s,
Where, after dining, probably with wine,
One felt indifferent to hostile sallies,
And with a pipe meandered round the line;
You trudged along a trench until it ended;
It led at least to some familiar spot;
It might not be the place that you'd intended,
But then you might as well be there as not.

But what a wilderness we now inhabit
Since this confounded "open" strife prevails!
It may be good; I do not wish to crab it,
But you should hear the language it entails,
Should see this waste of wide uncharted craters
Where it is vain to seek the companies,
Seeing the shell-holes are as like as taters
And no one knows where anybody is.

Oft in the darkness, palpitant and blowing,
Have I set out and lost the hang of things,
And ever thought, "Where _can_ the guide be going?"
But trusted long and rambled on in rings,
For ever climbing up some miry summit,
And halting there to curse the contrite guide,
For ever then descending like a plummet
Into a chasm on the other side.

Oft have I sat and wept, or sought to study
With hopeless gaze the uninstructive stars,
Hopeless because the very skies were muddy;
I only saw a red malicious Mars;
Or pulled my little compass out and pondered,
And set it sadly on my shrapnel hat,
Which, I suppose, was why the needle wandered,
Only, of course, I never thought of that.

And then perhaps some 5.9's start dropping,
As if there weren't sufficient holes about;
I flounder on, hysterical and sopping,
And come by chance to where I started out,
And say once more, while I have no objection
To other people going to Berlin,
Give _me_ a trench, a nice revetted section,
And let me stay there till the Bosch gives in!

* * * * *

=A Judge Speaks Out.=

"Regarding the assertions that the appellant introduced politics
into his sermons, it would be a bad day for this country when in
a political controversy when a clergyman could conceive cases in
which some high ideal was involved in a political controversy
when a clergyman could honestly and reasonably preach about
it."--_Yorkshire Post._

We have always felt that something like this needed saying.

* * * * *

[Illustration: COMFORT IN EXILE.

IMPERIAL BROTHER-IN-LAW. "AFTER ALL, MY DEAR TINO, YOU ARE SOMETHING
BETTER THAN A KING; YOU AR