[Illustration:  ON THE BLACK LIST

KAISER (as executioner):  “I’m going to hang you.”

PUNCH:  “Oh, you are, are you?  Well, you don’t seem to know how the scene ends.  It’s the hangman that gets hanged.”]

[Illustration:  SOME BIRD

THE RETURNING DOVE (to President Woodrow Noah): 

“Nothing doing.”

THE EAGLE:  “Say, Boss, what’s the matter with trying me?”]

But Germany does not merely talk.  She has been indulging in drastic reprisals in consequence of Mr. Winston Churchill’s memorandum on the captured submarine crews.  As a result 39 imprisoned British officers, carefully selected, have been subjected to solitary confinement under distressing conditions in return for Mr. Churchill’s having hinted at possible severities which were never carried out.  Moral:  Do not threaten unless you mean to act.  The retirement of Mr. Churchill to the seclusion of the Duchy of Lancaster and the appointment of Mr. Balfour to the First Lordship of the Admiralty afford hope that the release of the Thirty-Nine from their special hardship will not be unduly postponed.  The Coalition Government is shaking down.  A Ministry of Munitions has been created, with Mr. Lloyd George in charge; and members of the Cabinet have decided to pool their salaries with a view to their being divided equally.  Mr. McKenna has made his first appearance as Chancellor of the Exchequer and introduced a Bill authorising the raising of a War Loan unlimited in extent, but, being a man of moderate views, will be satisfied if nine hundred millions are forthcoming.  Lord Haldane has been succeeded in the Lord Chancellorship by Lord Buckmaster, having caused by one unfortunate phrase a complete oblivion of all the services rendered by his creation of the Territorial system.  The cry for “more men” has now changed to one for “more shells,” and certain newspapers, always in search of a scapegoat, have entered on a campaign directed against Lord Kitchener, the very man whom a few short months ago they hailed as the saviour of the situation.  Finding that the public cannot live on their hot air, they are doing their best to make our flesh creep and keep our feet cold.  Let us hope that K. of K. will find the Garter some slight protection against this hitting below the belt.

The Russian retreat continues, but there is no debacle. Greece shows signs of returning sanity in the restoration to power of her one strong man, M. Venizelos.  If there were a few more like him then (to adapt Porson) “the Germanised Greek would be sadly to seek.”  As it is, he flourishes exceedingly, under the patronage of a Prussianised Court.

In Gallipoli the deadly struggle goes on; our foothold has been strengthened by bitter fighting and our lines pushed forward for three miles by a few hundred yards—­a big advance in modern trench warfare.  Blazing heat and a plague of flies add to the discomforts of our men, but a new glory has been added to the ever growing vocabulary of the war in “Anzac.”  There is a lull on the Western front, if such a word properly can be applied to the ceaseless activities of the war of position, of daily strafe and counter-strafe.