Study of a German Gentleman going into Action]

The rigours of the Censorship are pressing hard on war correspondents.  Official news of importance trickles in in driblets:  for the rest, newspaper men, miles from the front, are driven to eke out their dispatches with negligible trivialities.  We know that Rheims Cathedral is suffering wanton bombardment.  And a great many of us believe that at least a quarter of a million Russians have passed through England on their way to France.  The number of people who have seen them is large:  that of those who have seen people who have seen them is enormous.

[Illustration:  PORTER:  “Do I know if the Rooshuns has really come to England?  Well, sir, if this don’t prove it, I don’t know what do.  A train went through here full, and when it came back I knowed there’d been Rooshuns in it, ’cause the cushions and floors was covered with snow.”]

We gather that the Press Bureau has no notion whether the rumour is true or not, and cannot think of any way of finding out.  But it consents to its publication in the hope that it will frighten the Kaiser.  Apropos of the Russians we learn that they have won a pronounced victory (though not by us) at Przemysl.

Motto for the month:  Grattez le Prusse et vous trouverez le barbare.

[Illustration:  UNCONQUERABLE

THE KAISER:  “So, you see—­you’ve lost everything.”

THE KING OF THE BELGIANS:  “Not my soul.”]

October, 1914.

Antwerp has fallen and the Belgian Government removed to Havre.  But the spirit of the King and his army is unshaken.

Unshaken, too, is the courage of Burgomaster Max of Brussels, “who faced the German bullies with the stiffest of stiff backs.”  The Kaiser has been foiled in his hope of witnessing the fall of Nancy, the drive for the Channel ports has begun at Ypres, and German submarines have retorted to Mr. Churchill’s threat to “dig out” the German Fleet “like rats” by torpedoing three battleships.  Trench warfare is in full and deadly swing, but “Thomas of the light heart” refuses to be downhearted: 

  He takes to fighting as a game,
  He does no talking through his hat
  Of holy missions:  all the same
  He has his faith—­be sure of that: 
  He’ll not disgrace his sporting breed
  Nor play what isn’t cricket.  There’s his creed.

Last month Lord Kitchener paid a high tribute to the growing efficiency of the “Terriers” and their readiness to go anywhere. Punch’s representative with the “Watch Dogs” fully bears out this praise.  They have been inoculated and are ready to move on.  Some suggest India, others Egypt.  “But what tempted the majority was the thought of a season’s shooting without having to pay for so much as a gun licence, and so we decided for the Continent.”

News from the front continues scanty, and Joffre’s laconic communiques might in sum be versified as follows: