Small quarto. 46pp. Set to the familiar nursery rhyme tunes are Thorpe's coy verses critiquing the enemy German forces. With contrasting sincerity, Thorpe explains his approach: "At times of great national stress, a little nonsense may occasionally prove an excellent tonic." Certainly the rhymes are as nonsensical as they are enjoyable, though flush with an optimism characteristic of these early days of war, a feeling that would wane as battles dragged on. Nevertheless, to characterize Jack Horner as "Hans Horner" or to watch Kaiser "Bill" tumble down and lose his crown, like Jack and Jill, is a clever rhetorical and political strategy. Thorpe's ribald efforts are aided by Stevens's drawings. The full-page illustrations that face the text set the Germans to disadvantage, whether by machine or man. Around the verses at each page is a border with helmeted Kaiser at the left, running away from the Allies at the right: a Belgian, a Japanese soldier (stereotypically depicted), a Frenchman, a Russian, and an Englishman with bulldog in the lead. Bound in pictorial covers backed in red cloth, with front illustration of a Germanic goose goose-stepping and rear illustration of the same goose enfeebled and with a patchwork of bandages. Rubbing overall, cloth spine toned, offsetting to front and rear endpapers, else vg+.