never one-tenth so heavy as those in France on days when G.H.Q. reports
"everything quiet on the Western front." Still worse is the temper of some
of our society weeklies, which have set their faces like flint against any
serious reference to the War, and go imperturbably along the old
ante-bellum lines, "snapping" smart people at the races or in the Row, or
reproducing the devastating beauty of a revue chorus, and this at a time
when every day brings the tidings of irreparable loss to hundreds of
families.

* * * * *

MISSING

"He was last seen going over the parapet into the German trenches."

What did you find after war's fierce alarms,
When the kind earth gave you a resting-place,
And comforting night gathered you in her arms,
With light dew falling on your upturned face?

Did your heart beat, remembering what had been?
Did you still hear around you, as you lay,
The wings of airmen sweeping by unseen,
The thunder of the guns at close of day?

All nature stoops to guard your lonely bed;
Sunshine and rain fall with their calming breath;
You need no pall, so young and newly dead,
Where the Lost Legion triumphs over death.

When with the morrow's dawn the bugle blew,
For the first time it summoned you in vain,
The Last Post does not sound for such as you,
But God's Reveille wakens you again.

The discomforts of railway travelling do not diminish. But impatient
passengers may find comfort in a maxim of R. L. Stevenson: "To travel
hopefully is a better thing than to arrive." And further solace is
forthcoming in the fact that our enemies are even worse off than we are.
Railway fares in Germany have been doubled; but it is doubtful if this
transparent artifice will prevent the Kaiser from going about the place
making speeches to his troops on all the fronts. Here all classes are
united by the solidarity of inconvenience. And they all have different ways
of meeting it. But we really think more care should be taken by the
authorities to see that while waging war on the Continent they do not
forget the defence of those at home. The fact that Mr. Winston Churchill
and Mr. Horatio Bottomley were away in France at the same time looks like
gross carelessness. In this context we may note the report that the Eskimos
had not until quite recently heard of war, which seems to argue slackness
on the part of the circulation manager of the _Dail