Apparently he’s just as small,
    But since his size no more impedes him
  In spirit he is six foot tall—­
    Because his country needs him.

[Illustration:  THE EXCURSIONIST

TRIPPER WILHELM:  “First Class to Paris.”

CLERK:  “Line blocked.”

WILHELM:  “Then make it Warsaw.”

CLERK:  “Line blocked.”

WILHELM:  “Well, what about Calais?”

CLERK:  “Line blocked.”

WILHELM:  “Hang it!  I must go somewhere!  I promised my people
I would.”]

We have begun to think in millions.  The war is costing a million a day.  The Chancellor of the Exchequer has launched a war loan of 230 millions and doubled our income tax.  The Prime Minister asks for an addition of a million men to the Regular Army.  But the country has not yet fully awakened to the realities of war.  Football clubs are concerned with the “jostling of the ordinary patrons” by men in uniform.  “Business as usual” is interpreted as “pleasure as usual” in some quarters.  Rumour is busy with stories of mysterious prisoners in the Tower, with tales of huge guns which are to shell us from Calais when the Germans get there; with reports (from neutral sources) of the speedy advent of scores of Zeppelins and hundreds of aeroplanes over London.  But though

  Old England’s dark o’ nights and short
    Of ’buses:  still she’s much the sort
  Of place we always used to know.

[Illustration:  T.B.D.

OFFICER’S STEWARD:  “Will you take your bath, sir, before or after haction?”]

It is otherwise with Belgium, with its shattered homes and wrecked towns.  The great Russian legend is still going strong, in spite of the statements of the Under-Secretary for War, and, after all, why should the Germans do all the story telling?  By the way, a “German Truth Society” has been founded.  It is pleasant to know that it is realised over there at last that there is a difference between Truth and German Truth.  The British Navy, we learn from the Koelnische Zeitung, “is in hiding.”  But our fragrant contemporary need not worry.  In due course the Germans shall have the hiding.

In some ways the unchanged spirit of our people is rather disconcerting.  One of Mr. Punch’s young men, happening to meet a music-hall acquaintance, asked him how he thought the war was going, and met with the answer:  “Oh, I think the managers will have to give in.”  And the proposal to change the name of Berlin Road at Lewisham has been rejected by the residents.

December, 1914.

In less than six weeks Coronel has been avenged at the battle of the
Falkland Islands: 

  Hardened steel are our ships;
    Gallant tars are our men;
  We never are wordy
    (STURDEE, boys, STURDEE!),
  But quietly conquer again and again.