s life." Even
crocodiles sometimes speak the truth unwittingly. Meanwhile the Hamburg
_Fremdenblatt_ asserts that, "We Germans would gladly follow the
Kaiser's lead through the very gates of hell, were it necessary." The
qualification is surely superfluous, in the light of the murder of the
heroic English hospital matron, Edith Cavell, at Brussels on October 12.
Her life was one long act of mercy. She died with unshaken fortitude after
the mockery of a trial on a charge of having assisted fugitive British and
Belgian prisoners to escape. But her great offence was that she was
English. The names of her chief assassins are General Baron von Biasing,
the Governor of Brussels, General von Sauberschweig, the Military Governor,
and the Baron von der Lancken, the Head of the Political Department. Many
years will pass before the echoes of that volley fired at dawn in a
Brussels prison yard will die away.

[Illustration: LANDLADY; "'Ere's the Zeppelins, sir!" LODGER: "Right-o! Put
'em down outside."]

A new phase has been reached in the Conscription controversy, and the
burning question appears to be whether the necessary men are to be
compelled to volunteer or persuaded to be compulsorily enrolled. One of our
novelist military experts, who is not always lucky with figures, though he
thoroughly enjoys them, is alleged to have discovered that there are no
more men than can be raised by conscription, but that the same does not, of
course, apply to the voluntary system.

The _Daily Mail_ asks, "Have we a Foreign Office?" We understand that
a search-party is going carefully through Carmelite House. We have
certainly got a Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, so efficient in the
discharge of his duties that he has made himself an accomplished landscape
painter in three months.

A visitor to a remote East Anglian village in search of rest has found
recreation in discussing with the inhabitants the Great War, of which he
found some of them had heard. "Them there Zett'lins," said one old woman,
"I almost shruk as I heerd the mucky varmints a-shovellin' on the
coals--dare, dare! How my pore heart did beat!" And an onlooker, who had
seen a bomb drop near a church, informed the visitor that it "fared to him
like the body of the chach a-floatin' away--that it did and all! It made a
clangin' like a covey of lorries with their innards broke loose." Another
inhabitant said that he had two boys fighting. "One on 'em is in France,
wherever