* * * * *

    “The Canadian papers are unanimous that the German peace proposals
    are premature, and will be refused saskatoon.”

    Examiner (Launceston, Tasmania).

We had not heard before that Germany had asked for Saskatoon, but anyway we are glad she is not going to get it.

* * * * *

From a schoolgirl’s essay:—­

    “The Reconnaissance was the time when people began to wake up ... 
    Friar Jelicoe was a very great painter; he painted angles.”

Probably an ancestor of the gallant gentleman who recently had a brush with the enemy.

* * * * *

Tactless tactics.

  Were I a burglar in the dock
    With every chance of doing time,
  With Justice sitting like a rock
    To hear a record black with crime;
  If my conviction seemed a cert,
    Yet, by a show of late repentance,
  I thought I might, with luck, avert
    A simply crushing sentence;—­

  I should adopt, by use of art,
    A pensive air of new-born grace,
  In hope to melt the Bench’s heart
    And mollify its awful face;
  I should not go and run amok,
    Nor in a fit of senseless fury
  Punch the judicial nose or chuck
    An inkpot at the jury.

  So with the Hun:  you might assume
    He would exert his homely wits
  To mitigate the heavy doom
    That else would break him all to bits;
  Yet he behaves as one possessed,
    Rampaging like a bull of Bashan,
  Which, as I think, is not the best
    Means of conciliation.

  For when the wild beast, held and bound,
    Ceases to plunge and rave and snort,
  The Bench, I hope, will pass some sound
    Remarks on this contempt of court;
  The plea for mercy, urged too late,
    Should prove a negligible cipher,
  And when the sentence seals his fate
    He’ll get at least a lifer.

O.S.

* * * * *

Heart-to-heart talks.

(The KAISER and Count BERNSTORFF.)

The Kaiser (concluding a tirade).  And so, in spite of my superhuman forbearance, this is what it has come to.  Germany is smacked in the face in view of the whole world—­yes, I repeat it, is smacked in the face, and by a nation which is not a nation at all, but a sweeping together of the worst elements in all the other nations, a country whose navy is ludicrous and whose army does not exist; and you, Count, have the audacity to come here into my presence and tell me that, with the careful instructions given to you by my Government and by myself, you were not able to prevent such an end to the negotiations?  It is a thing that cannot be calmly contemplated.  Even I, who have learnt perhaps more thoroughly than other men to govern my temper—­even I feel strangely moved, for I know how deplorable will be the effect of this on our Allies and on the other neutral Powers.  Our enemies, too, will be exalted by it and thus the War will be prolonged.  No, Count, at such a moment one does not appear before one’s Emperor with a smiling face.