Page:Mr. Punch's history of the Great War, Graves, 1919.djvu/64

 smite the enemy; while practical people regard it rather as a "Coal and Ammunition Government." The cost of the War is now Two Millions a day, and a new campaign of Posters and Publicity has been inaugurated to promote recruiting. Volunteers, with scant official recognition, continue their training on foot; the Hurst Park brigade continue their activities, mainly on rubber wheels. An evening paper announces:

Mr. Punch is prompted to comment:

More agreeable is the sportsmanship of the trenches, where a correspondent tells of the shooting of a hare and the recovery of the corpse, by a reckless Tommy, from the turnip-field which separated our trenches from those of Fritz.

Amongst other signs of the times the emergence of the Spy Play is to be noted, in which the alien enemy within our gates is gloriously confounded. Yet, if a certain section of the Press is to be believed, the dark and sinister operations of the Hidden Hand continue unchecked.

The Germans as unconscious humorists maintain their supremacy hors concours. A correspondent of the Cologne Gazette was with other journalists recently entertained to dinner in a French villa by the Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. "The party, while dining," we are told, "talked of the defects of French taste, and Prince Rupprecht said that French houses were full of horrors." True, O Prince, but the French are determined to drive them out. Better still, in the month which witnessed the sinking of the Lusitania we read this panegyric of the Teuton in Die Welt: "Clad in virtue and in peerless nobility of character, unassailed by insidious enemies either within or without, girded about by the benign influences of Kultur, the German, whether soldier or civilian, pursues his destined way, fearless and serene."