Page:Mr. Punch's history of the Great War, Graves, 1919.djvu/60

 also reported that the Kaiser has bestowed an Iron Cross on a learned pig—one of a very numerous class.

May, 1913.

E often think that we must have got to the end of German "frightfulness," only to have our illusions promptly shattered by some fresh and amazing explosion of calculated ferocity. Last month it was poison gas; now it is the sinking of the Lusitania.

Yet Mr. Punch had read the omens some seven and a half years ago, when the records established by that liner had created a jealousy in Germany which the Kaiser and his agents have now appeased, but at what a cost! The House of Commons is an odd place, unique in its characteristics. Looking round the benches when it reassembled on May 10th, and noting the tone and purport of the inquiries addressed to the First Lord, one might well suppose that nothing remarkable had happened since Parliament adjourned. The questions were numerous but all practical, and as unemotional as if they referred to outrages by a newly-discovered race of fiends in human shape peopling Mars or Saturn. The First Lord, equally undemonstrative, announced that the Board of Trade have ordered an inquiry into the circumstances