***

According to the Town Crier of Dover, who has just retired after fifty years’ service, town crying isn’t what it was before the War.  People will listen to the bombs instead of attending to the properly constituted official.

***

A “History of the Russian Revolution” has been published.  The pen may not be mightier than the sword to-day, but it manages to keep ahead of it.

***

A private in one of the London regiments has translated two hundred and fifty lines of Paradise Lost into Latin verse during a sixteen-day spell in the trenches.  The introduction of some counter-irritant into our public school curriculum is now thought to be inevitable.

***

The crew of the U-boat interned at Cadiz, says a Madrid correspondent, have been allowed to land on giving their word of honour not to leave Spain during the continuance of the War.  The mystery of how the word of honour came into their possession is not explained.

***

Further evidence of the success of the U-boat starvation campaign has been thoughtlessly afforded the German Press by a London newspaper which has announced that burglars are now using practically nothing but skeleton keys.

***

No one has yet found anything that will conquer the wire-worm, says Professor J.R.  Dunstan.  We feel that the Professor is unduly pessimistic.  Has he tried the effect of writing a letter to The Daily Mail about it?

***

Things appear to be settling down in Mexico.  Last week only one hundred of General CARRANZA’S men were annihilated by bandits.

***

The Berlin authorities have ordered a “Shaveless day.”  As a measure of frightfulness this is doomed to failure against an Army like ours with tanks which will eat their way through all sorts of entanglements.

***

Because an officer omitted to salute him, Field-Marshal Von Hindenburg stopped his car and said, “I am Hindenburg.”  We understand that the officer accepted the explanation.

***

“There is a scarcity of violins,” says The Evening News.  Some papers never know how to keep a secret.

***

Lundy Island has just been purchased by Mr. Augustus Christie, of North Devon.  We are relieved to know it is still on the side of the Allies.

***

A grocer at Coalville, Leicestershire, riding a motor-bicycle without lights, is said to have offered two and a half pounds of sugar to a policeman to say nothing about it.  Fortunately the constable, when he came out of his faint, remembered the number of the bicycle, and the man was summoned.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  “You on Guard to-night, nobby?” “Naw.”  “Wot Yer bin an’ washed Yer face for, then?”]