Volume 158 — THE BENEFITS OF PEACE

When Peace superseded the strife and the stress Which the public regard as a gift for the Press, It was feared in the quiet that followed the storm, With nothing to do but retrench and reform, That the Town would be painted a colourless tint And the printers have nothing exciting to print. That fear was unfounded, I'm happy to say, And red is the dominant tone of to-day; So far from incurring a shortage of news While the place is made fit for our heroes to use, We cannot remember a rosier time; We have rarely enjoyed such an orgy of crime. There are scandals as nice for the reader to nose As any old garbage of carrion crows; Our mystery-mongers are full of resource; There's a bigamy boom and a vogue of divorce; To the licence of flappers we freely allude, And we do what we can with the cult of the nude. No, the War isn't missed; there's a murrain of strikes Where a paper can take any side that it likes; We are done with denouncing the filth of the Bosch, But we still have our own dirty linen to wash; Though we trade with the brute as a man and a brother, Our Warriors still can abuse one another. And if spicier features incline to be slack There is always the Chief of the State to attack; We have standing instructions to cake him with mud And a couple of columns reserved for his blood. Oh, yes, there is Peace, but our property thrives— We are having, I tell you, the time of our lives. O.S.