Another poet, an R.F.C. man, adopts the same vein, void alike of hate or exultation: 

  Returning from my morning fly
  I met a Fokker in the sky,
  And, judging from its swift descent,
  It had a nasty accident. 
  On thinking further of the same
  I rather fear I was to blame.

It is easy to understand why the enemy nations find England so disappointing and unsatisfying to be at war with.

Italy, too, has had her Big Push on the Isonzo, capturing Monte Sabotino, which had defied her for fifteen months, and Gorizia—­a triumph of scientific preparation and intrepid assault.  The Austrian poison-gas attack on the Asiago plateau has been avenged, and the objectives of the long and ineffectual offensive of the previous winter carried with thousands of prisoners at a comparatively cheap price.  To add to Austria’s humiliation her armies on the Eastern Front have been placed under the Prussian Hindenburg.  And Rumania has joined the Allies at the end of what has been a very bad month for the Central Empires.  English newspapers have been excluded from Germany, and Berlin has added truthless to meatless days.  But the Germans have long since found a substitute for veracity as well as for leather and butter and rubber and bread.  They are said to have found a substitute for International Law, and it is an open secret that they are even now in search of a substitute for victory.  We might even suggest a few more substitutes which have not yet been utilised.  As, for example, a substitute for Verdun with the German flag flying over it; substitutes for several German Colonies; a substitute for Austria as an ally; and substitutes for Kultur and Organisation and Efficiency and World Power and the Mailed Fist and the Crown Prince and the Kaiser and the War and all the things that haven’t come off.

Various momentous decisions have been arrived at in Parliament.  The Cabinet are not to be cinematographed, and unnecessary taxi-whistling is to be suppressed, without any prejudice to the squealing of importunate chatterers below the gangway.  Ireland has again dominated the Parliamentary scene; the Nationalists have resumed their freedom of action with attacks on Sir John Maxwell and martial law, and are displaying an embarrassing industry reminiscent of the ’Eighties.  Mr. Ginnell has been removed by order of the Speaker; Mr. Duke has succeeded Mr. Birrell; and the discussion of three Irish Bills has bulked so large that one might almost forget we were at war.  In such brief moments as could be spared from Irish affairs the Premier has proposed a fresh Vote of Credit for 450 millions, has introduced a Bill for extending the life of Parliament, and another establishing a new Register.  The last has been unmercifully belaboured in debate, the Prime Minister himself describing it as “a halting, lopsided, temporary makeshift.”  The apparently insoluble problem is that of enabling soldiers in the trenches