for myself I welcome every touch of nature in these our warriors. It
is good to be in the midst of them, for they thrive as never before, and
their comforts are few enough these wet bloody days."

The Crown Prince, after seven months of ineffective carnage before Verdun,
has been giving an interview to an American ex-clergyman, representing the
Hearst anti-British newspapers, in which he appears in the light of a
tender-hearted philanthropist, longing for peace, mercy, and the delights
of home-life. Mr. Lloyd George, in an interview with an American
journalist, has defined our policy as that of delivering a "knock out" to
Prussian military despotism, a pugilistic metaphor which has wounded some
of our Pacificists. Our Zeppelin bag is growing; Count Zeppelin has sworn
to destroy London or die, but now that John Bull is getting his eye in, the
oath savours of suicide.

[Illustration:

THE SUNLIGHT-LOSER

KAISER (as his sainted Grandfather's clock strikes three): "The British are
just putting their clocks back an hour. I wish I could put ours back about
three years."]

The Allies have presented an ultimatum to Greece, but Mr. Asquith's appeal
to the traditions of ancient Hellas is wasted on King Constantine, who, if
he had lived in the days of Marathon and Salamis, would undoubtedly have
been a pro-Persian. As for his future, Mr. Punch ventures on a prediction:

Tino, if some day Hellas should arise
A phoenix soaring from her present cinders,
Think not to share her passage to the skies
Or furnish purple copy for her Pindars;
You'll be in exile, if you don't take care,
Along with brother William, Lord knows where!

A couple of months ago, on the occasion of sharks appearing on the Atlantic
coast of the U.S.A., it was freely intimated at the fashionable
watering-places that there was such a thing as being too proud to bathe.
Now a new and untimely irritant has turned up off the same shores in the
shape of U-boats. Their advent is all the more inconsiderate in view of the
impending Presidential Election, at which Mr. Wilson's claim is based on
having kept America out of the War.

[Illustration:

COMRADES IN VICTORY

Combles, September 26th

POILU: "Bravo, mon vieux!"

TOMMY: "Same to you, mate."]

Members have returned to St. Stephen's refreshed by seven weeks' holiday,
and the Nationalists have been recruiting their energies, but unfortunately
nothing else, in Ireland. By way of signalising