Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/595

The Tägliche Rundschau's message to the Kaiser is," Harden your heart!" More reinforced concrete?

The Archduke Eugene of Austria has assured his officers that they will spend Christmas in Venice and Milan. As a matter of fact, we understand, they will be sent further south.

Extract from an article in The Egyptian Mail describing the ceremony of Selamlik in Constantinople under the present Sultan:—"My last recollections of a Selamlik go back to the times of Abdul Hamid. How the scene has lost in splendour! Instead of the brilliant mass of gorgeously uninformed infantry and cavalry, a few hundred soldiers in khaki..." Still, less gorgeousness and more information probably mean an increase in efficiency.

The Chief Rabbi has announced his intention of going to France to visit Jewish soldiers serving there. He is also said to be anxious to investigate the report circulated by a misprinter that the men in the trenches burrow like rabbis.

A systematic study of the cracks in the buildings of the Tower of London is to be undertaken weekly for a period of twelve months, at the suggestion of the principal architect in charge of the Royal Palaces. It speaks well for the moral regeneration of our criminal classes in these days that several of our leading cracksmen are said to have offered their services for the good work.

Mouth-organs have so often made life impossible that we were glad to read last week that one had saved the life of a Canadian at the Front.

"Now," says Mr. Hilaire Belloc, "we know pretty accurately what the enemy's reserves of men are—at least of men at all useful for his purpose, and excluding the boys and middle-aged people whom popular journalism summons up to swell his figures." Our experience of the average middle-aged German is that he swells his own figure.

In a paragraph on the opening of the general angling season a contemporary reports, "Big barbel are jumping freely in the Thames." It is really very silly of these fish to be so nervy seeing that no enemy submarine has yet penetrated the river. Their confrères in the high seas must be greatly tickled.

A German machine gun and a trench mortar captured in France have been buried by the Army Council in the Museum of the Royal United Service Institution.

An interesting result of the rumour that the sale of lamb and veal is to be prohibited has been noticed by observant persons. Staid old sheep have been seen frisking about and cutting the most absurd capers, while elderly cows have been observed nuzzling yet older ones, in the hope that the butcher will not realise that they have grown up.

"Few people in Egham, no doubt, thought of Tuesday, June 15th, as the 700th anniversary of the signing of Magna Charta on the island of 'Runingmede,' between Windsor and Staines, which is in the parish of Egham. Many of us, however, have a notion of what that Charter meant to England and our forefathers, and it is well to remember the day. Seven hundred years ago one of the fickle Stewarts was met by that bold band of Barons.

Imagine the scene: King Charles is handed the document, and in the language of the day, politely but gently was he impressed with the need for such a Charter and advised probably that it would be all the better for his health if he signed it."—Surrey Herald.

It was on this occasion that King Charles, the well-known "Stewart," remarked (as recorded by Shakspeare):

"The Germans are now turning their attention to T.N.A.—tetra-nitro-aniline—an even more powerful explosive than the famous T.N.T. It is hinted, however, that we are not behindhand in regard to this point.

GET A BOX TO-DAY."

Yorkshire Evening Post.

This advice is not only dangerous but, in view of the needs of our soldiers at the Front, most unpatriotic, and should be unhesitatingly rejected.

Motto for Mr. D. A. Thomas, who is to be sent to the U.S. and Canada to discuss the question of munition contracts on the spot:—Bis D.A.T. qui cito D.A.T.