NOTHING TO REPORT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11267, 22 December 1914, Page 4

NOTHING TO REPORT.

" There is nothing new to report."— Frequent, official bulletin.

A thousand here, a thousand there, perhaps have bit the dust; A dozen families or so are living on a ' crust; Some place is now a. ■ burial-ground which lately was a fort; But neither side has moved a yard; there's nothing to report. A hundred British orphans were created in an hour, Three hundred German widows to extol the Kaiser's power; Another five per cent at home are lacking boots and shoes; But the war is at a standstill, and there isn't any news.

Ten million pounds went yesterday. and eight the day before; To-day's dull doings will require at least nine millions moro; Food for two hundred million men each day goes up in smoke; But nothing, nothing happens,. says the grim official joke.

With fifty yards from trench to trench the fight unmoved remains, And every time a liead shows up a bullet finds the brains; The winter comes; the ground grows hard for picks to scrabble through; Yet all the same the graves are dug; there's really nothing new.

The Belgian in his ravaged land looks round . for meat and bread; The lines keep ducking to the shells exploding overhead; The scurvy .spreads in Sliemisel, where food is running- short; It's plain as plain that everywhere there's nothing to report,

In every dock the battleships are building faster yet; In every treasury there grows the choking weed of debt; The Gurkha stabs; the airmen flyjust as they did before; There's only death, disease, and all the daily round of war.

If fifty men in days of peace were murdered in a lump, How would the startled nations wince! how would the papers jump! But ten times fifty every hour may die to shot and shell,. And such'a commonplace as that is not worth while to tell.