ore the scythe. In India one hundred thousand
beef-eating and brandy-and-soda guzzling Britons hold in subjection two
hundred and fifty million vegetarian abstainers of the same Aryan race.
With what an easy grace the whisky-loving American pushed the temperate
Spaniard out of his possessions! From the time when the Berserkers
ravaged all the coasts of western Europe and lay drunk in every
conquered port it has been the same way: everywhere the nations that
drink too much are observed to fight rather well and not too
righteously. Wherefore the estimable old ladies who abolished the
canteen from the American army may justly boast of having materially
augmented the nation's military power.

TORTOISE, n. A creature thoughtfully created to supply occasion for
the following lines by the illustrious Ambat Delaso:

TO MY PET TORTOISE

My friend, you are not graceful--not at all;
Your gait's between a stagger and a sprawl.

Nor are you beautiful: your head's a snake's
To look at, and I do not doubt it aches.

As to your feet, they'd make an angel weep.
'Tis true you take them in whene'er you sleep.

No, you're not pretty, but you have, I own,
A certain firmness--mostly you're [sic] backbone.

Firmness and strength (you have a giant's thews)
Are virtues that the great know how to use--

I wish that they did not; yet, on the whole,
You lack--excuse my mentioning it--Soul.

So, to be candid, unreserved and true,
I'd rather you were I than I were you.

Perhaps, however, in a time to be,
When Man's extinct, a better world may see

Your progeny in power and control,
Due to the genesis and growth of Soul.

So I salute you as a reptile grand
Predestined to regenerate the land.

Father of Possibilities, O deign
To accept the homage of a dying reign!

In the far region of the unforeknown
I dream a tortoise upon every throne.

I see an Emperor his head withdraw
Into his carapace for fear of Law;

A King who carries something else than fat,
Howe'er acceptably he carries that;

A President not strenuously bent
On punishment of audible dissent--

Who never shot (it were a vain attack)
An armed or unarmed tortoise in the back;

Subject and citizens that feel no need
To make the March of Mind a wild stampede;

All progress slow, contemplative, sedate,
And "Take your time" the word, in Church and State.

O Tortoise, 'tis a happy