FIRST SKIPPER; “Oh, you’re a’richt then.  Ye’ll hae practically nothin’ tae lose but yer life.”]

  Oh, there ain’t no band to cheer us up, there ain’t no Highland pipers
  To keep our warlike ardure warm round New Chapelle and Wipers,
  So—­since there’s nothing like a tune to glad the ‘eart o’ man,
  Why Billy with his mouth-organ ’e does the best ’e can.

  Wet, ’ungry, thirsty, ’ot or cold, whatever may betide ’im,
  ’E’ll play upon the ’ob of ’ell while the breath is left inside ’im;
  And when we march up Potsdam Street, and goose-step through Berlin,
  Why Billy with ’is mouth-organ ’e’ll play the Army in!

[Illustration:  THE OLD MAN OF THE SEA

SINBAD THE KAISER:  “This submarine business is going to get me into trouble with America; but what can an All-Powerful do with a thing like this on his back?”]

When officers come home on leave and find England standing where she did, their views support the weather-beaten major who said that it was “worth going to a little trouble and expense to keep that intact.”  But you can hardly expect people who live in trenches which have had to be rebuilt twice daily for the last few months and are shelled at all hours of the day or night, to compassionate the occasional trials of the home-keeping bomb-dodger.  The war, as it goes on, seems to bring out the best and the worst that is in us.  South Wales responded loyally to the call for recruits, yet 200,000 miners are affected by the strike fever.

The House, where party strife for a brief space was hushed by mutual consent, is now devastated by the energies of indiscreet, importunate, egotistic or frankly disloyal question-mongers.  We want a censorship of Parliamentary Reports.  The Press Bureau withholds records of shining courage at the front lest they should enlighten the enemy, but gives full publicity to those

  Who give us words in lieu of deeds,
  Content to blather while their country bleeds.

There is, however, some excuse for those importunates who wish to know on what authority the Premier declared at Newcastle that neither our Allies nor ourselves have been hampered by an insufficient supply of munitions.  In two months’ fighting in Gallipoli our casualties have largely exceeded those sustained by us during the whole of the Boer War.  And financial purists may be pardoned for their protests against extravagant expenditure in view of the announcement that the war is now costing well over three millions daily.  The idea of National Registration has taken shape in a Bill, which has passed its second reading.  The notion of finding out what everyone can do to help his country in her hour of need is excellent.  But the Government do not seem to have realised that half a million volunteer soldiers have been waiting and ready for a job for the last six months: 

  And when at last you come and say
    “What can you do?  We ask for light
  On any service you can pay,”
    The answer is:  “You know all right,
  And all this weary while you knew it;
  The trouble was you wouldn’t let us do it.”