spies)
We are reduced to starve on dog and thistles;
London, with all her forts, in ashes lies;
Through Scarboro's breached redoubts the sea-wind whistles:
And Margate, quite unmanned,
Would cause no trouble if you cared to land.

Roumania is your granary, whence you draw
For loyal turns a constant cornucopia;
Belgium, quiescent under Culture's law,
Serves as a type of Teutonised Utopia;
And, as for U.S.A.,
They're scheduled to arrive behind The Day.

Why, then, this talk of Peace? The victor's meed
Lies underneath your nose--why not continue?
_Because humanity makes your bosom bleed_;
So, though you have a giant's strength within you,
Your gentle heart would shrink
To use it like a giant--I don't think.

O.S.

* * * * *

MISTAKEN CHARITY.

Slip was riding a big chestnut mare down the street and humming an
accompaniment to the tune she was playing with her bit. He pulled up
when he saw me and, still humming, sat looking down at me.

"Stables in ten minutes," I said. "You're heading the wrong way."

"A dispensation, my lad," he replied. "I'm taking Miss Spangles up on
the hill to get her warm--'tis a nipping and an eager air."

A man was coming across the road towards us. He was incredibly old and
stiff and the dirt of many weeks was upon him. He stood before us and
held out a battered yachting cap. "M'sieur," he said plaintively.

Miss Spangles cocked an ear and began to derange the surface of the
road with a shapely foreleg. She was bored.

"Tell him," said Slip, "that I am poorer even than he is; that this
beautiful horse which he admires so much is the property of the King
of ENGLAND, and that my clothes are not yet paid for."

I passed this on.

"M'sieur," said the old man, holding the yachting cap a little nearer.

"Give him a piece of money to buy soap with," said Slip. "Come up,
Topsy," and he trotted slowly on.

I gave the old man something for soap and went my way.

That night at dinner the Mandril, who loves argument better than life,
said _a propos_ of nothing that any man who gave to a beggar was a
public menace and little better than a felon. He was delighted to find
every man's hand against him.

"RUSKIN," said Slip, "decrees that not only should one give to
beggars, but that one should give kindly and deliberately and not
as though the coin were red-hot."

The Mandril threw hi