Genius has been denned as an infinite capacity for taking pains; and if the definition is sound, genius cannot be denied to the painstaking officials who test the physical fitness of recruits—­“as in the picture.”

The month has witnessed the amendment of the President’s much discussed phrase:  “Too proud to fight” has now become “Proud to fight too.”  Another revised version is suggested by Margarine:  C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas le beurre.  The German Food Controller laments the mysterious disappearance of five million four hundred thousand pigs this year.  The idea of having the Crown Prince’s baggage searched does not seem to have been found feasible.

[Illustration:  OUR PERSEVERING OFFICIALS

Or, the Recruit that was passed at the thirteenth examination.]

June, 1917.

Within some eleven weeks of the Declaration of War by the U.S.A., the first American troops have been landed in France.  Even the Kaiser has begun to abate his thrasonic tone, declaring that “it is not the Prussian way to praise oneself,” and that “it is now a matter of holding out, however long it lasts.”

But other events besides the arrival of the Americans have helped to bring about this altered tone.  The capture of Messines Ridge, after the biggest bang in history, has given him something to think about.  His brother-in-law, Constantine of Greece, has at last thrown up the sponge and abdicated.  “Tino’s” place of exile is not yet fixed.  The odds seem to be on Switzerland, but Mr. Punch recommends Denmark.  There is no place like home: 

  Try some ancestral palace, well appointed;
    For choice the one where Hamlet nursed his spite,
  Who found the times had grown a bit disjointed
    And he was not the man to put ’em right;
  And there consult on that enchanted shore
        The ghosts of Elsinore.

Brazil has also entered the War, and Germany is now able to shoot in almost any direction without any appreciable risk of hitting a friend.

Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig gave the nation a birthday present on his own birthday, in the shape of a dispatch which is as strong and straight as himself: 

  Frugal in speech, yet more than once impelled
    To utter words of confidence and cheer
  Whereat some dismal publicists rebelled
    As premature, ill-founded, insincere—­
  Words none the less triumphantly upheld
    By Victory’s verdict, resonantly clear,
  Words that inspired misgiving in the foe
    Because you do not prophesy—­you know.

  Steadfast and calm, unmoved by blame or praise,
    By local checks or Fortune’s strange caprices,
  You dedicate laborious nights and days
    To shattering the Hun machine to pieces;
  And howsoe’er at times the battle sways
    The Army’s trust in your command increases;
  Patient in preparation, swift in deed,
  We find in you the leader that we need.