Tanuary 27 1916. LAND AND WATER. 
A SONG OF THE GUNS. 
By gilbert FRANKAU. 
5.-SIGNALS. 
The hot wax drips from the flares 
On the scrawled pi^nk forms that Htter 
The bench where he sits ; the ghtter 
Of stars is framed by the sand-bags atop of the dug-out stairs. 
.\nd the lagging watch hands creep ; 
And his cloaked mates murmur in sleep — 
Forms he can wake with a kick — 
And he hears, as he plays with the pressel-switch, the strapped receiver click 
On his ear that listens, Hstens ; 
And the candle-flicker glistens 
On the rounded brass of the switch-board where the red wires cluster thick. 
Wires from the earth, from the air ; 
Wires that whisper and chatter 
At night, when the trench-rats patter 
And nibble among the rations and scuttle back to their lair ; 
Wires that are never at rest — 
For the linesmen tap them and test, 
And ever they tremble with tone : 
And he knows from a hundred signals the buzzing call of his own. 
The breaks and the vibrant stresses. 
The Z, and the G, and the Esses, 
That call his hand to the answering key and his mouth to the microphone. 
For always the laid guns fret 
On the words that his mouth shall utter, 
When rifle and Maxim stutter ' 
And the rockets volley to starward from the spurtmg parapet ; 
And always his ear must hark 
To the voices out of the dark, 
For the whisper over the wire, 
From the bombed and the battered trenches where the wounded moan in the mire ; 
For a sign to waken the thunder 
Which shatters the night in sunder 
With the flash of the leaping muzzles and the beat of battery-fire. 
N.B. — A Song of the Guns will be continued in our next issue. 
INCREMENT VALUE DUTY. 'ssued writs to enforce their claims. In Mr. Lumsden's case 
they write that unless £22, the Duty demanded, and costs 
To the Editor of Land and Water. amounting to £249 as. 4d. are paid, they wiU take legal 
proceedmgs without further notice or delay. 
Sir,— Although the Land Union is anxious to avoid The Land Union deplores this action as likely to provoke 
anything in the nature of political controveisy at the present ill-feeling at the present time, and urges that either the 
time, it nevertheless considers it a duty to draw attention to promised Bill should be passed without delay, or in the event 
the following facts. of that being impossible, the Commissioners of Inland Revenue 
Mr. Lloyd George recognised the unfairness of the claim should be instructed not to press their claims in these cases 
•for Increment Value Duty in the Lumsden case. Wlien the until Parliament shall have had time to deal with the matter. 
Revenue Bill was in Committee in the House of Commons on Yours obediently, 
August 1st, I9r3, he stated that Clause 2 in that Bill Desborough, 
was inserted " in order to protect people like Mr. Lumsden." Chairman of the Council, Land Union. 
Unfortunately the Bill did not reach the Statute Book, and St. Stephen's House, Westminster, 
the same fate befell the Bill of the following year into whicl January, 1916. 
a similar Clause was introduced. Nevertheless, the Prime . _ 
Minister and the Secretary to the Treasury on July 23rd, In the Memoirs of M. Thiers, reviewed in these pages 
19T4, undertook, on behalf of the Government, to intioduce last week, a remarkable passage occurs. The negotiations 
a one-clause Bill to annul the effect of the Lumsden Judgment for an armistice were being discussed between M. Thiers 
and to bring the assessment to Increment Value Duty into and Count Bismarck in November 1870, when the question of 
harmony with the original proposals put forward when the the fleets of the two nations came up. M. Thiers proceeds: 
Budget of 1909 was introduced into the House of Commons — " As to the German fleet, whose position Count Bismarck 
namely, that there must be a rise in the value of the bare site did not know, it was agreed that it should stay wherever 
Lefore Increment Value Duty is demandable. it was at the time. At this point Count Bismarck spoke to 
War having broken out, the Land Union makes no com- me of the thirty-five merchant ships that we had taken, and 
plaint that the Government has been unable to introduce whose captains had been made prisoners. That, he said, 
this Bill, but it does complain that after the injustice suffered was an intolerable abuse of force. The Germans had there- 
by Mr. Lumsden was fully recognised by the Government, fore taken in our towns forty citizens whom they were equally 
the Commissioners of Inland Revenue continue to demand, holding as prisoners in Germany." Verily Germany has 
under threat of legal proceedings. Increment Value Duty travelled a long distance backward since the mere imprison- 
under the Lumsden Judgment when it is agreed that there ment of captains of mercharrt ships in time of war was con- 
has been no rise in the value of the bare site, and have actually sidered " an intolerable abuse of force." 
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