[Illustration: PADDY (who has had his periscope smashed by a bullet): "Sure there's seven years' bad luck for the poor devil that broke that, anyhow."] Mr. Punch's Correspondent "Blanche" sends distressing details of some of the new complaints contracted by smart war workers. These include munition-wrists, shell-makers' crouch, neuro-committee-itis, and Zeppelin-eye through looking up into the sky too long with a telescope. A great deal depends on what you look at and what you look through. Thus Mr. Walter Long says that when he reads carping criticisms upon the conduct of the War he looks through his window at the people in the street and is always surprised to see the quiet steadfast manner in which they are going about their business. It is a good plan, but not always successful. The Kaiser got his view of the Irish people through a Casement, and it was entirely erroneous. The _Cologne Gazette_ has stated that "there is in England no real soldiers' humour such as we have." Certainly we have nothing like it, though we confess to preferring the home-grown brand. _December, 1915_ Kut and Ctesiphon, Ctesiphon and Kut. Thus may the events of the last month in Mesopotamia, no longer a "blessed word," be expressed in a bald formula, which takes no account of the unavailing heroism of General Townshend's small but splendid force. Things have not been going well in the East. The Allies have been unable to save Serbia, Monastir has fallen, and our lines have been withdrawn to Salonika. The experts are now divided into two camps, the Westerners and the Easterners, and the former, pointing to the evacuation of Gallipoli, are loud in their denunciations of costly "side-shows," and the folly of strengthening Germany's hold on Turkey by killing out the Turks, instead of concentrating all our forces on killing the Germans on the Western front. The time is not yet come to decide which is right. But all are agreed with the British officer who described the Australian soldier at Gallipoli as "the bravest thing God ever made," and so prompted these lines: Bravest, where half a world of men Are brave beyond all earth's rewards, So stoutly none shall charge again Till the last breaking of the swords; Wounded or hale, won home from war, Or yonder by the Lone Pine laid; Give him his due for evermore-- "The bravest thing God ever made!"