lowed to speak to each other if granted a special licence
or talking-ticket by the Sheikh-ul-Islam, though there is a special
dispensation for mothers-in-law. The reported mobilization of eighty
goats on Mount Tabor shows pretty clearly which way the wind is
blowing; whilst it is persistently rumoured in Joppa that five camels
were seen passing through Jerusalem yesterday. Suspicious dredging
operations in the Dead Sea are also reported by a Berne correspondent.
The future is big with presage.

All eyes are fixed on the two great African Powers which still stand
aside from the maelstroem of war. The position in Ethiopia is, to say
the least of it, tendentious, and at any moment the natives may change
their skin. The coronation of the new Empress of Abyssinia is being
followed as usual by the great Feast of the Blue Umbrella, at which
an important pronouncement is, I learn, to be made. I hear, moreover
(from a private source in Trondhjem, _via_ Mecca and Amsterdam), that
Wady-ul-Dzjinn, the new Premier, and a staunch pro-Ally, is expected
to speak with no uncertain voice. Unfortunately serious liquorice
riots have broken out in the capital, and these are being cunningly
used by German agents to turn popular discontent against the Allies.
Fraeulein von Schlimm, a niece by marriage of the acting Montenegrin
Envoy, is accused of purposely hoarding five hundred sticks of
"Spanish" so as to aggravate the crisis. The usually reliable
correspondent of _The Salt Lake City Morning Pioneer_ telegraphs
(_via_ Tomsk) that she only escaped lynching by distributing her
treasure to the mob.

In a similar way economic issues are determining the attitude
of Thibet. Prices in Lhassa are rising fabulously. The new Food
Controller is endeavouring to grapple with the situation, and the yak
ration has again been reduced. It behoves British diplomacy to see
that the ensuing discontent is not turned into Germanophil currents.
Where is our Foreign Office? What is being done? We are in the third
year of the War and yet, while the German Minister is distributing
free arrowroot to the populace, Whitehall slumbers on. It may be
nothing to our mandarins that a full platoon was added to the Thibetan
field-strength only last week, and that the Government dinghy is
already watertight.

_Later_. Paraguay's attitude is now defined as one of Stark
Neutrality. Patagonia has increased her army by fifty per cent. The
new recruit promises to make an excell