Page:Mr. Punch's history of the Great War, Graves, 1919.djvu/109

 German Fleet out. According to another, it was because he could no longer take the German people in.

At Oxford the Hebdomadal Council have suspended the filling of the Professorship of Modern Greek for six months. Apparently there is no one about just now who understands the modern Greek. A French correspondent puts it somewhat differently: "La Grèce Antique: Hellas. La Grèce Moderne: Hélas!"

April, 1916.

HO would have thought when the month opened that at its close a new front within the Four Seas would be added to our far-flung line, Dublin's finest street half ruined, Ireland placed under martial law? Certainly not Mr. Birrell or Mr. Redmond or the Irish Nationalist Members. The staunchest Unionist would acquit Mr. William O'Brien of any menace when in the Budget Debate, three weeks before the Rebellion of Easter Week, he gave it as his opinion that Ireland ought to be omitted from the Budget altogether. So, too, with Mr. Tim Healy, whose principal complaint was that the tax on railway tickets would put a premium on foreign travel; that people would go to Paris instead of Dublin, and Switzerland instead of Killarney. No, so far as the Government and Ireland's Parliamentary representatives went, it was a bolt from the blue—or the green. Mr. Birrell, Chief Secretary for Ireland for nine years, a longer period than any of his predecessors, has shown himself conspicuous at once by his absence and his innocence, and England in her hour of need, with the submarine peril daily growing and Kut starved out after a heroic defence, stands to pay dearly for the privilege of entrusting the administration of Ireland to an absentee humorist.

On the Western front Verdun still rivets all eyes. The German hordes are closing in on the fortress, but at a heavier cost for each mile gained than they have ever paid before.

Germany's colossal effort would inspire admiration as well as respect if she would only fight clean. The ugly stories of her treatment of prisoners have now culminated in the terrible