alais has been leased to England for
ninety-nine years. Our own information is that the situation is really
worse than that, the lease being granted alternatively for ninety-nine
years "or the duration of the War."

***

An official statement points out that the work of the National Service
Department is continuing without interruption pending the appointment of
a new Director-General. It appears that the members of the staff have
expressed a desire to die in harness.

* * * * *

IDYLLS OF THE KING OF PRUSSIA.

A FRAGMENT.

So spake Sir GERARD (U.S.A.) and ceased.
Then answered WILLIAM, talking through his hat:
"When first the heathen rose against our realm,
That haunt of peace where all day long occurred
The cooing of innumerable doves,
I hailed my knighthood where I sat in hall
At high Potsdam the Palace, and they came;
And all the rafters rang with rousing _Hochs_.

"So to my feet they drew and kissed my boots
And laid their maily fists in mine and sware
To reverence their Kaiser as their God
And _vice versa_; to uphold the Faith
Approved by me as Champion of the Church;
To ride abroad redressing Belgium's wrongs;
To honour treaties like a virgin's troth;
To serve as model in the nations' eyes
Of strength with sweetness wed; to hack their way
Without superfluous violence; to spare
The best cathedrals lest my heart should bleed,
Nor butcher babes and women, or at least
No more than needful--in a word, behave
Like Prussian officers, the flower of men.

"I bade them take ensample from their Lord
Of perfect manners, wearing on their helms
The bouquet of a blameless Junkerhood,
And be a law of culture to themselves,
Though other laws, not made in Germany,
Should perish, being scrapped. For so I deemed
That this our Order of the Table Round
Should mould its Christian pattern on the spheres,
Itself unchanged amid a world new-made,
And men should say, in that fair after-time,
'The old Order sticketh, yielding place to none.'"

So be. Whereat that other held his peace,
Seeming, for courtesy, to yield assent.
But, as within the lists at Camelot
Some temporary knight mislays his seat
And falls, and, falling, lets his morion loose,
And lights upon his head, and all the spot
Swells like a pumpkin, and he hides the bulge
Beneath his gauntlet lest it cause remark
And curious comment--so behin