To the ordinary queues we now have to add processions of conscientious
disgorgers patriotically evading prosecution. The problem "Is tea a food or
is it not?" convulses our Courts, and the axioms of Euclid call for
revision as follows:
"Parallel lines are those which in a queue, if only produced far enough,
never mean meat."
"If there be two queues outside two different butchers' shops, and the
length and the breadth of one queue be equal to the length and breadth of
the other queue, each to each, but the supplies in one shop are greater
than the supplies in the other shop, then the persons in the one queue will
get more meat than those in the other queue, which is absurd, and Rhondda
ought to see about it."
All the same, Lord Rhondda is a stout fellow who goes on his way with an
imperviousness to criticism--criticism that is often selfish and
contemptible--which augurs well for his ultimate success in the most
thankless of all jobs.
[Illustration:
INDIGNANT WAR-WORKER: "And she actually asked me if I didn't think I might
be doing something! Me? And I haven't missed a charity matinée for the last
three months."]
Food at the front is another matter, and Mr. Punch is glad to print the
tribute of one of his war-poets to the "Cookers":
The Company Cook is no great fighter,
And there's never a medal for _him_ to wear,
Though he camps in the shell-swept waste, poor blighter,
And many a cook has "copped it" there;
But the boys go over on beans and bacon,
And Tommy is best when Tommy has dined,
So here's to the Cookers, the plucky old Cookers,
And the sooty old Cooks that waddle behind.
"It is Germany," says a German paper, "who will speak the last word in this
War." Yes, and the last word will be "Kamerad!" But that word will be
spoken in spite of many pseudo-war-workers on the Home Front.
Among the many wonders of the War one of the most wonderful is the
sailor-man, three times, four times, five times torpedoed, who yet wants to
sail once more. But there is one thing that he never wants to do again--to
"pal" with Fritz the square-head:
"When peace is signed and treaties made an' trade begins again,
There's some'll shake a German's 'and an' never see the stain;
But _not me_," says Dan the sailor-man, "not me, as God's on high--
Lord knows it's bitter in an open boat to see your shipmates die."
Among the ignoble curiosities of the time we note the following
advertisements in a Manchester newspaper of "wants" in our "indispensable"
industries: "Tennis ball inflators, cutters and makers" and "Caramel
wrappers"; while a Brighton paper has "Wanted, two dozen living flies
weekly during the remainder of winter for two Italian frogs."
The situation in Ireland remains unchanged, and suggests the following
historical division of eras. (1) Pagan era; (2) Christian era; (3) De
Valera.
_March, 1918_.
Once again the month of the War-God has been true to its name. March,
opening in suspense, with the Kaiser and his Chancellor still talking of
peace, has closed in a crisis of acute anxiety for the Allies. The expected
has happened; the long-advertised German attack has been delivered in the
West, and the war of movement has begun.
Breaking through the Fifth British Army, in five days the Germans have
advanced twenty-five miles, to within artillery range of Amiens and the
main lateral railway behind the British lines. Bapaume and Péronne have
fallen. The Americans have entered the war in the firing line. It is the
beginning of the end, the supreme test of the soul of the nation:
The little things of which we lately chattered--
The dearth of taxis or the dawn of Spring;
Themes we discussed as though they really mattered,
Like rationed meat or raiders on the wing;--
How thin it seems to-day, this vacant prattle,
Drowned by the thunder rolling in the West,
Voice of the great arbitrament of battle
That puts our temper to the final test.
Thither our eyes are turned, our hearts are straining,
Where those we love, whose courage laughs at fear,
Amid the storm of steel around them raining,
Go to their death for all we hold most dear.
New-born of this supremest hour of trial,
In quiet confidence shall be our strength,
Fixed on a faith that will not take denial
Nor doubt that we have found our soul at length.
O England, staunch of nerve and strong of sinew,
Best when you face the odds and stand at bay;
Now show a watching world what stuff is in you!
Now make your soldiers proud of you to-day!
Of our soldiers we at home cannot be too proud, from Field-Marshal to
officer's servant. As one of Mr. Punch's correspondents at the front
writes: "Dawn to me hereafter will not be personified as a rosy-fingered
damsel or a lovely swift-footed deity, but as a sturdy little man in khaki,
crimson-eared with cold, heralded and escorted by frozen wafts of outer
air, bearing in one knobby fist a pair of boots, and in the other a tin mug
of black and smoking tea." As for the charities and courtesies of war, as
interpreted by our soldiers, Mr. Punch can wish for no better illustration
than in these lines on "The German graves":
I wonder are there roses still
In Ablain St. Nazaire,
And crosses girt with daffodil
In that old garden there.
I wonder if the long grass waves
With wild-flowers just the same,
Where Germans made their soldiers' graves
Before the English came?
The English set those crosses straight
And kept the legends clean;
The English made the wicket-gate
And left the garden green;
And now who knows what regiments dwell
In Ablain St. Nazaire?
But I would have them guard as well
The graves we guarded there.
And when at last the Prussians pass
Among those mounds and see
The reverent cornflowers crowd the grass
Because of you and me,
They'll give, perhaps, one humble thought
To all the "English fools"
Who fought as never men have fought
But somehow kept the rules.
[Illustration: MADE IN GERMANY