[Illustration:  Spokesman of French determination:  M. Viviani, Premier of France.

At the opening of the French Chamber on the 22nd, M. Viviani, the Premier, expressed the national resolve to continue the war till the cause of the Allies is won.—­[Photo.  Topical.]]

[Illustration:  Appointed Commander-in-chief at the Nore:  Admiral Callaghan.

Admiral Sir George Callaghan was Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet from 1911 till the war began.  He has since been on the War Staff at the Admiralty.—­[Photo.  Heath.]]

Quite of a piece with the doing of this job in South Africa was the disposal of another overt enemy against our authority at the other extremity of the Dark Continent—­in the person of the Khedive, Abbas II., who has now been replaced by Prince Hussein Kamel Pasha as the nominal Sultan of Egypt—­under our protection and power.  No change of the kind was ever brought about with so much statesmanlike wisdom and such little friction, or with so much hearty approval from all sides—­except, of course, that of the Turks and their German backers, for whom the change of regime, effected as it was by a simple stroke of Sir Edward Grey’s masterly pen, was a most painful slap.  The exchange of messages between King George and Prince Hussein—­one promising unfailing support, and the other unfailing allegiance—­completed the transaction, one of the greatest triumphs of British statesmanship, compared with which the recent statecraft of the Germans is mere amateur bungling.  Marshal von der Goltz Pasha, who has now exchanged his Governorship of Belgium for the position of chief military counsellor on the Bosphorus, will find it harder than ever—­with his rabble army under Djemal Pasha—­to “liberate” from the British yoke the people of Egypt, who have already shown that they no more yearn for such emancipation than our loyal fellow-subjects in India.  At Constantinople it was given out that the Messudiyeh, sunk by one

(Continued overleaf.)

[Illustration:  German praise of the British soldier:  General von Heeringen.

Interviewed recently, General von Heeringen said:  “The English first-line troops are splendid soldiers, experienced and very tough, especially on the defensive.”—­[Photo.  Bain.]]

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The illustrated war News, Dec. 30, 1914—­[Part 21]—­3

[Illustration:  Christmas decorations on A British war-ship:  EVERGREENS for the masthead.]

[Illustration:  The Commander-in-chief of the grand Fleet at sea:  Admiral jellicoe.]