you observe your team is tiring,

And wish the call of Time were blown,

To Mr. WILSON, where he stands umpiring

Gratuitously on his own,

You'll look (as drowning men will clutch a straw)

To make the thing a draw.

O.S.

HEART-TO-HEART TALKS.

(The KING OF THE HELLENES and the KAISER: On the Telephone).

The King. HALLOA! Are you there? Halloa, halloa! Are you there, I say?

The Kaiser. All right, all right. Who's talking?

The King. KING CONSTANTINE. I want a word with the KAISER.

The Kaiser. Ha, TINO, it's you, is it? Fire away.

The King. Is that you, WILLIE?

The Kaiser. Yes; what do you want? I haven't too much time.

The King. I say, the most awful thing has happened. The Allies have sent me an Ultimatum.

The Kaiser. A what?

The King. An Ultimatum.

The Kaiser. I say, old man, you really must speak louder and more plainly. I can't hear a word you say.

The King. The Allies have sent me an ULTIMATUM!! Did you hear that time?

The Kaiser. Yes, most of it.

The King. Well.

The Kaiser. Well.

The King. What do you think about it?

The Kaiser. Not very much. Lots of other people have had ultimatums and haven't been one pfennig the worse for them.

The King. Oh, but this is the very last thing in ultimatums. It's a regular ultimatissimum.

The Kaiser. What do they want you to do?

The King. All sorts of disagreeable things. For instance, I am to move my troops to the Peloponnese, so as to get them out of harm's way.

The Kaiser. Well, move them. What are troops for except to be moved about? You can always move them back again, you know. I keep on moving troops forward and backward all the time. It's a mere nothing when you once get accustomed to it. Just you try it and see. Anything more?

The King. Yes; I'm to release from prison the followers of the pestilential VENIZELOS.

The Kaiser. That's unpleasant, of course, for a patent Greek War-Lord; but I should do it if I were you, and then you can let me know how it feels.

The King. Look here, William, I don't know what's the matter with you, but I wish you wouldn't try to be so funny. You seem to think the whole affair's a sort of German joke. So it is, by Zeus—that's to say it's no joke at all.

The Kaiser. Manners, TINO, manners.

The King. I'm sick and tired of all this talk.

The Kaiser. If you go on like that I shall not talk to you any more.

The King. Don't say that; I could not bear such a loss. But, seriously, are you going to help as you promised?

The Kaiser. I cannot help you now. You must play for time.

The King. I've exhausted all the possibilities of playing for time. It wouldn't be the least good. They really mean it this time, and they've given me a strictly limited period for compliance.

The Kaiser. Well, I suppose you know best, but I should have thought you could have spun out negotiations for a hit—given them a little promise here and a little promise there on the chance of something turning up.

The King. The long and the short of it is that you promised to help us, but it was only a little promise here or there, and you don't mean to keep it. I shall accept the ultimatum.

The Kaiser. The what? The telephone's buzzing again.

The King. The ULTIMATUM!!

The Kaiser. Oh, the ultimatum. Yes, by all means accept it. And, by the way, I'm publishing a volume of my War-speeches, and will make a point of sending you an early copy. You might get it reviewed in the Athens papers.

The King. Gr-r-r.

Our Helpful Government.

"Don't grow potatoes where they will not grow. OFFICIAL ADVICE."—Daily Express.

Journalistic Modesty.

"The sale of yesterday's Christmas Number of the Daily Gazette already exceeds that of last year's Christmas Number by more than 50 per cent. The sell is still going on actively."—Daily Gazette (Karachi).

"Yes, I think we have it at last—I mean the stranglehold round the enemy's neck. I seem to hear the death rattle in his guttural throat."—Sunday Pictorial.

And to see the glazing of his ocular eyes.

"Had you shut your eyes the opening night at the Opera you might have fancied yourself back at Covent Garden, London, for the types of well-turned-out men out-Englished the English, from top hat to varnished boot."—American Paper.

That's the worst of varnished boots; they will creak so.

UNMADE IN GERMANY.

BETHMANN-HOLLWEG. "AND TO THINK THAT I, WHO DEFENDED THE VIOLATION OF BELGIUM, SHOULD HAVE MY HONESTY DOUBTED. SURELY I AM FRIGHTFUL ENOUGH."

[The Kaiser's Chancellor has been attacked in a German pamphlet which ridicules his "silly ideas of humanity," and says that "nobody need be surprised at the rumour which is going through Germany that he has been bought by England."]

Sergeant (after bringing his men to attention, to knock-kneed recruit). "WELL, THAT WINS IT, NO. 4. ALL YOU'VE GOT TO DO ON THE COMMAND 'STAN' AT EASE' IS TO MOVE YER BLINKIN' 'ANDS."

THE WATCH DOGS.

LV.

MY DEAR CHARLES,—Notwithstanding the reckless speed of the leave train and the surfeit of luxuries and lack of company on the leave boat, our gallant warriors continue to volunteer in thousands for that desperate enterprise known as "Proceeding on leave to the U.K." There is however a certain artfulness in the business, if only artfulness for artfulness' sake.

In the old days the ingenuity of man was concentrated upon extending by any means short of the criminal the duration of the leave. When Robert first went on leave he was young and innocent. He had four days given him; he left his unit on the first of them and was back with it on the last of them. The second time he improved on this and left France very early on the morning of his first day and arrived in France again very late on the last night of it. Then his friend John regarded his leave as beginning and ending in England, which, if the leave boat happens to be in mid-Channel at midnight, is not a distinction without a difference. Robert's next leave was for seven days, and he spent nine of them in the U.K. His explanation was logically unassailable, but logic is wasted on military authorities; after that, leave got fixed at ten days net, ten days of the inelastic sort.

Give a man an