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[Illustration:  “YOU’VE GOT SOME ROCKERY HERE, DAD, SINCE I LEFT.”

“HUSH!  NOT A WORD.  IT’S COAL, MY BOY, WHITEWASHED!  CELLAR’S FULL UP.”]

* * * * *

PROPAGANDA FRIGHTFULNESS.

(It is reported that the German Minister to Patagonia, with the assistance of the Swedish Charge d’Affaires, has caused the following Proclamation to be distributed, along with a translation into the vernacular, among the natives; alleging that it reproduces a leaflet composed by the ALL-HIGHEST and dropped from a German aeroplane over the London district.)

This is a know-making to my Britisch Underthanes addressed.  Be it known that from to-day on the Britisch Empire my Empire is, and all Britisch Men, Fraus and Childer are Germans.  The folgende are now rules:—­

(1) I make all Laws alone and nobody with me interfere must.

(2) When a Man or Frau or Child a mile from me laughs it is as when into my All-Highest Face gelaughed is and the Strafe shall the Death be.

(3) Who me sees shall flat on the Earth fall and shall him there until I my gracious Hand wave keep.

(4) The German Sprache shall the Britisch Folk’s Sprache be and every Englisch Man who German not sprech kann shall with a by-Proclamation-to-be-declared-Strafe gestrafed be.

(5) German at the Table Manners shall by all Britisch Childer gelernt be.

(6) Everyone shall German Soldiers salute.  If any one misses this to do shall the Soldier the Right have him through the body with a sword to run.

(7) Only German Cigars and Tabak shall gesmokt be.

(8) The Newspapers shall every day print an Artikel me for my good Heart, my Genius and my Condescension praising.

(9) It shall a Picture of me in every House be.

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[Illustration:  AN OPEN-AIR VARIETY ENTERTAINMENT AT THE FRONT

WITH “OCCASIONAL MUSIC BY THE ANTI-AIRCRAFT SECTION.”]

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

“THE YELLOW TICKET.”

If Mr. MICHAEL MORTON doesn’t mind my not taking his original play too seriously I don’t mind telling him how much I enjoyed it.  It is quite a neat example of the shocker—­an agreeable form of entertainment for the simple and the jaded.  The chief properties are a yellow ticket and a hat-pin.  Both belong to the innocent and beautiful Jewish heroine, Anna Mirol.

It appears that she wanted to leave the pale to go to see her dying father in Petersburg, and the police, who will have their grim joke against a Jewess, offer her “the most powerful passport in Russia”—­the yellow ticket of Rahab.  She accepts it desperately, and, to escape its horrible obligations, enters an English family as governess, under an assumed name.  Here the head of the sinister Okhrana (Secret Police