I'll off to Petrograd and Bolshevize.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _The Mayor_. "THE CONTENTS OF THE PURSE WILL IN TIME
INEVITABLY DISAPPEAR; BUT (_laying his hand on the clock_) HERE IS
SOMETHING WHICH WILL NEVER GO."]

* * * * *

A PLEA FOR PROPORTION.

[Its contemporaries having told us all about Mr. Lloyd
George's hat and how President Wilson ate a banana, _The
Daily Express_ recently went one better with the headline,
"Mr. Balfour joins a Tennis Club," as the subheading of its
"Peace Conference Notes."]

Has it always been this way, I wonder,
Did editors always display
The same disposition to blunder
O'er the weight of the news of the day?
When simpler was war and directer,
Was Athens accustomed to see
In the sheets of its _Argus_ how Hector
Had bloaters for tea?

If so--or indeed if it's not so--
One cannot but gently deplore
That the custom of chronicling rot so