Volume 156 — THE VERDICT OF DEMOCRACY.

The nation's memory, then, is not so short; It still recalls the fields we lately bled on; And when it had to choose the likeliest sort For clearing up the mess of Armageddon And making all things new, It chose the man whose courage saw it through. Hun-lovers, pledged to Peace (the German kind), And such as sported LENIN'S sanguine token, Appealed to Liberty to speak her mind, And Liberty has very frankly spoken, Strewing around her polls The remnants of their ungummed aureoles. In Amerongen there is grief to-day; I seem to hear the martyr of Potsdam say, "Alas for SNOWDEN, gone the downward way, And O my poor, my poor beloved RAMSAY; I much regret the rout That washed this couple absolutely out!" Dreadfully, too, the heart of TROTSKY bleeds, To match the stain upon his reeking sabre, Which is the blood of Russia, when he reads How BARNES, the champion knight of loyal Labour, Downed in the Lowland lists MACLEAN, the Red Hope of the Bolshevists. But here is jubilation in the air And matter made to build the jocund rhyme on, Though in our joyance some may fail to share, Like Mr. RUNCIMAN or Major SIMON, That hardened warrior, he Who won the Military O.B.E. Already dawns for us a golden age (Lo! with the loud "All Clear!" our pæan mingles), An era when the OUTHWAITES cease to rage And there is respite from the prancing PRINGLES, And absence puts a curb On the reluctant lips of SAMUEL (HERB.). O.S.