[Illustration: SWOOPING FROM THE WEST
(_It is the intention of our new Ally to assist us in the patrolling of
the Atlantic_.)]
The British have entered Péronne; the Canadians have captured Vimy Ridge.
But the full extent of German frightfulness has never been so clearly
displayed as in their retreat. Here, for once, the German account of their
own doings is true. "In the course of these last months great stretches of
French territory have been turned by us into a dead country. It varies in
width from 10 to 12 or 13 kilometres, and extends along the whole of our
new positions. No village or farm was left standing, no road was left
passable, no railway track or embankment was left in being. Where once were
woods, there are gaunt rows of stumps; the wells have been blown up.... In
front of our new positions runs, like a gigantic ribbon, our Empire of
Death" (_Lokal Anzeiger_, March 18, 1917). The general opinion of the
Boche among the British troops is that he is only good at one thing, and
that is destroying other people's property. One of Mr. Punch's
correspondents writes to say that while the flattened villages and severed
fruit trees are a gruesome spectacle, for him "all else was forgotten in
speechless admiration of the French people.
"Their self-restraint and adaptability are beyond words. These hundreds of
honest people, just relieved from the domineering of the Master Swine, and
restored to their own good France again, were neither hysterical nor
exhausted." The names of the new German lines--Wotan and Siegfried and
Hunding--are not without significance. We accept the omen: it will not be
long before we hear of fresh German activities in the _Götterdämmerung_
line. Count Reventlow has informed the Kaiser that without victory a
continuation of the Monarchy is improbable. The "repercussion" of
Revolution is making itself felt. Even the Crown Prince is reported
to have felt misgivings as to the infection of anti-monarchial ideas,
and Mr. Punch is moved to forecast possibilities of upheaval:
Not that the Teuton's stolid wits
Are built to plan so rude a plot;
Somehow I cannot picture Fritz
Careering as a _sans-culotte_;
Schooled to obedience, hand and heart,
I can imagine nothing odder
Than such behaviour on the part
Of inoffensive cannon-fodder.
And yet one never really knows.
You cannot feed his massive trunk
On fairy tales of beaten foes,
Or Hindenburg's "victorious" bunk;
And if his rations run too short
Through this accursed British blockade,
Even the worm may turn and sport
A revolutionary cockade.
On the German Roll of Dishonour this month appears the name of one who has
been _grande et conspicuum nostro quoque tempore monstrum_. Baron
Moritz Ferdinand von Bissing, the German Military Governor-General of
Belgium, who was largely responsible for the murder of Nurse Cavell and the
chief instigator of the infamous Belgian deportations, after being granted
a rest from his labours, is reported to have died "of overwork." Here for
once we find ourselves in perfect agreement with the official German view.
In a recent character sketch of the deceased Baron, the _Cologne
Gazette_ observed, "He is a fine musician, and his execution was good."
It would have been.
The proceedings in Parliament do not call for extended comment. Mr. Asquith
has handsomely recanted his hostility to women's suffrage, admitting that
by their splendid services in the war women have worked out their own
electoral salvation. An old spelling-book used to tell us that "it is
agreeable to watch the unparalleled embarrassment of a harassed pedlar when
gauging the symmetry of a peeled pear." Lord Devonport, occupied in
deciding on the exact architecture and decoration of the Bath bun (official
sealed pattern), would make a companion picture. For the rest the House has
been occupied with the mysteries of combing and re-combing. The best War
saying of the month was that of Mr. Swift MacNeill, in reference to
proposed peace overtures, that it would be time enough to talk about peace
when the Germans ceased to blow up hospital ships.
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