According to an advertisement
in the _Nation_ the Fabian Research Department have issued two
Reports, "together with a Project for a Supernatural Authority that will
Prevent War." The egg, on the authority of the _Daily Mail_, is
"disappearing from our breakfast table," but even the humblest of us can
still enjoy our daily mare's nest. The effect of the Zeppelin on the young
has already been shown; but even the elderly own its stimulating influence.
_October, 1916_.
Mr. Punch's correspondents at the Front have an incorrigible habit of
euphemism and levity. Even when things go well they are never betrayed into
heroics, but adhere to the schoolboy formula of "not half bad," just as in
the blackest hours they would not admit that things were more than "pretty
beastly." Yet sometimes they deviate for a moment into really enlightening
comment. No better summary of the situation as it stands in the third year
of the War can be given than in the words of the faithful "Watch-dog," who
has long been on duty in trench and dug-out and crater-hole:--
"This War has ceased to become an occupation befitting a
gentleman--gentleman, that is, of the true Prussian breed. It was a happy
and honourable task so long as it consisted of civilising the world at
large with high explosive, poisonous gas and burning oil, and the world at
large was not too ready to answer back.
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