Page:Mr. Punch's history of the Great War, Graves, 1919.djvu/104

 Many early nestings are recorded as the result of mild weather, and at least one occasional visitor (Polonius bombifer) has laid eggs in various parts of the country.

March, 1916.

HE month of the War god has again justified its name and its traditions. Both entry and exit have been leonine. The new submarine "frightfulness" began on the 1st, and the battle round Verdun, in which the fate of Paris, to say the least, is involved, has raged with unabated fury throughout the entire month.

Germany's junior partners, Turkey and Bulgaria, are for the moment more concerned with bleeding Germany than with shedding their blood for her; Enver Pasha is reported to have gone to pay a visit to the tomb of the Prophet at Medina; Portugal, our oldest ally, is now officially at war with Germany, and the dogs of frightfulness are already toasting "der Tagus."

On our share of the Western front there is still what is nominally described as a "lull." But, as a young officer writes, "you must not imagine that life here is all honey. Even here we do a bit for our eight-and-sixpence." Once upon a time billets were billets. They now very often admit of being shelled with equal exactitude from due in front and due in rear, and water is laid on throughout. "It is a fact well known to all our most widely circulated photographic dailies that the German gunners waste a power of ammunition. The only criticism I have to make is that I wish they would waste it more carefully. The way they go strewing the stuff about around us is such that they're bound to hit someone or something before long. Still, we have only two more days in these trenches, and they seldom give us more than ten thousand shells a day."

Letters from second-lieutenants seldom go beyond a gentle reminder that their life is not an Elysium. They offer a strange contrast to the activities of Parliamentary grousers and scape-goat hunters. If the Germans were in occupation of the Black Country, if Oxford were being daily shelled as Rheims is, and if with a favouring breeze London could hear the dull rumble