n--poison gas. He had already poisoned wells in South West Africa, but
this is an uglier outcome of the harnessing of science to the Powers of
Darkness. Italy grows restive in spite of the blandishments of Prince
Buelow, and as the month closes we hear of the landing of the Allies in
Gallipoli, just two months after the unsupported naval attempt to force the
Dardanelles. British and Australian and New Zealand troops have achieved
the impossible by incredible valour in face of murderous fire, and a
foothold has been won at tremendous cost of heroic lives. Letters from the
Western front continue cheerful, but it does not need much reading between
the lines to realise the odds with which our officers and men have to
contend, the endless discomfort and unending din. They are masters of a
gallant art of metaphor which belittles the most appalling horrors of
trench warfare; masters, too, of the art of extracting humorous relief from
the most trivial incidents.

On the home front we have to contend with a dangerous ally of the enemy in
Drink, and with the self-advertising politicians who do their bit by asking
unnecessary questions. Sometimes, but rarely, they succeed in eliciting
valuable information, as in Mr. Lloyd George's statement on the situation
at the front. We have now six times as many men in the field as formed the
original Expeditionary Force, and in the few days fighting round Neuve
Chapelle almost as much ammunition was expended by our guns as in the whole
of the two and three-quarter years of the Boer War.

[Illustration: THE HAUNTED SHIP

GHOST OF THE OLD PILOT: "I wonder if he would drop me _now!_"]

The Kaiser has been presented with another grandson, but it has not been
broken to the poor little fellow who he is. It is also reported that the
Kaiser has bestowed an Iron Cross on a learned pig--one of a very numerous
class.

_May, 1915_.

We often think that we must have got to the end of German "frightfulness,"
only to have our illusions promptly shattered by some fresh and amazing
explosion of calculated ferocity. Last month it was poison gas; now it is
the sinking of the _Lusitania_. Yet Mr. Punch had read the omens some
seven and a half years ago, when the records established by that liner had
created a jealousy in Germany which the Kaiser and his agents have now
appeased, but at what a cost! The House of Commons is an odd place, unique
in its characteristics. Looking round the benches when it