Many early nestings are recorded as the result of mild weather, and at
least one occasional visitor _(Polonius bombifer_) has laid eggs in
various parts of the country.
_March_, 1916.
The month of the War god has again justified its name and its traditions.
Both entry and exit have been leonine. The new submarine "frightfulness"
began on the 1st, and the battle round Verdun, in which the fate of Paris,
to say the least, is involved, has raged with unabated fury throughout the
entire month.
Germany's junior partners, Turkey and Bulgaria, are for the moment more
concerned with bleeding Germany than with shedding their blood for her;
Enver Pasha is reported to have gone to pay a visit to the tomb of the
Prophet at Medina; Portugal, our oldest ally, is now officially at war with
Germany, and the dogs of frightfulness are already toasting "_der
Tagus_."
On our share of the Western front there is still what is nominally
described as a "lull." But, as a young Officer writes, "you must not
imagine that life here is all honey. Even here we do a bit for our
eight-and-sixpence." Once upon a time billets were billets. They now very
often admit of being shelled with equal exactitude from due in front and
due in rear, and water is laid on throughout. "It is a fact well known to
all our most widely circulated photographic dailies that the German gunners
waste a power of ammunition. The only criticism I have to make is that I
wish they would waste it more carefully. The way they go strewing the stuff
about around us is such that they're bound to hit someone or something
before long. Still, we have only two more days in these trenches, and they
seldom give us more than ten thousand shells a day."
[Illustration: Verdun, February--March, 1916]
Letters from second-lieutenants seldom go beyond a gentle reminder that
their life is not an Elysium. They offer a strange contrast to the
activities of Parliamentary grousers and scapegoat hunters. If the Germans
were in occupation of the Black Country, if Oxford were being daily shelled
as Rheims is, and if with a favouring breeze London could hear the dull
rumble of the bombardment as Paris can, one wonders if Members would still
be encumbering the Order-paper with the vexatious trivialities that now
find place there, or emitting what a patriotic Labour Member picturesquely
described as "the croakings and bleatings of the fatted lambs who have
besmirched their country." _Per contra_ we welcome the optimism of Mr.
Asquith in discussing new Votes of Credit, though he reminds us of Micawber
calculating his indebtedness for the benefit of Traddles. It will be
remembered that when the famous IOU had been handed over, Copperfield
remarked, "I am persuaded not only that this was quite the same to Mr.
Micawber as paying the money, but that Traddles himself hardly knew the
difference until he had had time to think about it." Then we have had the
surprising but welcome experience of Mr. Tim Healy championing the
Government against Sir John Simon's attack on the Military Service Bill;
and have listened to Lord Montagu of Beaulieu's urgent plea in the Lords
for unity of air control, a proposal which Lord Haldane declared could not
be adopted without some "violent thinking." Most remarkable of all has been
Mr. Churchill's intervention in the debate on the Naval Estimates, his
gloomy review of the situation--Mr. Churchill is always a pessimist when
out of office--and the marvellous magnanimity of his suggestion that Lord
Fisher should be reinstated at the Admiralty, on the ground that his former
antagonist was the only possible First Sea Lord. Mr. Balfour dealt so
faithfully with these criticisms and suggestions that there seems to be no
truth in the report that Mr. Churchill has been asked to join the
Government as Minister of Admonitions. A new and coruscating star has swum
into our Parliamentary ken in the shape of the Member for Mid-Herts, and
astronomers have labelled it "Pegasus [Greek: pi beta]." When the House of
Commons passed the Bill prohibiting duels it ought to have made an
exception in favour of its own Members. Nothing would have done more to
raise the tone of debate, for offenders against decorum would gradually
have eliminated one another. Yet Parliament has its merits, not the least
of them being the scope it still affords for hereditary talent. Lord Derby,
at the moment the most prominent man on the Home Front after the Premier,
is the grandson of the "Rupert of Debate," and the new Minister of Blockade
enters on his duties close on fifty years after another Lord Robert Cecil
entered the Cabinet of Lord Derby. So history repeats itself with a
difference. In spite of the Coalition, or perhaps because of it, the old
strife of Whigs and Tories has revived, though the lines of cleavage are
quite different from what they were. Thus the new Tories are the men who
believe that the War is going to be decided by battles in Flanders and the
North Sea, and would sacrifice everything for victory, even the privilege
of abusing the Government. The new Whigs are the men who consider that the
House of Commons is the decisive arena, and that even the defeat of the
Germans would be dearly purchased at the cost of the individual's right to
say and do what he pleased.
[Illustration: "He's kicked the Corporal!"
"He's kicked the Vet.!!"
"He's kicked the Transport Officer!!!"
"He's kicked the Colonel!!!!"