Five months have elapsed since the sinking of the Lusitania and the pro-German campaign in the United States is more active than ever, thanks to the untiring efforts of Count Bernstorff and his worthy ally, Dr. Dumba, in promoting strikes and sabotage; but President Wilson, “Le Grand Penseur,” declines to be rushed by the interventionists, and is giving his detached consideration to the “concessions” of the German Government in regard to submarine warfare.  But three thousand miles of ocean no longer keep America free from strife.  The enemy is within her gates, plotting, spying and bribing.  The lesser neutrals in Europe find it harder to dissemble their sympathies, but Ferdinand of Bulgaria maintains a vulpine inscrutability.

[Illustration:  THE UNSINKABLE TIRP

GERMAN CHANCELLOR:  “Well, thank Heaven, that’s the last of Tirpitz.”

TIRPITZ (reappearing):  “I don’t think!”]

By way of a sidelight on what happens on the Western front, a wounded officer sends a characteristic account of his experiences after “going over the top” at 3 A.M.  “The first remark, as distinct from a shout that I heard after leaving our parapet, came from Private Henry, my most notorious malefactor.  As the first attempt at a wire entanglement in our new position went heavenward ten seconds after its emplacement, and a big tree just to our right collapsed suddenly like a dying pig, he turned round with a grin, observing:  ’Well, sir, we do see a bit of life, if we don’t make money.’  I never saw a man all day who hadn’t a grin ready when you passed, and a bit of a riposte if you passed the time of day with him.”  Our officers only think of their men, and the men of their officers.  In Gallipoli our soldiers have discovered a new method of annoying the Turk: 

  We go and bathe, in shameless scores
    Beneath his baleful een,
  Disrobe, unscathed, on sacred shores
    And wallow in between;
  Nor does a soldier then assume
  His university costume,
  And though it makes the Faithful fume,
    It makes the Faithless clean.

The return of the wounded to England is marked by strange incidents, pathetic and humorous.  Thus it has been reserved for an officer, reported dead in the casualty list, to ring up his people on the telephone and correct “this silly story about my being killed.”  And the cheerfulness of the limbless men in blue is something wonderful.  They “jest at scars,” but not because they “never felt a wound.”  It is a high privilege to entertain these light-hearted heroes, one of whom recently presented his partner in a lawn tennis match with a fragment of shell taken direct from his “stummick.”  And the recipient rightly treasures it as a love-token.

Parliament has reassembled, the inquisitors returning (unhappily) like giants refreshed after their holiday.  But they sometimes contribute to our amusement, as when one relentless and complacent critic declared that, on the matter of conscription, he should himself “prefer to be guided—­very largely—­by Lord Kitchener.”  The concession is something.  Most of the importunate questionists are on the other side: