help being a little
sorry for the Boche now that his wild oats are coming home to roost." Even
his poetic friends, formerly soulful and precious, take this restrained
view. The Attributes of the Enemy are thus summed up by one trench bard:

If Boches laughed and Huns were gents,
They'd own their share of continents;
There'd be no fuss, and, what is more,
There wouldn't even be a war.
Whereas the end of all this tosh
Can only be there'll be no Boche.

[Illustration: THE BIG PUSH

MUNITION WORKER: "Well, I'm not taking a holiday myself just yet, but I'm
sending these kids of mine for a little trip on the Continent."]

Another poet, an R.F.C. man, adopts the same vein, void alike of hate or
exultation:

Returning from my morning fly
I met a Fokker in the sky,
And, judging from its swift descent,
It had a nasty accident.
On thinking further of the same
I rather fear I was to blame.

It is easy to understand why the enemy nations find England so
disappointing and unsatisfying to be at war with.

Italy, too, has had her Big Push on the Isonzo, capturing Monte Sabotino,
which had defied her for fifteen months, and Gorizia--a triumph of
scientific preparation and intrepid assault. The Austrian poison-gas attack
on the Asiago plateau has been avenged, and the objectives of the long and
ineffectual offensive of the previous winter carried with thousands of
prisoners at a comparatively cheap price. To add to Austria's humiliation
her armies on the Eastern Front have been placed under the Prussian
Hindenburg. And Rumania has joined the Allies at the end of what has been a
very bad month for the Central Empires. English newspapers have been
excluded from Germany, and Berlin has added truthless to meatless days. But
the Germans have long since found a substitute for veracity as well as for
leather and butter and rubber and bread. They are said to have found a
substitute for International Law, and it is an open secret that they are
even now in search of a substitute for victory. We might even suggest a few
more substitutes which have not yet been utilised. As, for example, a
substitute for Verdun with the German flag flying over it; substitutes for
several German Colonies; a substitute for Austria as an ally; and
substitutes for Kultur and Organisation and Efficiency and World Power and
the Mailed Fist and the Crown Prince and the Kaiser and the War and all the
things that haven't come off.

Vari