“Yes, I think we have it at last—­I mean the stranglehold round the
    enemy’s neck.  I seem to hear the death rattle in his guttural
    throat.”—­Sunday Pictorial.

And to see the glazing of his ocular eyes.

* * * * *

“Had you shut your eyes the opening night at the Opera you might have fancied yourself back at Covent Garden, London, for the types of well-turned-out men out-Englished the English, from top hat to varnished boot.”—­American Paper.

That’s the worst of varnished boots; they will creak so.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  UNMADE IN GERMANY.

BETHMANN-HOLLWEG.  “AND TO THINK THAT I, WHO DEFENDED THE VIOLATION OF
BELGIUM, SHOULD HAVE MY HONESTY DOUBTED. SURELY I AM FRIGHTFUL ENOUGH.”

(The Kaiser’s Chancellor has been attacked in a German pamphlet which ridicules his “silly ideas of humanity,” and says that “nobody need be surprised at the rumour which is going through Germany that he has been bought by England.")]

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Sergeant (after bringing his men to attention, to knock-kneed recruit).  “WELL, THAT WINS IT, NO. 4.  ALL YOU’VE GOT TO DO ON THE COMMAND ‘STAN’ AT EASE’ IS TO MOVE YER BLINKIN’ ’ANDS.”]

* * * * *

THE WATCH DOGS.

LV.

MY DEAR CHARLES,—­Notwithstanding the reckless speed of the leave train and the surfeit of luxuries and lack of company on the leave boat, our gallant warriors continue to volunteer in thousands for that desperate enterprise known as “Proceeding on leave to the U.K.”  There is however a certain artfulness in the business, if only artfulness for artfulness’ sake.

In the old days the ingenuity of man was concentrated upon extending by any means short of the criminal the duration of the leave.  When Robert first went on leave he was young and innocent.  He had four days given him; he left his unit on the first of them and was back with it on the last of them.  The second time he improved on this and left France very early on the morning of his first day and arrived in France again very late on the last night of it.  Then his friend John regarded his leave as beginning and ending in England, which, if the leave boat happens to be in mid-Channel at midnight, is not a distinction without a difference.  Robert’s next leave was for seven days, and he spent nine of them in the U.K.  His explanation was logically unassailable, but logic is wasted on military authorities; after that, leave got fixed at ten days net, ten days of the inelastic sort.