THE MURDERERS.
(Lines addressed to their Master.)
THE FISH FAMINE
It is only proper that an agitation should be on foot to compel the Government to take measures to prevent a further rise in the cost of bread, the food of the people.
But what is the Government prepared to do to remedy the present deplorable dearth in the food of the people's thinkers—fish?
Scientists, statisticians, fishmongers and other authorities tell us that for the development of the human brain there is nothing to compare with fish. Indeed, one has only to glance at the throng assembled in any popular fish-bar of a night to realise that the people of our country are alive to their need in this respect.
Consider what this shortage of fish must mean in the development of the intellectual life of the people of this country. How can we expect our parcels to be delivered intelligently, our gas-fittings to be adjusted properly, our bulbs to be planted effectively, if our carmen, our plumbers, our jobbing gardeners, and so forth, are deprived of their daily bloater or bloaters, as the case may be?
How can we hope that Mr. H. G. Wells, Mr. Arnold Bennett or even Lord Kitchener himself will continue to guide the nation effectively with the fish course obliterated from the menu?
What is the use of the Poet Laureate to the country if Billingsgate is inactive? And without Billingsgate how can our half-penny morning papers adjust their differences, or illuminating discussion among intellectuals be maintained?
How much longer will The Spectator and The Church Times be worth reading if the present scarcity of fish continues? Is a Hampstead thinkable without halibut?
A marked deterioration has already been noted in the quality of the discourses of the senior curate at one of our suburban churches. We may be capturing trade, and the position of our banks may be wonderfully sound; but against that must be recorded the lamentable fact that in a certain town iu the Home Counties last week only twenty-two people attended a widely announced debate on the subject, "Have Cinema Pictures a more refining influence upon the Poor than Classical Poetry?"
THE BRITISH ARMY.
(As seen from Berlin.)
[The Socialist Vorwärts, which takes considerable pains to correct the mistakes of its contemporaries, solemnly rebukes journals which, it says, have described the Scots Greys as "the Scottish Regiment of the Minister Grey."—The Times.]
The desperate straits of the British are indicated by the statement that it has become necessary for what is called in England the "senior service" to take a hand in recruiting the junior, i.e. the British Army. We learn that the naval gunnery expert, Sir Percy Scott, has raised a regiment known as Scott's Guards.
It illustrates the difficulty which the British have in raising recruits, that the Government, now that it has acquired the railways, is ruthlessly compelling even the older servants to join the army. One section of these men, who hitherto have been occupied with flag and whistle, and have never been mounted in their lives, are being enlisted in a special battalion known as the Horse Guards, while, as the authorities themselves admit, the railways furnish whole regiments of the line. The War Office has even made up a force from the men who drive King George's trains, under the title of the Royal Engineers.
The British commemorate their generals in their regiments. For instance, the name of the Duke of Wellington is carried by the West Riding Regiment, which, as its name indicates, is a cavalry regiment; and the Gordon Highlanders—the Chasseurs Alpins of the British army—were founded to preserve the name of the late General Gordon.
The curious practice of bathing the body in cold water at the beginning of day, which is compulsory in the British army, is an old one, and is said to have been inaugurated by a royal regiment which even to-day commemorates the beginning of the odd habit in its title of Coldstreamers.
THE BELLS OF BERLIN.
(Which are said to be rung by order occasionally to announce some supposed German victory.)
