***

At a rally of five hundred boy scouts of London, Wolf Cubs greeted Cardinal Bourne with the “Great Howl.”  It is not known in what way the Cardinal had offended the young Cubs.

***

Under the new order the police will not have power to enter the premises of persons suspected of food hoarding.  Cooks who in the past have been in the habit of hoarding cold rabbit pie will have to be dealt with in other ways.

***

According to a Billingsgate fish merchant kippers are daily increasing in price.  It is, of course, too much to hope that they will ever become so dear as to prohibit their use among comedians on the music-hall stage.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  “What makes your husband so cross these times?”

“He keeps fretting dreadful because he’s over the age and so he can’t be A conscientious objector.”]

* * * * *

The Potsdam altruist.

    [The Frankfurter Zeitung protests against the idea that “the Kaiser
    in Germany’s gravest times allows anxiety about himself or his dynasty
    to have access to his thoughts.”]

  Among the penalties imposed on Kings
    Who govern absolutely by divine right,
  I am no more affected by the things
    That Socialists and other dirty swine write
          Than when a pin is thrust
    Into a pachyderm’s indifferent crust.

  But now I deign to answer, even I,
    The vilest yet of these revolting sallies,
  Where they allege that when our German sky
    Rocks to the air of “Deutschland ueber alles,”
          “Und Ich,” I add (aside),
  “Ich ueber Deutschland!” There the blighters lied.

  I’m not like that.  I never use the first
    Personal pronoun, like the Monarch Louis,
  Who said (in French—­a tongue I deem accurst),
    “L’etat, c’est moi.” My conscience, clear and dewy,
          Tells me that, as a Kaiser,
  I am a very poor self-advertiser.

  This is a feature of our dynasty;
    And no historian who has ever studied
  The traits peculiar to the family tree
    On which the Hohenzollern genus budded
          In all that noble list
    Has come across a single egoist.

  They loved their people better than their throne;
    Lightly they sat on it, dispensing Freedom;
  They never said, “Your souls are not your own,
    But simply there in case your King should need ’em;”
          They would have thought it odd
    To want to be regarded as a god.

  Thus have I served my land; and if a wave
    Of lurid revolution overswept her,
  And I, her loyal and obedient slave,
    Were called upon to down my orb and sceptre,
          That grace I’d freely do,
    And so, I’m sure, would little Willie too.