The mutiny of the German sailors at Kiel is now explained. They
preferred death to another speech from the KAISER.
***
A Constantinople poet has translated the plays of SHAKSPEARE into
Turkish. The rendering is said to be faithful to the text, and it is
assumed that a keen appreciation of Turkey's military necessities
alone accounts for his reference to the "Swan of Avon" as the "Bulbul
of Potsdam."
***
The use of flour as an ingredient of sausages is now forbidden. Young
sausages which have hitherto been fed on bread and milk must either be
broken to bones or killed for the table.
***
An optimist writes to express the hope that by this elimination of
flour the dreadful secret of the sausage may be at last revealed.
***
The German Government has created a Pulp Commission. We have always
said they would be reduced to it in time.
***
The King of SIAM'S royal yacht has been turned into a cargo boat.
Reports that the Sacred White Elephant has been commandeered for use
as a floating dock are still unconfirmed.
***
For giving corn to pheasants a fine of ten pounds has been inflicted
on a merchant of New York (Lincs.) The removal _en bloc_ of this
village from the mouth of the Hudson river to its present site should
finally convince the sceptics of the magnitude of America's war
effort.
***
The Vacant Land Cultivation Society offers a prize of ten shillings
for the heaviest potato. Some of our most notorious potato-tellers are
expected to compete.
***
The provision of steel helmets for the Metropolitan Police is all
right so far as it goes, but the Force is still asking why it cannot
be furnished with some protection for its other extremities.
***
From China it is reported that an aboriginal priest now claiming
the Throne has been accustomed to eat the flesh of tigers, wolves,
leopards, &c., also the human heart. It is, however, only fair to our
own restaurateurs to state that, though China is alleged to be on the
eve of war, there is as yet no food-control in that country.
***
An unusual scarcity of wasps is reported from various parts of the
country. Nothing is being done about it.
***
A calf has been sold for two thousand seven hundred guineas in
Aberdeenshire. The plucky purchaser is understood to have had for some
time past a craving for a veal cutlet.
***
A new form of frightfulness is evidently being practised upon their
guards by our interned Huns. "Some of them," says a contemporary,
"purchase a hundred cigars with a portion of the one pound a day which
is the miserable maximum they may spend on luxuries."
***
"People who speak of suicide seldom do anything desperate," says a
well-known mental expert. So that the KAISER'S threat to fight England
to the death may be taken for what it is worth.
***
An extraordinary meeting of German Reichstag Members has arrived at
the decision that the Germans cannot hope for victory in the field. We
see nothing extraordinary in this.
***
Professor BERGEN was once described as "the well-known inventor and
philanthropist." He still invents (his latest is a gas-thrower,
reported by the _Berliner Tageblatt_ to be "a veritable monster of
destruction"), but has dropped the other job.
***
A swallow-tail butterfly which escaped from the Zoo has been
re-captured at Eastbourne. When caught it gave the policeman to
understand that it would go quietly.
***
Two men, we read, took twenty-two hours to chisel a hole through the
three-foot flint concrete roof of the London Opera House. The report
that they did this to avoid the Entertainment Tax has now been
contradicted.
***
"The American Winston Churchill," says _The Daily Express_, "has to
plod through life without a middle name." We all have our little cross
to bear. Even the MINISTER OF MUNITIONS has to plod through life with
the knowledge that there is another Winston Churchill loose about the
world.
***
It is proposed that Parliament shall sit from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M.,
instead of from 3 to 11 P.M. We do not care for this crude attempt to
mix business with politics.
***
The Boundary Commission Report advocates the creation of thirty-one
new M.P.'s. It will be a bitter disappointment for those who were
sanguine enough to hope that Redistribution would spell Reform.
***
The Government has commandeered all stocks of rum. The rigours of war,
it seems, must be suffered even by our little tots.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _The Wit._ "AH, NOW YOU'RE FOR IT, ALBERT?"
_Tractor-Driver._ "WOT'S THE MATTER?"
_The Wit._ "WHY, YOU'VE BEEN AND GONE AND COME ON PARADE WITHOUT
YOUR SPURS."]
* * * * *
"The bridegroom, 6 ft. 35 ins. in height, was wearing the
full-dress uniform of a captain in the Army."--_Great
Yarmouth Independent_.
He would need it all.
* * * * *