ncreasing fears that it will
not hold water.

[Illustration: THE FAR-REACHING EFFECT OF THE RUSSIAN PUSH]

A number of professional fortune-tellers have been fined at Southend for
having predicted Zeppelins. The fraudulent nature of their pretensions was
sufficiently manifest, since even the authorities had been unable to
foresee the Zeppelins until some time after they had arrived.

The discussions in Parliament and out of it of the way in which things get
into the papers which oughtn't to, are dying down. A daily paper, however,
has revived them by the headline, "Cabinet leekage." Now, why, in wonder,
do they spell it in that way?

It is quite impossible to keep pace with all the new incarnations of women
in war-time--'bus-conductress, ticket-collector, lift-girl, club waitress,
post-woman, bank clerk, motor-driver, farm-labourer, guide, munition maker.
There is nothing new in the function of ministering angel: the myriad
nurses in hospital here or abroad are only carrying out, though in greater
numbers than ever before, what has always been woman's mission. But
whenever he sees one of these new citizens, or hears fresh stories of their
address and ability, Mr. Punch is proud and delighted. Perhaps in the past,
even in the present, he may have been, or even still is, a little given to
chaff Englishwomen for some of their foibles, and even their aspirations.
But he never doubted how splendid they were at heart; he never for a moment
supposed they would be anything but ready and keen when the hour of need
struck.

[Illustration: FARMER (who has got a lady-help in the dairy): "'Ullo,
Missy, what in the world be ye doin'?"

LADY: "Well, you told me to water the cows, and I'm doing it. They don't
seem to like it much."]

_July, 1916_.

On the home front we have long been accustomed to the sound of guns, small
and great, but it has come from training camps and inspires confidence
rather than anxiety. We have been spared the horrors of invasion,
occupation, wholesale devastation. In certain areas the noise of bombs and
anti-aircraft guns has grown increasingly familiar, and on our south-east
and east coasts war from the air, on the sea, and under the sea has become
more and more audible as the months pass by. But July has brought us a new
experience--the sound fifty or sixty miles inland in peaceful rural
England, amid glorious midsummer weather, of the continual throbbing night
and day of the great guns on th