Mr. Punch's History of the Great War
WITHIN some eleven weeks of the Declaration of War by the U.S.A., the first American troops have been landed in France. Even the Kaiser has begun to abate his thrasonic tone, declaring that "it is not the Prussian way to praise oneself," and that "it is now a matter of holding out, however long it lasts."
But other events besides the arrival of the Americans have helped to bring about this altered tone. The capture of Messines Ridge, after the biggest bang in history, has given him something to think about. His brother-in-law, Constantine of Greece, has at last thrown up the sponge and abdicated. "Tino's" place of exile is not yet fixed. The odds seem to be on Switzerland, but Mr. Punch recommends Denmark. There is no place like home:
Try some ancestral palace, well appointed;
For choice the one where Hamlet nursed his spite,
Who found the times had grown a bit disjointed
And he was not the man to put 'em right;
And there consult on that enchanted shore
The ghosts of Elsinore.
Brazil has also entered the War, and Germany is now able to shoot in almost any direction without any appreciable risk of hitting a friend.
Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig gave the nation a birthday present on his own birthday, in the shape of a dispatch which is as strong and straight as himself:
Frugal in speech, yet more than once impelled
To utter words of confidence and cheer
Whereat some dismal publicists rebelled
As premature, ill-founded, insincere—
Words none the less triumphantly upheld
By Victory's verdict, resonantly clear,
Words that inspired misgiving in the foe
Because you do not prophesy—you know.
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