Who would have thought when the month opened that at its close a new front within the Four Seas would be added to our far-flung line, Dublin’s finest street half ruined, Ireland placed under martial law?  Certainly not Mr. Birrell or Mr. Redmond or the Irish Nationalist Members.  The staunchest Unionist would acquit Mr. William O’Brien of any menace when in the Budget Debate, three weeks before the Rebellion of Easter Week, he gave it as his opinion that Ireland ought to be omitted from the Budget altogether.  So, too, with Mr. Tim Healy, whose principal complaint was that the tax on railway tickets would put a premium on foreign travel; that people would go to Paris instead of Dublin, and Switzerland instead of Killarney.  No, so far as the Government and Ireland’s Parliamentary representatives went, it was a bolt from the blue—­or the green.  Mr. Birrell, Chief Secretary for Ireland for nine years, a longer period than any of his predecessors, has shown himself conspicuous at once by his absence and his innocence, and England in her hour of need, with the submarine peril daily growing and all but starved out after a heroic defence, stands to pay dearly for the privilege of entrusting the administration of Ireland to an absentee humorist.

On the Western front Verdun still rivets all eyes.  The German hordes are closing in on the fortress, but at a heavier cost for each mile gained than they have ever paid before.

Germany’s colossal effort would inspire admiration as well as respect if she would only fight clean.  The ugly stories of her treatment of prisoners have now culminated in the terrible record of the typhus-stricken camp at Wittenberg, where the German doctors deserted their post.

[Illustration:  THE REPUDIATION

Martin Luther (to Shakespeare):  “I see my countrymen claim you as one of them.  You may thank God that you’re not that.  They have made my Wittenberg—­ay, and all Germany—­to stink in my nostrils.”]

[Illustration:  THE GRAPES OF VERDUN

THE OLD FOX:  “You don’t seem to be getting much nearer them?”

THE CUB:  “No, Father.  Hadn’t we better give it out that they’re sour?”]

The report of Mr. Justice Younger’s Committee, in which the tale of this atrocity is fully told, is being circulated in neutral countries, and Mr. Will Thorne has suggested that it should also be sent to our conscientious objectors.  It is well to administer some sort of corrective to the information diffused by the neutral newsmonger: 

  Who cheers us when we’re in the blues,
  With reassuring German news,
  Of starving Berliners in queues? 
      The Neutral.

  And then, soon after, tells us they
  Are feeding nicely all the day,
  And in the old familiar way? 
      The Neutral.

  Who sees the Kaiser in Berlin,
  Dejected, haggard, old as sin,
  And shaking in his hoary skin? 
      The Neutral.