NURSE:  “Oh, come!  I say!  That’s not very polite to us.”

TOMMY:  “Never mind.  Nurse, put it down.  It’ll please her!”]

Tommy is adding to his other great qualities that of diplomacy, to judge from the incident illustrated above.

February, 1916.

The Epic of the Dardanelles is closed; that of Verdun has begun, and all eyes are focused on the tremendous struggle for the famous fortress.  The Crown Prince has still his laurels to win, and it is clear that no sacrifice of German “cannon fodder” will be too great to deter him from pushing the stroke home.  Fort Douaumont has fallen, and the hill of the Mort Homme has already terribly justified its cadaverous name.  The War-lords of Germany are sorely in need of a spectacular success even though they purchase it at a great price, for they are very far from having everything their own way.  Another Colony has gone the way of Tsing-tau, New Guinea and South-West Africa.  The German Kamerun has cried “Kamerad!” General Smuts, like Botha, “Boer and Briton too,” has gone off to take command in East Africa, and in the Caucasus Erzerum has fallen to the Russians.  The Kaiser is reported to be bitterly disappointed with Allah.

Sir Edward Grey is not altogether satisfied with the conduct of the Neutral Powers.  He has no desire to make things as irksome to them as some of his critics desire.  But he has pointed out that in the matter of preventing supplies from reaching the enemy by circuitous routes Great Britain has her own work to do, and means to do it thoroughly.

The miraculous forbearance of President Wilson, in face of the activities of Count Bernstorff, is even more trying to a good many of his countrymen than it is to the belligerent Briton.  Mr. Roosevelt, for instance, derives no satisfaction from being the fellow-countryman of a man who can “knock spots” off Job for patience.  The New York Life has long criticised the President with a freedom far eclipsing anything in the British Press.  It has now crowned its “interventionist” campaign by a “John Bull number,” the most generous and graceful tribute ever paid to England by the American Press.

[Illustration:  THE CHALLENGE

“Halt!  Who comes there?” “Neutral.”  “Prove it!”

“What I would say to Neutrals is this:  Do they admit our right to apply the principles which were applied by the American Government in the war between North and South—­to apply those principles to modern conditions and to do our best to prevent trade with the enemy through neutral countries?  If the answer is that we are not entitled to do that, then I must say definitely it is a departure from neutrality.”—­SIR EDWARD GREY.]

[Illustration: 

GRANNIE (dragged out of bed at 1.30 a.m., and being hurriedly dressed as the bombs begin to fall):  “Nancy, these stockings are not a pair.”]