promised my people I would."

We have begun to think in millions. The war is costing a million a day. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has launched a war loan of 230 millions and doubled our income tax. The Prime Minister asks for an addition of a million men to the Regular Army. But the country has not yet fully awakened to the realities of war. Football clubs are concerned with the "jostling of the ordinary patrons" by men in uniform. "Business as usual" is interpreted as "pleasure as usual" in some quarters. Rumour is busy with stories of mysterious prisoners in the Tower, with tales of huge guns which are to shell us from Calais when the Germans get there; with reports (from neutral sources) of the speedy advent of scores of Zeppelins and hundreds of aeroplanes over London. But though

Old England's dark o' nights and short
  Of 'buses: still she's much the sort
Of place we always used to know.

T.B.D.

OFFICER'S STEWARD: "Will you take your bath, sir, before or after haction?"

It is otherwise with Belgium, with its shattered homes and wrecked towns. The great Russian legend is still going strong, in spite of the statements of the Under-Secretary for War, and, after all, why should the Germans do all the story telling? By the way, a "German Truth Society" has been founded. It is pleasant to know that it is realised over there at last that there is a difference between Truth and German Truth. The British Navy, we learn from the Kölnische Zeitung, "is in hiding." But our fragrant contemporary need not worry. In due course the Germans shall have the hiding.

In some ways the unchanged spirit of our people is rather disconcerting. One of Mr. Punch's young men, happening to meet a music-hall acquaintance, asked him how he thought the war was going, and met with the answer: "Oh, I think the managers will have to give in." And the proposal to change the name of Berlin Road at Lewisham has been rejected by the residents.

December, 1914.

In less than six weeks Coronel has been avenged at the battle of the Falkland Islands:

Hardened steel are our ships;
  Gallant tars are our men;
We never are wordy
  (STURDEE, boys, STURDEE!),
But quietly conquer again and again.

Here at least we can salute the vanquished. Admiral von Spee, who went down with his doomed squadron, was a gallant and chivalrous antagonist, like Captain Müller, of the Emden. Germany's retort, eight days later, by bombarding Scarborough and Whitby, reveals the normal Hun:

Come where you will--the seas are wide;
  And choose your Day--they're all alike;
You'll find us ready when we ride
  In calm or storm and wait to strike;
But--if of shame your shameless Huns
  Can yet retrieve some casual traces--
Please fight our men and ships and guns,
  Not womenfolk and watering places.

Austria's "punitive expedition" has ended in disaster for the Austrians. They entered Belgrade on the 2nd, and were driven out twelve days later by the Serbs. King George has paid his first visit to the front, and made General Foch a G.C.B. We know that the General is a great authority on strategy, and that his name, correctly pronounced, rhymes with Boche, as hero with Nero. He is evidently a man likely to be heard of again. Another hitherto unfamiliar name that has cropped up is that of Herr Lissauer, who, for writing a "Hymn of Hate" against England, has been decorated by the Kaiser. This shows true magnanimity on the part of the Kaiser, in his capacity of King of Prussia, since the "Hymn of Hate" turns out to be a close adaptation of a poem composed by a Saxon patriot, in which Prussia, not England, was held up to execration.

Kitchener's great improvisation is already bearing fruit, and the New Armies are flocking to the support of the old. Indian troops are fighting gallantly in three continents. King Albert "the unconquerable," in the narrow strip of his country that still belongs to him, waits in unshaken faith for the coming of the dawn. And as Christmas draws on the thoughts of officers and men in the waterlogged trenches turn fondly homeward to mothers, wives and sweethearts:

Cheer up! I'm calling far away;
  And wireless you can hear.
Cheer up! You know you'd have me stay
And keep on trying day by day;
  We're winning, never fear.

Christmas at least brings the children's truce, and that is something to be thankful for, but it is not the Christmas that we knew and long for:

ON EARTH--PEACE

No stir of wings sweeps softly by;
  No angel comes with blinding light;
Beneath the wild and wintry sky
  No shepherds watch their flocks to-night.

In the dull thunder of the wind
  We hear the cruel guns afar,
But in the glowering heavens we find
  No guiding, solitary star.

But lo! on this our Lord's birthday,
  Lit by the glory whence she came,
Peace, like a warrior, stands at bay,
  A swift, defiant, living flame!

Full-armed she stands in shining mail,
  Erect, serene, unfaltering still,
Shod with a strength that cannot fail,
  Strong with a fierce o'ermastering will.

Where shattered homes and ruins be
  She fights through dark and desperate days;
Beside the watchers on the sea
  She guards the Channel's narrow ways.

Through iron hail and shattering shell,
  Where the dull earth is stained with red,
Fearless she fronts the gates of Hell
  And shields the unforgotten dead.

So stands she, with her all at stake,
  And battles for her own dear life,
That by one victory she may make
  For evermore an end of strife.

THE CHILDREN'S PEACE

PEACE: "I'm glad that they, at least, have their Christmas unspoiled."

Yet we have our minor war gains in the temporary disappearance of cranks and faddists, some of whom have sunk without a ripple. And though the Press Censor's suppressions and delays and inconsistencies provoke discontent in the House and out of it, food for mirth turns up constantly in unexpected quarters. The Crown Prince tells an American interviewer that there is no War Party in Germany, nor has there ever been. The German General Staff have begun to disguise set-backs under the convenient euphemism that the situation has developed "according to expectation." An English village worthy, discussing the prospects of invasion, comes to the reassuring conclusion that "there can't be no battle in these parts, Jarge, for there bain't no field suitable, as you may say; an' Squire, 'e won't lend 'em the use of 'is park." The troubles of neutrality are neatly summed up in a paper in a recent geography examination. "Holland is a low country, in fact it is such a very low country that it is no wonder that it is dammed all round."

The trials of mistresses on the home front are happily described