Page:Mr. Punch's history of the Great War, Graves, 1919.djvu/216

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Mr. Punch's History of the Great War



Attila's understudy, "Go forth," he said, "my sons. Go and behave exactly as the Huns."

Apropos of the Kaiser, it appears that a certain Herr Stegerwald, addressing a Berlin meeting, said: "We went to war at the side of the Kaiser, and the All-Highest will return from war with us." If we may be permitted to say anything, we expect he will be leading by at least a couple of lengths.

The versatility and inventive genius of the Prime Minister provoke mingled comment. An old Parliamentarian, when asked to what party Mr. Lloyd George now belonged, recently answered: "He used to be a Radical; he will some day be a Conservative; and at present he is the leader of the Improvisatories."

December, 1917.

IT seems useless to attempt to cope with the staggering multiplicity of events crowded into the last few weeks. Jerusalem captured in this last crusade, which realises the dream of Cœur de Lion ; Russia "down and out" as a result of the armistice and the Brest-Litovsk Conference; Germany's last colony conquered in East Africa; Lord Lansdowne's letter; the retirement of Lord Jellicoe; while in one single week Cuba has declared war on Austria, the Kaiser has threatened to make a Christmas peace offer, and Mr. Bernard Shaw has described himself as "a mere individual." We have traversed the whole gamut of sensation from the sublime and tragic to the ridiculous; and Armageddon, vulgarised by the vulgar repetition of the journalist, has redeemed its significance in the dispatches from our Palestine front. The simplicity and dignity of General Allenby's entry into the Syrian town—

Where on His grave with shining eyes
The Syrian stars look down—

afford a happy contrast to the boastful pageantry of the Kaiser's visit in 1898. Meanwhile it has not yet been decided in Berlin what the Sultan of Turkey thinks of the capture of Jerusalem.

Where Russia is concerned Mr. Balfour wisely declines to

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