to exercise the franchise.  Soldiers and sailors can very well wait for their votes, but not for their money, and the delays in providing pensions for discharged men have been condemned by members of all parties.  So the War is not altogether forgotten by the House.  Mr. Lloyd George, the new War Secretary, without wasting breath on the pessimistic comments of his colleague Mr. Churchill, has given an encouraging survey of the general situation.  The cry has gone up that Mr. Hughes Must Come Back from Australia, and Mr. Swift MacNeill has been rewarded for his pertinacity by extracting a promise from Mr. Asquith that he will purge the Peerage of its enemy Dukes.  Better still is the solemn assurance of the Premier that the Government are taking steps to discover the identity of all those who are in any way responsible for the judicial murder of Captain Fryatt—­the worst instance of calculated atrocity against non-combatants since the murder of Nurse Cavell.

The education of our New Armies is full of strange and noble surprises.  Now it is an ex-shop boy converted into an R.H.A. driver.  Or again it is a Tommy learning to appreciate the heroism of a French peasant woman: 

  ‘Er bloke’s out scrappin’ with the rest,
    Pushin’ a bay’net in Argonne;
  She wears ’is photo on ’er breast,
    “Mon Jean,” she sez—­the French for John.

  She ‘ears the guns boom night an’ day;
    She sees the shrapnel burstin’ black;
  The sweaty columns march away,
    The stretchers bringin’ of ’em back.

  She ain’t got no war-leggin’s on;
    ’Er picture’s never in the Press,
  Out scoutin’.  She finds breeks “no bon,”
    An’ carries on in last year’s dress.

  At dawn she tows a spotty cow
    To graze upon the village green;
  She plods for miles be’ind a plough,
    An’ takes our washin’ in between.

  She tills a patch o’ spuds besides,
    An’ burnt like copper in the sun,
  She tosses ’ay all day, then rides
    The ’orse ’ome when the job is done.

  The times is ’ard—­I got me woes,
    With blistered feet an’ this an’ that,
  An’ she’s got ’ers, the good Lord knows,
    Although she never chews the fat.

  But when the Boche ’as gulped ’is pill,
    An’ crawled ’ome to ‘is bloomin’ Spree,
  We’ll go upon the bust, we will,
    Madame an’ Monsieur Jean an’ me.

Or once more it is the young officer shaving himself in a captured German dug-out before an old looking-glass looted from a chateau by a dead German, and apologising to its rightful owner: 

  Madame, at the end of this long campaign,
  When France comes into her own again
  In the setting where only she can shine,
  As you in your mirror of rare design—­
       Forgive me, who dare
       In a German lair
  To shave in your mirror at Pozieres.

Then there are “lonely soldiers” in India, envious of their more fortunate comrades in Flanders, and soldiers quite the reverse of lonely during their well-earned leave.