relegated to clerical duties instead of going
to the front; of the evaporation of visions of military glory in the
routine of typing, telephoning and telegraphing; of leisurely Oriental
methods. Being a soldier clerk in India is very different from being a
civilian clerk in England. Patience, good Territorials in India, your time
will come.

[Illustration: THE SHIRKERS' WAR NEWS

"There! What did I tell you? Northdown Lambs beaten--two to nothing."]

At home, though the "knut" has been commandeered and nobly transmogrified,
though women are increasingly occupied in war work and entering with
devotion and self-sacrifice on their new duties as substitutes for men, we
have not yet been wholly purged of levity and selfishness. Football news
has not receded into its true perspective; shirkers are more pre-occupied
with the defeat or victory of "Lambs" or "Wolves" in Lancashire than with
the stubborn defence, the infinite discomfort and the heavy losses of their
brothers in Flanders.

Overdressed fashionables pester wounded officers and men with their
unreasonable visits and futile queries. The enemies in our midst are not
all aliens; there are not a few natives we should like to see interned.

The Kaiser has had his first War birthday and, as the Prussian Government
has ordered that there shall be no public celebrations, this confirms the
rumours that he now wishes he had never been born.

Germany, says the _Cologne Gazette_ in an article on the food
question, "has still at hand a very large supply of pigs"--even after the
enormous number she has exported to Belgium. Germany, however, does not
only export pigs; her trade in "canards" with neutrals grows and grows,
chiefly with the United States, thanks to the untiring mendacity of
Bernstorff and Wolff. Compared with these efforts, the revelations of
English governesses at German courts, which are now finding their way into
print, make but a poor show.

As the British armies increase, the moustache of the British officer, one
of the most astonishing products of these astonishing times, grows "small
by degrees and beautifully less." Waxed ends, fashionable in a previous
generation, are now only worn by policemen, taxi-drivers and labour
leaders. The Kaiser remains faithful to the Mephistophelean form. But in
proof of his desire to make the best of both worlds, nether and celestial,
he continues to commandeer "Gott" on every occasion as his second in
command. Out-Herodin