These brave men and their heroic brothers in the trenches are true sportsmen as well as patriots, not those who interpret the need of lightheartedness by the cult of “sport as usual” on the football field and the racecourse.  And the example of the Universities shines with the same splendour.  Of the scanty remnant that remain at Oxford and Cambridge all the physically fit have joined the O.T.C.  Boat-race day has passed, but the crews are gone to “keep it long” and “pull it through” elsewhere: 

  Not here their hour of great emprise;
    No mounting cheer towards Mortlake roars;
  Lulled to full tide the river lies
    Unfretted by the fighting oars;
  The long high toil of strenuous play
    Serves England elsewhere well to-day.

London changes daily.  The sight of the female Jehu is becoming familiar; the lake in St. James’s Park has been drained and the water-fowl driven to form a concentration camp by the sorry pool that remains beside the Whitehall Gate.

Spy-hunting is prevalent in East Anglia, but the amateurs have not achieved any convincing results.  Spring poets are suffering from suspended animation; there is a slump in crocuses, snowdrops, daffodils and lambkins.  Their “musings always turn away to men who’re arming for the fray.”  The clarion and the fife have ousted the pastoral ode.  And our military and naval experts, harassed by the Censor, take refuge in psychology.

The Koelnische Zeitung has published a whole article on “Mr. Punch.”  The writer, a Herr Professor, finds our cartoons lacking in “modest refinement.”  Indeed, he goes so far as to say that the treatment of the Kaiser savours of blasphemy.  One is so apt to forget that the Kaiser is a divinity, so prone to remember that Luther wrote, “We Germans are Germans, and Germans we will remain—­that is to say, pigs and brutish animals.”  This was written in 1528:  but “the example of the Middle Ages” is held up to-day by German leaders as the true fount of inspiration.

[Illustration:  THE WAR SPIRIT AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM

ARDENT EGYPTOLOGIST (who has lately joined the Civic Guard):  “No, I seem to have lost my enthusiasm for this group since I noticed Bes-Hathor-Horus was out of step with the other two.”]

April, 1915.

A hundred years ago Bismarck was born on April 1, the man who built with blood and iron, but now only the blood remains.  Yet one may doubt whether even that strong and ruthless pilot would have commended the submarine crew who sank the liner Falaba and laughed at the cries and struggles of drowning men and women.  Sooner or later these crews are doomed to die the death of rats: 

  But you, who sent them out to do this shame;
    From whom they take their orders and their pay;
  For you—­avenging wrath defers its claim,
    And Justice bides her day.