Sergeant. "'Ere, Brown, what are you knockin' your 'orses about for?"
Brown. "Please, Sergeant, they're always 'angin' back. If it wasn't for them two bloomin' 'orses we'd 'a' bin in Berlin months ago."
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Mr. Galsworthy has never been much in love with the plain Englishman. He has often dealt him very shrewd and cutting strokes. Perhaps he might plead that the cruelty of deftly turning the knife in the wound cannot be so very great, seeing that the victim (as happens rather from the nature of the victim than the operation) makes no general sign of taking notice. In The Little Man and other Satires (Heinemann) he is at his old task again. "The Little Man" is, in form of a playlet, a fantastic study of an odd, insignificant, pathetic idealist who finds himself, by accident of travel, left with a strange woman's baby, and faces with equanimity the typhus with which it is thought to be infected. Of course you can't state the case in such bald terms without injustice to what is actually a very amusing and effective trifle. But the meat of the book is in the other satires, and chiefly "The Plain Man" and "The Perfect One" (who is in fact merely the Superplain One). For, though Mr. Galsworthy scarifies The Artist, The Critic and The Writer, the studies of these latter types seem rather academic essays in the gentle art of flaying alive, whereas the others express the author's characteristic attitude towards life. His hand has not lost its cunning, but one feels that this is pre-eminently one of the many books written before the War which the War throws out of key. In the matter of the plain man, for instance, I doubt if Mr. Galsworthy will ever again write or think of him in quite the same way; so obviously and so often in these grim months has this simple, substantial type done the plain, hard, right thing in the heroically right way; and little shafts, such as "his eyes, with their look of out-facing Death, fixed on the ball that he had just hit so hard," flutter lamely to the ground.
Most fervently I hope that the title of Dr. J. William White's book will not prevent it from achieving an enormous circulation in this country. A Text-Book of the War for Americans (Winston) is not exactly a seductive title, but when that obstacle has been overcome you will thank me for recommending one of the most illuminating books that the War has brought forth. Dr. White is a modest man, out to tell the truth. He is surprised at the success that his earlier work on the same subject has already gained in America, but there is really no reason for wonder that so lucid a statement of his case should attract and convince countless readers. As everyone knows, the strong point of the Allies' cause is that they have been able to lay their facts upon the table of the world, and to ask that they may be judged wholly and solely by them. But knowing the justice of their cause they may occasionally have been impatient with those who have not instantly and actively recognised it. As regards America, for instance, some of us may have been amazed that the invasion of Belgium and the atrocities following upon that wanton act should have called forth no official protest. Dr. White makes no excuse for this attitude of his country's government; indeed he deplores it deeply and is anxious, both for practical and sentimental reasons, that the States should come at once into the open and join the Allies. Had I ever whispered a quarter as much on the subject of America's policy as Dr. White has openly said here, I should have expected hornets to buzz around my ears, but I shall now fearlessly admit that I agree with every word he has written. Out of their own mouths Dr. White proves the Germans again
