A learned law of wise old books
  And men with meditative looks,
  Who move in quaint red-gabled towns,
  And sit in gravely-folded gowns,
  Divining in deep-laden speech
  The world’s supreme arcana—­each
  A homely god to listening youth,
  Eager to tear the veil of Truth;

  Mild votaries of book and pen—­
  Alas, the dreams, the dreams of men!

  A music land whose life is wrought
  In movements of melodious thought;
  In symphony, great wave on wave—­
  Or fugue elusive, swift and grave;
  A singing land, whose lyric rhymes
  Float on the air like village chimes;
  Music and verse—­the deepest part
  Of a whole nation’s thinking heart!

  Oh land of Now, oh land of Then! 
  Dear God! the dreams, the dreams of men!

  Slave nation in a land of hate,
  Where are the things that made you great? 
  Child-hearted once—­oh, deep defiled,
  Dare you look now upon a child?

  Your lore—­a hideous mask wherein
  Self-worship hides its monstrous sin—­
  Music and verse, divinely wed—­
  How can these live where love is dead?

  Oh depths beneath sweet human ken,
  God help the dreams, the dreams of men!

The Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, is preparing for a trip to the North Pole in 1918.  Additional interest now attaches to this spot as being the only territory whose neutrality the Germans have omitted to violate.  Apropos of neutrals, the crew of the U-boat interned at Cadiz has been allowed to land on giving their word of honour not to leave Spain during the continuance of the War.  The mystery of how the word “honour” came into their possession is not explained.  It is easier to explain that the Second Division, in which Mr. E.D.  Morel is now serving, is not the one which fought at the battle of Mons.

October, 1917.

Another month of losses and gains.  Against the breakthrough at Caporetto on the Isonzo we have to set the steady advance of Allenby on the Palestine front, and the decision arrived at by an extraordinary meeting of German Reichstag members that the Germans cannot hope for victory in the field.  We see nothing extraordinary in this.  The Reichstag may not yet be able to influence policy, but it is not blind to facts—­to the terribly heavy losses involved in our enemy’s desperate efforts to prevent us from occupying the ridges above the Ypres-Menin road, and so forcing him to face the winter on the low ground.  Then, too, there has been the ominous mutiny of the German sailors at Kiel.  The ringleaders have been executed, but they may have preferred death to another speech from the Kaiser.  Dr. Michaelis, that “transient embarrassed phantom,” has joined the ranks of the dismissed.  No sooner had the Berliner Tageblatt pointed out that “Dr. Michaelis was a good Chancellor as Chancellors go” than he went.  Another of the German