September has brought us good tidings by land and air.  Thiepval and Combles are ours, and the plague of the Zeppelins has been stayed.  The downing of the Zepp at Cuffley by Lieutenant Robinson gave North London the most thrilling aerial spectacle ever witnessed.  There has been much diversity of opinion as to the safest place to be in during a Zeppelin raid—­under cover or in the open, on the top floor or in the basement; but recent experiences suggest that by far the most dangerous place on those occasions is in a Zeppelin.  But perhaps the most momentous event of the month has been the coming of the Tanks, a most humorous and formidable addition to the fauna of the battlefield—­half battleship, half caterpillar—­which have given the Germans the surprise of their lives, a surprise all the more effective for being sudden and complete.  The Germans, no doubt, have their surprise packets in store for us, but we can safely predict that they are not likely to be at once so comic and so efficient as these unlovely but painstaking monsters.  As an officer at the front writes to a friend:  “These animals look so dreadfully competent, I am quite sure they can swim.  Thus, any day now, as you go to your business in the City, you may meet one of them trundling up Ludgate Hill, looking like nothing on earth and not behaving like a gentleman.”  As for the relations between the Allies in the field the same correspondent contributes some enlightening details.  The French aren’t English and the English aren’t French, and difficulties are bound to arise.  The course of true love never did run smooth.  Here it started, as it generally does, with a rush; infatuation was succeeded by friction, and that in turn by the orthodox aftermath of reconciliation.  “How do we stand now?  We have settled down to one of those attachments which have such an eternity before them in the future that they permit of no gushing in the present.”  The War goes well on the Western Front, the worst news being the report that the Kaiser has undertaken to refrain in future from active participation in the conduct of military operations.

[Illustration: 

THE SWEEPERS OF THE SEA.

MR. PUNCH:  “Risky work, isn’t it?”

TRAWLER SKIPPER:  “That’s why there’s a hundred thousand of us doin’ it.”]

Peace reigns at Westminster, where legislators are agreeably conspicuous by their absence.  But other agencies are active.  According to an advertisement in the Nation the Fabian Research Department have issued two Reports, “together with a Project for a Supernatural Authority that will Prevent War.”  The egg, on the authority of the Daily Mail, is “disappearing from our breakfast table,” but even the humblest of us can still enjoy our daily mare’s nest.  The effect of the Zeppelin on the young has already been shown; but even the elderly own its stimulating influence.

October, 1916.