ning the
special questions raised"--a result which must have been anything but
agreeable to the War-Lord of Potsdam, who had been thirsting for
_Weltmacht_, or world-dominion, and casting about to pave the way for this
result by absorbing the minor States of Northern Europe--as a shark would
open its voracious jaws to swallow down a shoal of minnows, or other small
fry. That this was a prominent plank in the platform of German policy must
be clear to all who have read the diplomatic revelations of the last few
months; but now the "Three Kings of Scandinavia," going one better than
their storied colleagues of Cologne, have shown that they are as obtuse to
the blandishments of Berlin as the journalists of New York and Chicago.

[Illustration: TYPICAL OF THOSE USED BY GERMAN AIR-CRAFT DURING THE WAR:
A BOMB RECENTLY DROPPED FROM AN AEROPLANE INTO WARSAW.

German air-craft have lately been active in the neighbourhood of Warsaw,
the great objective of the German Eastern Armies. Our photograph shows a
bomb after it had fallen into the city.

_Photograph by Illus. Bureau._]

According to all accounts, the Allied position in the west, especially the
British section thereof, is as "safe as the Bank of England," to use the
words of one of our officers already quoted; and though the Kaiser,
recovered from his illness, has again returned to the front--or, at least.
the distant rear of the front--he does not seem to have much refreshed the
offensive spirit of his armies. Nevertheless, the French _communiques_
have suffered from no great diminution in the daily records of sporadic
trench-fighting all along the Allied line--fighting of a fluctuating, if
on the whole favourable, kind for the strategic plans of General Joffre,
as to whom, one German officer in Belgium said that he wished to God his
country had such a War Lord, seeing that, apart from Marshal Hindenburg,
all their Generals were only worthy of disdain.

In a telegram to his aunt, the Dowager Grand Duchess of Baden, only
daughter of the old Emperor William, the Kaiser gave "God alone the glory"
for a grand victory which was supposed to have been achieved by Hindenburg
over the Russians in front of Warsaw--a victory which caused Berlin to
burst out into bunting and braying and comparisons to Salamis and Leipzig
in its momentous results. But this acknowledgment of the Kaiser to the
Lord of Hosts, "our o