CHARIVARIA.

“We will hold up wheat, we will hold up meat, we will hold up munitions of war and we will hold up the world’s commerce,” says Herr Ballin.  Meanwhile his countrymen on the Western front are content to hold up their hands.

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It is reported from German Headquarters that the Kaiser intends to confer on Count BERNSTORFF the Iron Cross with white ribbon.  This has, we understand, caused consternation in official circles, where it is felt that after all the Count has done his best for Germany.

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“We are at war,” says the Berliner Tageblatt, a statement which only goes to prove that there is nothing hidden from the great minds of Germany.

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The report that Mr. Henry Ford has offered to place his works at the disposal of the American authorities seems to indicate that he is determined to get America on his side, one way or the other.

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Mr. S.F.  Edge, the famous motorist, now on the food controller’s staff, has given it as his opinion that a simple outdoor life is best for pigs.  We are ashamed to say that our own preference for excluding them from our drawing-room has hitherto been dictated by purely selfish motives.

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America is making every preparation for a possible war, and Mexico, not to be outdone, has decided to hold a Presidential election.

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It is true that Mr. George Bernard Shaw has visited the Front, but too little has, we think, been made of the fact that he wore khaki—­just like an ordinary person, in fact.

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A sensational story reaches us to the effect that a new journalistic enterprise in Berlin is being devoted to the “reliable reporting of news.”  We have always maintained that to be successful in business you must strike out on original lines.

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An exhibition of Zeppelin wreckage has been opened in the Middle Temple Gardens.  The authorities are said to be considering an offer confidentially communicated to them by the German Government to add Count zeppelin as an exhibit to the rest of the wreckage.

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Members of the Honor Oak Golf Club are starting a piggery on their course, and an elderly golfer who practises on a common near London is about to write to The Spectator to state that on Saturday he started a rabbit.

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The American Association for the Advance of Science decided at a recent convocation that the ape had descended from man.  This statement has evoked a very strong protest in monkey circles.

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The tuck-shops of Harrow have been loyally placed out of bounds by the boys themselves, though of course these establishments, like the playing fields of Eton, had their part in the winning of Waterloo.