Indeed the mother had done no wrong. She only happened to belong to one of the nations who are struggling against a barbaric tyranny. In that reckless crusade which the Central Powers are waging against all the higher laws of morality and civilisation, some of the heaviest of the blows fall on the defenceless. It is this appalling inhumanity, this godless desire to maim and wound and kill, which nerves the arms of the Allies, who know that in a case like this they are fighting for freedom and for the Divine laws of mercy and loving-kindness. And it is for the young especially that the war is being waged, young boys and young girls like the motherless child in the picture, in order that they may inherit a Europe which shall be free from the horrible burden of German militarism, and be able to live useful lives in peace and quietness. No, little girl, mother did no wrong! But we should be guilty of the deepest wrong if we did not avenge her death and that of other similar victims by making such unparalleled crimes impossible hereafter. W. L. COURTNEY [Illustration: THE ZEPPELIN TRIUMPH “But Mother had done nothing wrong, had she, Daddy?”] Keeping Out the Enemy The Prussian turns everything to account, from the scrapings of the pig-trough to the Austrian Emperor. The Bavarian lists, the Saxon lists, the Austrian lists--these are all only indications of injuries to the Prussian’s life-saving waistcoat. If this war is to be a war to the last penny and the last man, the last Austrian will die before the last Saxon, the last Saxon before the last Bavarian, the last Bavarian before the last Prussian--and the last Prussian will not die: he will live to clutch at the last penny. And the pity of it is that the Austrian is quite a good fellow, the Saxon is a decent sort of man, the Bavarian is chiefly a brute in drink, whilst the Prussian--we all know what the Prussian is, the black centre of hardness, the incarnation of the shady trick, and the very complex soul of mechanical efficiency. The Hohenzollern here makes a sandbag of the Hapsburg, of whom Fate has already made a football. Fate has always been behind the Hapsburg for his own sins and those of his house. She has made him kneel at last. H. DE VERE STACPOOLE [Illustration: “You see how I manage to keep the enemy out of _my_ country!”] The German Offer