Mr. Punch's History of the Great War
JANUARY ended with a knock for the Germans off the Dogger Bank, when the Blücher was sunk by our Battle-Cruiser Squadron:
They say the Lion and the Tiger sweep
Where once the Huns shelled babies from the deep,
And Blücher, that great cruiser—12-inch guns
Roar o'er his head, but cannot break his sleep.
And now it is the turn of "Johnny Turk," who has had his knock on the Suez Canal, and failed to solve the Riddle of the Sands under German guidance. Having safely locked up his High Seas Fleet in the Kiel Canal, the Kaiser has ordered the U-boat blockade of England to begin by the torpedoing of neutral as well as enemy merchant ships.
You may know a man by the company he keeps, and the Kaiser's friends are now the Jolly Roger and Sir Roger Casement.
Valentine's Day has come and gone. Here are some lines from a damp but undefeated lover in the trenches:
Though the glittering knight whose charger
Bore him on his lady's quest
With an infinitely larger
Share of warfare's pomp was blest,
Yet he offered love no higher,
No more difficult to quench,
Than the filthy occupier
Of this unromantic trench.
The fusion of classes in the camps of the New Armies outdoes the mixture of "cook's son and duke's son" fifteen years ago. The old Universities are now given up to a handful of coloured students, Rhodes' scholars and reluctant crocks. As a set-off, however, a Swansea clergyman and football enthusiast has held a "thanksgiving service for their good fortune against Newcastle United." Meanwhile, the Under-Secretary for War has stated that the army costs more in a week than the total estimates for the Waterloo campaign, and that our casualties on the Western
24
