The discomforts of railway travelling do not diminish.  But impatient passengers may find comfort in a maxim of R. L. Stevenson:  “To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.”  And further solace is forthcoming in the fact that our enemies are even worse off than we are.  Railway fares in Germany have been doubled; but it is doubtful if this transparent artifice will prevent the Kaiser from going about the place making speeches to his troops on all the fronts.  Here all classes are united by the solidarity of inconvenience.  And they all have different ways of meeting it.  But we really think more care should be taken by the authorities to see that while waging war on the Continent they do not forget the defence of those at home.  The fact that Mr. Winston Churchill and Mr. Horatio Bottomley were away in France at the same time looks like gross carelessness.  In this context we may note the report that the Eskimos had not until quite recently heard of war, which seems to argue slackness on the part of the circulation manager of the Daily Mail.

[Illustration: 

STOUT LADY (discussing the best thing to do in an air-raid):  “Well, I always runs about meself.  You see, as my ‘usband sez, an’ very reasonable too, a movin’ targit is more difficult to ’it.”]

November, 1917.

The best and the worst news comes from the outlying fronts.  Allenby’s triumphant advance is unchecked in Palestine.  Gaza has fallen.  The British are in Jaffa.  Jerusalem is threatened.  The German-Austrian drive which began at Caporetto has been stemmed, and the Italians, stiffened by a British army under General Plumer, are standing firm on the Piave.  In Mesopotamia we deplore the death of the gallant Maude, a great general and a great gentleman, beloved by all ranks, whose career is an abiding answer to those who maintain that no good can come out of our public schools or the Staff training of regular officers.  In Russia the Bolshevist coup d’etat has overthrown the Kerensky regime and installed as dictator Lenin, a declasse aristocrat, always the most dangerous of revolutionaries.  On the Western front the tide has flowed and ebbed.  The Germans have yielded ground on the Chemin des Dames, the British have stormed Passchendaele Ridge, but at terrible cost, and General Byng’s brilliant surprise attack and victory at Cambrai has been followed by the fierce reaction of ten days later.  But perhaps the greatest sensation of the month has been Mr. Lloyd George’s Paris speech, with its disquieting references to the situation on the Western front, and its announcement of the formation of the new Allied Council.  The Premier’s defence of, and, we may perhaps say, recomposition of his Paris oration before the House of Commons has appeased criticism without entirely convincing those who have been anxious to know how the Allied Council would work, and what would be the relations between the Council’s military advisers and the existing General Staff of the countries concerned.  But as Mr. Lloyd George confessed that he had deliberately made a “disagreeable speech” in Paris in order to get it talked about, the Press critics whom he rebuked will probably consider themselves absolved.