* * * * *

[Illustration:  The Wit. “Ah, now you’re for it, Albert?”

Tractor-Driver. “WOT’S the matter?”

The Wit. “Why, you’ve been and gone and come on Parade without your spurs.”]

* * * * *

    “The bridegroom, 6 ft. 35 ins. in height, was wearing the
    full-dress uniform of a captain in the Army.”—­Great
    Yarmouth Independent.

He would need it all.

* * * * *

Headline to a description of a recent push:—­

    “VONDERFUL results.”—­Evening Paper.

The “Hidden Hand” in the composing-room?

* * * * *

The innocents abroad.

["Stedfastness and righteousness are the qualities which the German people value in the highest degree, and which have brought it a good and honourable reputation in the whole world.  When we make experiments in lies and deception, intrigue and low cunning, we suffer hopeless and brutal failure.  Our lies are coarse and improbable, our ambiguity is pitiful simplicity.  The history of the War proves this by a hundred examples.  When our enemies poured all these things upon us like a hailstorm, and we convinced ourselves of the effectiveness of such tactics, we tried to imitate them.  But these tactics will not fit the German.  We are rough but moral, we are credulous but honest.”—­Herr DERNBURG, in “Deutsche Politik."]

  In Eden bowers, so fair to see,
  There dwelt, when sin was yet to be,
  A guileless Serpent up a tree,
    Sniffing the virgin breezes;
  Till eve (the huzzy!), one fine day,
  With evil purpose came his way,
  And led that simple worm astray
    By low and wicked wheezes.

  A Wolf there was, quite sweet and good,
  Till in his path Red Riding-Hood
  Went camouflaging through the wood—­
    A brazen little terror;
  Large teeth she had and bulgy eyes
  And told the most amazing lies,
  And taught him, in a flowery guise,
    The downward route to error.

  Of Fritz’s nature, fresh as morn,
  Pure as a babe that’s just been born,
  Clean as a poodle lately-shorn,
    These are symbolic samples;
  The Wolf unversed in specious vice,
  The Serpent with a taste as nice
  As anything in Paradise—­
    Debauched by bad examples.

  England seduced us.  ’Neath her spell,
  Mistress of lies, we fell and fell
  Into the poisoned sink, or well,
    Of faked and fabulous rumour;
  And there, as we were bound to do,
  We failed, because we loved the True,
  And loathed the False as alien to
    Our artless German humour.