[Illustration: 

DYNASTIC AMENITIES

LITTLE WILLIE (of Prussia):  “As one Crown Prince to another, isn’t your Hindenburg line getting a bit shaky?”

RUPPRECHT (of Bavaria):  “Well, as one Crown Prince to another, what about your Hohenzollern line?”]

Although the streets may have been sweetened by the absence of posters, days will come, it must be remembered, when we shall badly miss them.  It goes painfully to one’s heart to think that the embargo, if it is ever lifted, will not be lifted in time for most of the events which we all most desire—­events that clamour to be recorded in the largest black type, such as “Strasbourg French Again,” “Flight of the Crown Prince,” “Revolution in Germany,” “The Kaiser a Captive,” and last and best of all, “Peace.”  But Mr. Punch, with many others, has no sympathy to spare for the sorrows of the headline artist deprived for the time being of his chief opportunity of scaremongering.

In the competition of heroism and self-sacrifice the prize must fall to the young—­to the Tommy and the Second Lieutenant before all.  Yet a very good mark is due to the retired Admirals who have accepted commissions in the R.N.R., and are mine-sweeping or submarine-hunting in command of trawlers.  Yes, “Captain Dug-out, R.N.R.,” is a fine disproof of si vieillesse pouvait.

[Illustration:  TORPEDOED MINE-SWEEPER (to his pal):  “As I was a-saying, Bob, when we was interrupted, it’s my belief as ’ow the submarine blokes ain’t on ’arf as risky a job as the boys in the airy-o-planes.”]

According to the Pall Mall Gazette, Mr. Lloyd George’s double was seen at Cardiff the other day.  The suggestion that there are two Lloyd Georges has caused consternation among the German Headquarters Staff.  But we are not exempt from troubles and anxieties in England.  The bones of a woolly rhinoceros have been dug up twenty-three feet below the surface at High Wycombe, and very strong language has been used in the locality concerning this gross example of food-hoarding.  The weather, too, has been behaving oddly.  On one day of Eastertide there was an inch of snow in Liverpool, followed by hailstones, lightning, thunder, and a gale of wind.  Summer has certainly arrived very early.  But at least we are to be spared a General Election this year—­for fear that it might clash with the other War.

May, 1917.

In England, once but no longer merry though not downhearted, in this once merry month of May, the question of Food and Food Production now dominates all others.  It is the one subject that the House of Commons seems to care about.  John Bull, who has invested a mint of money in other lands, realises that it is high time that he put something into his own—­in the shape of Corn Bounties.  Mr. Prothero, in moving the second reading of the Corn Production Bill, while admitting that he had originally been opposed to State interference with agriculture, showed all the zeal of the convert—­to the dismay of the hard-shell Free Traders.