But though she fail us in the final test,
    Not there, not there, my child, the end shall be,
    But where, without your option, France and we
  Have made our own arrangements in the West.

[Illustration:  RUSSIA’S DARK HOUR]

It is another story on the Western Front, where the British are closing in on the wrecked remains of Lens, and the Crown Prince’s chance of breaking hearts along “The Ladies’ Way” grows more and more remote.

[Illustration:  THE OPTIMIST

“If this is the right village, then we’re all right.  The instructions is clear—­’Go past the post-office and sharp to the left afore you come to the church.’”]

A recent resolution of the Reichstag has been welcomed by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald as the solemn pronouncement of a sovereign people, only requiring the endorsement of the British Government to produce an immediate and equitable peace.  But not much was left of this pleasant theory after Mr. Asquith had dealt it a few sledge-hammer blows.  “So far as we know,” he said, “the influence of the Reichstag, not only upon the composition but upon the policy of the German Government, remains what it always has been—­a practically negligible quantity.”

The Reminiscences of Mr. Gerard, the late German Ambassador in Berlin, are causing much perturbation in German Court circles.  In one of his conversations with Mr. Gerard, the Kaiser told him “there is no longer any International Law.”

  Little scraps of paper,
    Little drops of ink,
  Make the Kaiser caper
    And the Nations think.

The real voice of Labour is not that of the delegates who want to go to the International Socialist Conference at Stockholm to talk to Fritz, but of the Tommy who, after a short “leaf,” goes cheerfully back to France to fight him.  And the fomenters of class hatred will not find much support from the “men in blue.”  Mr. Punch has had occasion to rebuke the levity of smart fashionables who visit the wounded and weary them by idiotic questions.  He is glad to show the other side of the picture in the tribute paid to the V.A.D. of the proper sort: 

  There’s an angel in our ward as keeps a-flittin’ to and fro,
  With fifty eyes upon ’er wherever she may go;
  She’s as pretty as a picture, and as bright as mercury,
  And she wears the cap and apron of a V.A.D.

  The Matron she is gracious, and the Sister she is kind,
  But they wasn’t born just yesterday, and lets you know their mind;
  The M.O. and the Padre is as thoughtful as can be,
  But they ain’t so good to look at as our V.A.D.

  Not like them that wash a teacup in an orficer’s canteen,
  And then “Engaged in War Work” in the weekly Press is seen;
  She’s on the trot from morn to night and busy as a bee,
  And there’s ’eaps of wounded Tommies bless that V.A.D.

Our Grand Fleet keeps its strenuous, unceasing vigil in the North Sea.  But we must not forget the merchant mariners now serving under the Windsor House Flag in the North Atlantic trade: