The outlook in Palestine is dark.  Strict-silence is enforced in all public places, and even whispering is forbidden at street corners.  More than two-thirds of the population are spies.  Relatives are only allowed to speak to each other if granted a special licence or talking-ticket by the Sheikh-ul-Islam, though there is a special dispensation for mothers-in-law.  The reported mobilization of eighty goats on Mount Tabor shows pretty clearly which way the wind is blowing; whilst it is persistently rumoured in Joppa that five camels were seen passing through Jerusalem yesterday.  Suspicious dredging operations in the Dead Sea are also reported by a Berne correspondent.  The future is big with presage.

All eyes are fixed on the two great African Powers which still stand aside from the maelstroem of war.  The position in Ethiopia is, to say the least of it, tendentious, and at any moment the natives may change their skin.  The coronation of the new Empress of Abyssinia is being followed as usual by the great Feast of the Blue Umbrella, at which an important pronouncement is, I learn, to be made.  I hear, moreover (from a private source in Trondhjem, via Mecca and Amsterdam), that Wady-ul-Dzjinn, the new Premier, and a staunch pro-Ally, is expected to speak with no uncertain voice.  Unfortunately serious liquorice riots have broken out in the capital, and these are being cunningly used by German agents to turn popular discontent against the Allies.  Fraeulein von Schlimm, a niece by marriage of the acting Montenegrin Envoy, is accused of purposely hoarding five hundred sticks of “Spanish” so as to aggravate the crisis.  The usually reliable correspondent of The Salt Lake City Morning Pioneer telegraphs (via Tomsk) that she only escaped lynching by distributing her treasure to the mob.

In a similar way economic issues are determining the attitude of Thibet.  Prices in Lhassa are rising fabulously.  The new Food Controller is endeavouring to grapple with the situation, and the yak ration has again been reduced.  It behoves British diplomacy to see that the ensuing discontent is not turned into Germanophil currents.  Where is our Foreign Office?  What is being done?  We are in the third year of the War and yet, while the German Minister is distributing free arrowroot to the populace, Whitehall slumbers on.  It may be nothing to our mandarins that a full platoon was added to the Thibetan field-strength only last week, and that the Government dinghy is already watertight.

Later.  Paraguay’s attitude is now defined as one of Stark Neutrality.  Patagonia has increased her army by fifty per cent.  The new recruit promises to make an excellent fighting unit.

* * * * *

In A good cause.