Though the chariots of War still drive heavily, 1917 finds the Allies in good heart--"war-weary but war-hardened." The long agony of Verdun has ended in triumph for the French, and Great Britain has answered the Peace Talk of Berlin by calling a War Conference of the Empire. The New Year has brought us a new Prime Minister, a new Cabinet, a new style of Minister. Captains of Commerce are diverted from their own business for the benefit of the country. In spite of all rumours to the contrary Lord Northcliffe remains outside the new Government, but his interest in it is, at present, friendly. It is very well understood, however, that everyone must behave. And in this context Mr. Punch feels that a tribute is due to the outgoing Premier. Always reserved and intent, he discouraged Press gossip to such a degree as actually to have turned the key on the Tenth Muse. Interviewers had no chance. He came into office, held it and left it without a single concession to Demos' love of personalia.

THE DAWN OF DOUBT
GRETCHEN: "I wonder if this gentleman really is my good angel after all!"

Germany has not yet changed her Chancellor, though he is being bitterly attacked for his "silly ideas of humanity"--and her rulers have certainly shown no change of heart. General von Bissing's retirement from Belgium is due to health, not repentance. The Kaiser still talks of his "conscience" and "courage" in freeing the world from the pressure which weighs upon all. He is still the same Kaiser and Constantine the same "Tino," who, as the Berliner Tageblatt bluntly remarks, "has as much right to be heard as a common criminal." Yet signs are not wanting of misgivings in the German people.

Mr. Wilson has launched a new phrase on the world--"Peace without Victory"; but War is not going to be ended by phrases, and the man who is doing more than anyone else to end it--the British infantryman--has no use for them:

The gunner rides on horseback, he lives in luxury,
The sapper has his dug-out as cushy as can be,
The flying man's a sportsman, but his home's a long way back,
In painted tent or straw-spread barn or cosy little shack;
Gunner and sapper and flying man (and each to his job say I)
Have tickled the Hun with mine or gun or bombed him from on high,
But the quiet work, and the dirty work, since ever the War began,
Is the work that never shows at all, the work of the infantryman.
The guns can pound the villages and smash the trenches in,
And the Hun is fain for home again when the T.M.B.s begin,
And the Vickers gun is a useful one to sweep a parapet,
But the real work is the work that's done with bomb and bayonet.
Load him down from heel to crown with tools and grub and kit,
He's always there where the fighting is--he's there unless he's hit;
Over the mud and the blasted earth he goes where the living can;
He's in at the death while he yet has breath, the British infantryman!
Trudge and slip on the shell-hole's lip, and fall in the clinging mire--
Steady in front, go steady! Close up there! Mind the wire!
Double behind where the pathways wind! Jump clear of the ditch, jump clear!
Lost touch at the back? Oh, halt in front! And duck when the shells come near!
Carrying parties all night long, all day in a muddy trench,
With your feet in the wet and your head in the rain and the sodden khaki's stench!
Then over the top in the morning, and onward all you can--
This is the work that wins the War, the work of the infantryman.

And if anyone should think that this means the permanent establishment of militarism in our midst let him be comforted by the saying of an old sergeant-major when asked to give a character of one of his men. "He's a good man in the trenches, and a good man in a scrap; but you'll never make a soldier of him." The new armies fight all the harder because they want to make an end not of this war but of all wars. As for the regulars, there is no need to enlarge on their valour. But it is pleasant to put on record the description of an officer's servant which has reached Mr. Punch from France: "Valet, cook, porter, boots, chamber-maid, ostler, carpenter, upholsterer, mechanic, inventor, needlewoman, coalheaver, diplomat, barber, linguist (home-made), clerk, universal provider, complete pantechnicon and infallible bodyguard, he is also a soldier, if a very old soldier, and a man of the most human kind."

Parliament is not sitting, but there is, unfortunately, no truth in the report that in order to provide billets for 5,000 new typists and incidentally to win the War, the Government has commandeered the Houses of Parliament. The Times Literary Supplement received 335 books of original verse in 1916, and it is rumoured that Mr. Edward Marsh may very shortly take up his duties as Minister of Poetry and the Fine Arts. Mr. Marsh has not yet decided whether he will appoint Mr. Asquith or Mr. Winston Churchill as his private secretary. Meanwhile, a full list of the private secretaries of the new private secretaries of the members of the new Government may at any moment be disclosed to a long suffering public.

On the Home Front the situation shows that a famous literary critic was also a true prophet:

O Matthew Arnold! You were right:
We need more Sweetness and more Light;
For till we break the brutal foe,
Our sugar's short, our lights are low.