Dr. Hans
Richter, who enjoyed English hospitality so long, now clamours for our
extinction; it is even said that he has asked to be allowed to conduct a
_Parsifal_ airship to this country.
[Illustration: STUDY OF A PRUSSIAN HOUSEHOLD HAVING ITS MORNING HATE]
_March, 1915._
A new and possibly momentous chapter has opened in the history of the War
by the attempt to force the Dardanelles. At the end of February the Allied
Fleet bombarded the forts at the entrance, and landed a party of
bluejackets. Since then these naval operations have been resumed, and our
new crack battleship _Queen Elizabeth_ has joined in the attack. We
have not got through the Narrows, and some sceptical critics are asking
what we should do if we got through to Constantinople, without a land
force. It is a great scheme, if it comes off; and the "only begetter" of
it, if report is true, is Mr. Winston Churchill, the strategist of the
Antwerp expedition, who now aspires to be the Dardanelson of our age.
Anyhow, the Sultan, lured on by the Imperial William o' the Wisp, is
already capable of envying even his predecessor:
Abdul! I would that I had shared your plight,
Or Europe seen my heels,
Before the hour when Allah bound me tight
To WILLIAM'S chariot-wheels!
Germany, always generous with other people's property, has begun to hint to
Italy possibilities of compensation in the shape of certain portions of
Austro-Hungarian territory.
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