She can hear a U-boat thinking in Atlantic depths below
And disintegrate it with a Martian ray;
She can feel her way by night
Through the minefield of the Bight;
She has all the tricks of science, grave and gay.

In the twinkle of a searchlight she can suffer a sea-change
From a collier to a _Shamrock_ under sail,
From a Hyper-super-Dreadnought, old Leviathan at range,
To a lightship or a whaler or a whale;
With some canvas and a spar
She can mock the morning star
As a haystack or the flotsam of a gale.

She's the derelict you chartered north of Flores outward-bound,
She's the iceberg that you sighted coming back,
She's the salt-rimed Biscay trawler heeling home to Plymouth Sound,
She's the phantom-ship that crossed the moon-beams' track;
She's the rock where none should be
In the Adriatic Sea,
She's the wisp of fog that haunts the Skagerrack.

Recognition of services faithfully done is an endless task; but Mr. Punch
is glad to print the valedictory tribute of one of the boys in blue to a
V.A.D.--a class that has come in for much undeserved criticism.

While willy-nilly I must go
A-hunting of the Hun,
You'll carry on--which now I know
(Although I've helped to rag you so)
Means great work greatly done.

Among the minor events of the month has been the christening of a baby by
the names of Grierson Plumer Haig French Smith-Dorrien, as its father
served under these generals. The idea is, no doubt, to prevent the child
when older from asking: "What did you do in the Great War, Daddy?"

England, as we have already said, endures its triumphs with composure. But
our printers are not altogether immune from excitement. An evening paper
informs us that "the dwifficuplties of passing from rigid trench warfare to
field warfare are gigantic and perhaps unsurmountable." And only our innate
sense of comradeship deters us from naming the distinguished contemporary
which recently published an article entitled: "The Importance of Bray."

_October, 1918_.

THE growing _crescendo_ of success has reached its climax in this, the
most wonderful month of our _annus mirabilis._ Every day brings
tidings of a new victory. St. Quentin, Cambrai, and Laon had all been
recaptured in the first fortnight. On the 17th Ostend, Lille, and Douai
were regained, Bruges was reoccupied on the 19th, and by the 20th the
Belgian Army under King Albert, reinforced by the Fre