at Le Cateau.  In these days of apprehension and misgiving, clouded by alarming rumours of a broken and annihilated army, it sometimes seems as though we should never smile again.  Where, in a world of blood and tears, can Punch exercise his function without outraging the fitness of things?  These doubts have been with us from the beginning, but they are already being resolved by the discovery—­another of the wonders of the time—­that on the very fringes of tragedy there is room for cheerfulness.  When our fighting men refuse to be downhearted in the direst peril, we at home should follow their high example, note where we can the humours of the fray, and “bear in silence though our hearts may bleed.”

[Illustration: 

BRAVO, BELGIUM!]

[Illustration:  MEDICAL OFFICER:  “Sorry I must reject you on account of your teeth.”

WOULD-BE-RECRUIT:  “Man, ye’re making a gran’ mistake.  I’m no wanting to bite the Germans, I’m wanting to shoot ’em.”]

Germany in one brief month has given us a wonderful exhibition of conscienceless strength, of disciplined ferocity.  She has shown an equally amazing failure to read the character of her foes aright.  We now know what German Kultur means:  but of the soul and spirit of England she knows nothing.  Least of all does she understand that formidable and incorrigible levity which refuses to take hard knocks seriously.  It will be our privilege to assist in educating our enemies on these and other points, even though, as Lord Kitchener thinks, it takes three years to do it.  The Mad Dog of Europe is loose, but we remember the fate of the dog who “to serve some private ends went mad and bit the man.”  “The man recovered from his bite, the dog it was that died.”  Meanwhile the Official Press Bureau has begun its operations, the Prince of Wales’s Relief Fund for the relief of those who may suffer distress through the war is started, and in the City

  Because beneath grey Northern Skies
    Some grey hulls heave and fall,
  The merchants sell their merchandise
    All just as usual.

September, 1914.

Another month of revelations and reticences, of carnage and destruction, loss and gain, with the miracle of the Marne as the first great sign of the turning of the tide.  On September 3 the Paris Government moved to Bordeaux, on the 5th the retreat from Mons ended, on the 13th Joffre, always unboastful and laconic, announced the rolling back of the invaders, on the 15th the battle of the Aisne had begun.  What an Iliad of agony, endurance and heroism lies behind these dates—­the ordeal and deliverance of Paris, the steadfastness of the “Contemptibles,” the martyrdom of Belgium!

Day by day Germany unmasks herself more clearly in her true colours from highest to lowest.  The Kaiser reveals himself as a blasphemer and hypocrite, the Imperial crocodile with the bleeding heart, the Crown Prince as a common brigand, the High Command as chief instigators to ferocity, the rank and file as docile instruments of butchery and torture, content to use Belgium women as a screen when going into action.