[Illustration:  RUNNING AMOK

GERMAN BULL:  “I know I’m making a rotten exhibition of myself; but I shall tell everybody I was goaded into it.”]

The fusion of classes in the camps of the New Armies outdoes the mixture of “cook’s son and duke’s son” fifteen years ago.  The old Universities are now given up to a handful of coloured students, Rhodes’ scholars and reluctant crocks.  As a set-off, however, a Swansea clergyman and football enthusiast has held a “thanksgiving service for their good fortune against Newcastle United.”  Meanwhile, the Under-Secretary for War has stated that the army costs more in a week than the total estimates for the Waterloo campaign, and that our casualties on the Western front alone have amounted to over 100,000.  So what with submarine losses, ubiquitous German spies, the German propaganda in America, and complaints of Government inactivity, the pessimists are having a fine time.  Tommy grouses of course, but then he complains far more of the loss of a packet of cigarettes or a tin of peppermints or a mouth-organ than of the loss of a limb.

Germany’s attitude towards the United States tempers the blandishments of the serenader with the occasional discharge of half-bricks.  There is no such inconsistency in the expression of her feelings about England.  Articles entitled “Unser Hass gegen England” constantly appear in the German Press, and people are beginning to wonder whether the Hass is not the Kaiser.  Apropos of newspapers, we are beginning to harbour a certain envy of the Americans.  Even their provincial organs often contain important and cheering news of the doings of the British Army many days before the Censor releases the information in England.  Daylight saving is again being talked of, and it would surely be an enormous boon to rush the measure through now so that the Germans may have less darkness of which to take advantage.  And there is a general and reasonable feeling that more use should be made of bands for recruiting.  The ways of German musicians are perplexing.  Here is the amiable Herr Humperdinck, composer of “Haensel and Gretel,” the very embodiment of the old German kindliness, signing the Manifesto of patriotic artists and professors who execrate England, while Strauss, the truculent “Mad Mullah” of the Art, holds aloof.  Dr. Hans Richter, who enjoyed English hospitality so long, now clamours for our extinction; it is even said that he has asked to be allowed to conduct a Parsifal airship to this country.

[Illustration:  STUDY OF A PRUSSIAN HOUSEHOLD HAVING ITS MORNING HATE]

March, 1915.