The German Press is not exactly the place where one expects to find occasion for merriment.  Yet listen to this from the Neueste Nachrichten:  “Our foes ask themselves continuously, How can we best get at Germany’s vital parts?  What are her most vulnerable points?  The answer is, her humanity—­her trustful honesty.”  Here, on the other hand, thousands of people, by knocking months and years off their real age, have been telling good straightforward lies for their country.  At the Front euphemism in describing hardship is mingled with circumlocution in official terminology.  Thus one C.O. is reported to refer to the enemy not as Germans but “militant bodies of composite Teutonic origin.”

A new and effectual cure for the conversion of pessimists at home has been discovered.  It is simply to out-do the prophets of ill at their own game.  The result is that they seek you out to tell you that an enemy submarine has been sunk off the Scillies or that the Crown Prince is in the Tower.  It is the old story that optimists are those who have been associating with pessimists and vice versa.  But seriousness is spreading.  We are told that even actresses are now being photographed with their mouths shut, though one would have thought that at such a time all British subjects—­especially the “Odolisques” of the variety stage—­ought to show their teeth.

August, 1915.

Ordinary anniversaries lead to retrospect:  after a year of the greatest of all wars it is natural to indulge in a stock-taking of the national spirit, and comforting to find that, in spite of disillusions and disappointments, the alternation of exultations and agonies, the soul of the fighting men of England remains unshaken and unconquerable.  Three of the Great Powers of Europe espoused the cause of Liberty a year ago; now there are four, and the aid of Italy in engaging and detaching large Austrian forces enables us to contemplate with greater equanimity a month of continuous Russian withdrawal, and the tragic loss of Warsaw and the great fortresses of Novo-Georgievsk and Brest-Litovsk.  And if there is no outward sign of the awakening of Germany, no slackening in frightfulness, no abatement in the blasphemous and overweening confidence of her Ruler and his War-lords who can tell whether they have not moments of self-distrust?

* * * * *

THE WAYSIDE CALVARY.  August 4th, 1915.

  Now with the full year Memory holds her tryst,
    Heavy with such a tale of bitter loss
  As never Earth has suffered since the Christ
          Hung for us on the Cross.

  If God, O Kaiser, makes the vision plain;
    Gives you on some lone Calvary to see
  The Man of Sorrows Who endured the pain
          And died to set us free—­

  How will you face beneath its crown of thorn
    That figure stark against the smoking skies,
  The arms outstretched, the sacred head forlorn,
          And those reproachful eyes?