The idea of National Registration has taken shape in a
Bill, which has passed its second reading. The notion of finding out what
everyone can do to help his country in her hour of need is excellent. But
the Government do not seem to have realised that half a million volunteer
soldiers have been waiting and ready for a job for the last six months:
And when at last you come and say
"What can you do? We ask for light
On any service you can pay,"
The answer is: "_You_ know all right,
And all this weary while you knew it;
The trouble was you wouldn't let us do it."
The German Press is not exactly the place where one expects to find
occasion for merriment. Yet listen to this from the _Neueste
Nachrichten_: "Our foes ask themselves continuously, How can we best get
at Germany's vital parts? What are her most vulnerable points? The answer
is, her humanity--her trustful honesty." Here, on the other hand, thousands
of people, by knocking months and years off their real age, have been
telling good straightforward lies for their country. At the Front euphemism
in describing hardship is mingled with circumlocution in official
terminology. Thus one C.O. is reported to refer to the enemy not as Germans
but "militant bodies of composite Teutonic origin."
A new and effectual cure for the conversion of pessimists at home has been
discovered.
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