Page:Mr. Punch's history of the Great War, Graves, 1919.djvu/272

 no information as to his alleged intention to go to the country in the political sense. In spite of the Premier's warning the Pacificists made another futile attempt on the very next day to convince the House that the Germans were ready to make an honest peace if only our Government would listen to it.

They were well answered by Mr. Robertson, who was a Pacificist himself until this War converted him, and by Mr. Balfour, who declared that we were quite ready to talk to Germany as soon as she showed any sign of a change of heart. Up to the present there has been no sign of it.

Food is still the universal topic. Small green apples, says a contemporary, are proving popular. A boy correspondent, however, desires Mr. Punch to say that he has a little inside information to the contrary. Nottingham children, it is stated, are to be paid 3d. a pound for gathering blackberries, but they are not to use their own receptacles. Captain Amundsen is on his way to the Pole, but we fear that he will not find any cheese there. The vocabulary of food control has even made its way to the nursery. A small girl on being informed by her nurse that a new little baby brother had come to live with her promptly replied: "Well, he can't stay unless he's brought his coupons."

Yet one of Mr.