Oh, those were palmy days at Brest! 
    You had no sort of scruples then;
  You knelt at ease on Russia’s chest,
    Dipped in her blood your iron pen,
  Dictated terms the most abhorrent
  And made her sign her own death-warrant.

  At Bucharest ’twas much the same: 
    You had Roumania under heel;
  No pity here nor generous shame,
    But just the argument of steel,
  The logic of the butcher’s knife—­
  And so she signed away her life.

  These object-lessons learnt by rote,
    As once we learnt your poison-gas,
  Your pupils now are shocked to note
    How Teuton wits, a little crass,
  Mistake for rude assault and battery
  Our imitation’s feeble flattery.

  We could not copy, line for line,
    The perfect models made by you;
  Yet the ideals they enshrine
    We dimly strove to keep in view,
  Trying to draft, with broad effect,
  The kind of Peace that you’d expect.

  Our efforts miss the cultured touch
    By which we saw your own inspired;
  They leave—­beside the model—­much,
    Oh very much to be desired;
  We’ve no excuse except to say
  We were not built the German way.

  But why these wails and tears and whines? 
    I must assume that they are bluff,
  That, as compared with your designs,
    You find our terms are easy stuff,
  And, with your tongue against your cheek,
  You’ll sign the lot within a week.

  O.S.

* * * * *

The beetle of Buda-Pesth.

An unrecorded episode of the great war.

The War being now practically at an end and Austria-Hungary irrevocably broken up, I am able to recount an adventure, in which I was involved, that occurred at Buda-Pesth in the second week of August, 1914.

Seated at a cafe on the famous Franz-Josef Quai, I was sipping coffee, after an excellent lunch, with Frederick, whose surname I will not mention in case I get into trouble for relating the incident before Peace is actually signed.  The sun shone joyously down upon the kaleidoscope of gaily dressed people promenading by the cool waters of the Danube, and we sat engrossed—­I in the charm of the scene, and Frederick in that of individual beauties who passed to and fro.

Suddenly I noticed that he was staring intently upon the ground a few yards in front of him.  I asked him what was the matter.

“Perceive,” he replied in a very serious tone, “a small beetle of the order of Coleoptera making its way across the pavement?”

“I do perceive it,” I replied; “but what about it?”

“Does it not occur to you,” he continued, “that it is a very remarkable thing that that beetle should have already travelled six feet across the most crowded promenade in Buda-Pesth without having been trodden on?”