Page:Mr. Punch's history of the Great War, Graves, 1919.djvu/281

 From a Hyper-super-Dreadnought, old Leviathan at range,
 * To a lightship or a whaler or a whale;
 * With some canvas and a spar
 * She can mock the morning- star
 * As a haystack or the flotsam of a gale.

She's the derelict you chartered north of Flores outward-bound,
 * She's the iceberg that you sighted coming back,

She's the salt-rimed Biscay trawler heeling home to Plymouth Sound,
 * She's the phantom-ship that crossed the moon-beams' track;
 * She's the rock where none should be
 * In the Adriatic Sea,
 * She's the wisp of fog that haunts the Skagerrack.

Recognition of services faithfully done is an endless task; but Mr. Punch is glad to print the valedictory tribute of one of the boys in blue to a V.A.D.—a class that has come in for much undeserved criticism.

Among the minor events of the month has been the christening of a baby by the names of Grierson Plumer Haig French Smith-Dorrien, as its father served under these generals. The idea is, no doubt, to prevent the child when older from asking: "What did you do in the Great War, Daddy?"

England, as we have already said, endures its triumphs with composure. But our printers are not altogether immune from excitement. An evening paper informs us that "the dwifficuplties of passing from rigid trench warfare to field warfare are gigantic and perhaps unsurmountable." And only our innate sense of comradeship deters us from naming the distinguished contemporary which recently published an article entitled: "The Importance of Bray."