n-wrists, shell-makers' crouch, neuro-committee-itis, and
Zeppelin-eye through looking up into the sky too long with a telescope.

A great deal depends on what you look at and what you look through. Thus
Mr. Walter Long says that when he reads carping criticisms upon the conduct
of the War he looks through his window at the people in the street and is
always surprised to see the quiet steadfast manner in which they are going
about their business. It is a good plan, but not always successful. The
Kaiser got his view of the Irish people through a Casement, and it was
entirely erroneous.

The _Cologne Gazette_ has stated that "there is in England no real
soldiers' humour such as we have." Certainly we have nothing like it,
though we confess to preferring the home-grown brand.

_December, 1915_

Kut and Ctesiphon, Ctesiphon and Kut. Thus may the events of the last month
in Mesopotamia, no longer a "blessed word," be expressed in a bald formula,
which takes no account of the unavailing heroism of General Townshend's
small but splendid force. Things have not been going well in the East. The
Allies have been unable to save Serbia, Monastir has fallen, and our lines
have been withdrawn to Salonika. The experts are now divided into two
camps, the Westerners and the Easterners, and the former, pointing to the
evacuation of Gallipoli, are loud in their denunciations of costly
"side-shows," and the folly of strengthening Germany's hold on Turkey by
killing out the Turks, instead of concentrating all our forces on killing
the Germans on the Western front. The time is not yet come to decide which
is right. But all are agreed with the British officer who described the
Australian soldier at Gallipoli as "the bravest thing God ever made," and
so prompted these lines:

Bravest, where half a world of men
Are brave beyond all earth's rewards,
So stoutly none shall charge again
Till the last breaking of the swords;
Wounded or hale, won home from war,
Or yonder by the Lone Pine laid;
Give him his due for evermore--
"The bravest thing God ever made!"

Though the wings of the angel of Peace cannot be heard, peace kite-flying
has already begun in Vienna, but Germany is anxious to represent it as
unauthorised and improper. Mr. Henry Ford's voyage to Europe on the
_Oscar II_ with a strangely assorted group of Pacificists does more
credit to his heart than his head, and the conflicting elements in his
party h