Punch/Volume 148/Issue 3857
CHARIVARIA.
There is gnashing of teeth in Germany. The Allan liner Corsican, with 700 women and 300 children on board, has arrived safely at Glasgow from Canada. Someone, it is said, will have to pay the penalty for allowing a cargo such as this to escape.
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"ROMAN REMAINS IN THE CITY," states a head-line in a contemporary. The explanation probably is that he is too old to return to Italy and take his place in the firing line.
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The Vossische Zeitung has published an article suggesting that Austria should make friends with Serbia by offering her a present of a slab of Austrian territory. This would certainly be a most strange ending to Austria's punitive expedition, and we suspect that Serbia is wondering where the catch is.
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A lesson to the pessimists here who make mountains out of molehills. The soldiers at the Front have now, The Morning Post tells us, made a plain of Hill 60.
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The fact that the visit of the Zeppelins to London was followed by a boom in recruiting in the Metropolis, is of course being pointed to by the Germans as a sign that Londoners now realise that it is not safe to remain in their city.
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The Home Secretary, we understand, cannot see his way to allow a distinguished Anglo-German who dwells in our midst with his family to exhibit, with a view to safeguarding his home against Zeppelins, an illuminated sky-sign bearing the words "Gute leute wohnen hier" ("Good people live here").
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The Berliner Tageblatt states that Herr Philipp Saszko, a Hungarian artist resident in London, has been removed from the list of members of a Hungarian artistic society for having adopted British nationality. This is another lie. The compliment in question has been paid to Mr. Philip Laszlo.
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"It does not matter to me," said a Birmingham Socialist and gas-worker, "whether I am under Germans, Russians, or Kaiser William, or anyone else." That being so he cannot grumble at having been sentenced to be under Lock and Key for three months.
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It seems almost a pity that the French should have found it necessary to take the sugar refinery at Souchez last week. Frankly we think it regrettable that the modern Huns should be deprived of any refining influence.
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The Telegraaf, of Amsterdam, reports that the German military authorities in Belgium have decided to entrust the watching of the frontier to police dogs, each sentry having two of these animals at his disposal; and our Government is now being blamed for keeping our dogs in ignorance of the War which is raging, and so preventing them volunteering for the Front and making short work of the German hounds.
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By the way, the Germans are said to have induced their dogs to go to the Front by a characteristic trick. The animals were told that, if they did not go, they would be stored as emergency rations.
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The Inland Revenue authorities anticipate that the valuation of the whole of the United Kingdom as provided for under the Finance Act of 1910 will be completed by the end of this month. It is possible, however, that the result will be kept secret for fear of whetting Germany's appetite.
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The Home Office has issued a denial of the statement that it has ordered that in all cases of deaths occurring in baths an expert pathologist should be called in. We hear that many nervous married ladies never enter their baths now without an inflatable blouse and a life-buoy.
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A Brussels printer has been fined forty pounds by the Germans for having printed a prayer in which the phrase occurred, "Deliver us from our enemies." This is curious, as we understood that the Germans were now the friends of the Belgians.
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Modesty is an engaging quality in a young man, and the War Office is said to have appreciated the letter of a youth with no military experience whatever who, in applying for a commission, stated that he would be quite willing to start as a lieutenant.
"So vast is Art, so narrow human wit."
Cubist Artist (who is being arrested for espionage by local constable). "My dear man, have you no æsthetic sense? Can't you see that this picture is an emotional impression of the inherent gladness of Spring?"
Constable. "Stow it, Clarence! D'yer think I don't know a bloomin' plan when I sees one?"
Commercial Candour.
Extract from moneylender's circular:—
"Should business result from this letter, either now or in the future, I take this opportunity of assuring you that you will find my methods honourable to the smallest degree."
An extract from one of Mr. Belloc's articles:
"It may fairly be said that the Trentino is for the Austrians a defensive asset of the first quality, and that if Italy can force it she will have achieved a task which military opinion throughout Europe regards as one of the utmost difficulty, and will correspondingly raise her prestige.... hm hm hm mmm."
Manchester Evening Chronicle.
For our part we consider the statement to be almost a truism, and cannot understand why the Manchester compositor should be so sceptical about it.
"The merry month of May has played hor daintiest pranks, and the page of the calendar that ends on Monday will be indexed among those which are to be found among the superlative adjectives in the list of the weatherwise. Nature has contrived to crowd its most wonderful whims into the thirty-two days of the fickle month."—Smethwick Telephone.
Even at Smethwick, you see, The Telephone cannot avoid its besetting sin—"Wrong number!"
TO A MINSTREL, GONE TO THE WARS.
"Grinder who serenely grindest..."
Calverley (né Blades).
We understand that General von Hindenburg, having now been commanded South by the Emperor to take charge of the Italian campaign after his successive exploits in the East and West, is negotiating with Miss Margaret Cooper for the Continental singing rights of that popular ditty, Waltz me round again, Willie.
The announcement that Stonehenge is for sale comes at an opportune moment, when we are all looking for something handy to throw at the Kaiser.
MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS O'REILLY.
I don't know why I am in Ballybun. I volunteered for the Front, and the Government sent me at once as far to the West as the Atlantic Ocean would let it. Perhaps it had seen me shoot. Cecilia thinks it had seen me in puttees. It is true that with me they never stay put, but in a good deep trench this would never be noticed by the men behind. You have guessed right; Cecilia and I are related by marriage.
Cecilia is the most delightful woman in the world, but I fear she disapproves of Ballybun. She says it is so different from dear Ealing. In Ealing, she says, no lady going shopping would be knocked down by a pig coming out of a grocer's shop with a straw in his mouth. Perhaps the pigs in Ealing do not chew straws. And Cecilia was not knocked down. And didn't Mrs. Quinn apologise in the most handsome manner to the sweet foreign lady? This, Cecilia said, was the last straw, as if an Englishwoman, even on the Continent, could ever be a foreigner. It has been no use explaining that people from the next county are foreigners in Ballybun. I fear this still rankles in Cecilia's mind.
Cecilia thinks we are unpunctual in the West of Ireland. We are not. As I have tried to show her, Time, according to the greatest philosophers, has no real existence; and we are all philosophers. If a meeting is summoned for half-past three on Monday "evening," as long as the chairman is in the chair by six on Wednesday no one worries. That is why we all live so long in the West. There was old Patsy Gollogher of Lisnahinch Cross Roads who remembered the Battle of Waterloo and, if you gave him a glass or twe, the Spanish Armada; he simply refused to die. They had to induce him. Cecilia will not believe in Patsy Gollogher. It is true they promised us our house in six days and that we did not get in for six weeks. But as I pointed out to her the people here are mystics, especially the working-men. She said mystics would not paper half the drawing-room wrong side up and then leave the work for two days to go to the races. I said they would.
The little house looked beautiful once we had settled in. Perhaps they should not have washed their paint-brushes in the bath-room. They don't, it seems, in Ealing. Fogarty, the paper-hanger (he's not a real paper-hanger, of course, but his cousin had a sore thumb), clean forgot one strip of paper in the drawing-room. He told me he had it all wet on the back verandah, but Mulligan's goat came through the hedge and ate it on him. Cecilia says it is absurd to think an able-bodied man Fogarty would allow so small a goat to knock him down and then sit on him eating wall-paper. It is no use explaining to her, but she regards Fogarty as untruthful. It's a pity, as they cannot match the paper owing to the War, and it was the last strip. Still, it was hardly Fogarty's fault, and with the big screen in front of it no one could tell it wasn't there.
Fogarty is an invaluable man and can do anything. He has never anything particular to do, and so I have been sending him on errands chiefly to the waterworks to implore them to send our water up. Thanks to him a trickle came through yesterday, but someone else has it to-day. In the intervals of water-finding Fogarty is hanging the pictures for us. Fogarty tells me—and he is always ready for a little conversation—that all his family are born water-finders. I wonder if Cecilia will notice the marks of Fogarty's boots on the top of the piano. It was a wedding present. I must give Fogarty a hint.
Lunch was late again to-day. Mary Ellen had mislaid the leg of mutton, Fogarty found it for her. That man is a born finder. I told Fogarty to find a good place in the hall for the hat-rack and put it up. I then went in to lunch. It was our first lunch together in peace since the last painter went out. I filled Cecilia a glass of wine and I was just about to say, "At last, darling, we have our peaceful little home to ourselves, free of painters and plasterers and paper-hangers and plumbers!" when Mary Ellen burst in the door with a shriek, "For the love of Heaven, Sir and Ma'am, come quick, Fogarty has us all drowned!"
I rushed into the hall, and my breath was taken away by a jet of water which swept from the end of the hall into the road. Fogarty, it seems, had driven the nail for the hat-rack into a concealed water-pipe. He was trying to stop the stream, which came down one of his sleeves and out at the other, with an ancient pocket-handkerchief, muttering to console himself, "Look at that now, and I only making a small hole. Will nobody turn her off at the main?"
Fogarty had found water.
Another Impending Apology.
On the retirement of a public official:—
His intentions with reference to remaining a valued and respected member of the community are understood to be indefinite."
Natal Mercury.
THE DOGS OF WAR.
The Roumanian Dog. "I SAY, THAT'S A SIGHT THAT MAKES YOU STRAIN AT THE LEASH—WHAT?"
The Bulgarian Dog. "RA—THER!"
MORE PEOPLE WE SHOULD LIKE TO SEE INTERNED.
Hostess. "No, I have no relatives at the Front. The War makes no difference to darling Boniface and me, excepting that, of course, I have reduced my subscriptions."
THE IMPISH PEDANT.
The passion for scoring off others is in some persons deeply rooted. No one held it in greater esteem than a late friend, whom I will call Mr. Aberdeen, because that was the place of his birth. He was blessed with an impassive face, which never betrayed the fun lurking behind it, and his general demeanour was so sedate and respectable that none of his victims suspected mischief. He played no practical jokes; he was the soul of courtesy in his own walk of life; but the very sight of anyone in the position of an underling excited him to a process which he himself might term the elongation of the nether limb.
One of his favourite devices was the adoption of exact but unfamiliar periphrasis. Thus, needing Punch, he would ask young bookstall clerks for The London Charivari, and for years before the sub-title was given up his enquiry at evening was for The Globe and Traveller. Recent journalistic amalgamations afforded fresh chances and he had the satisfaction of demanding both The Daily News and Leader and The Star and Echo before he passed away.
He would gravely ask a porter if he thought that he could find him a taximeter cab, or if there were facilities at this or that terminus for sending a message by the electric telegraph. Cabmen he bewildered by the request for change in "bronze," and if they had none it was his delight to convey the question (like a boomerang) to the nearest policeman, with whose Force the phrase of course originated.
A similar meticulousness would accompany his purchase of theatre tickets. You are quite sure that Miss Gertrude Millar will be in the cast?" he would say to the box office attendant; or Mr. Henry Tate is not absent, I trust."
A Concession to Mrs. Grundy.
"Dress.—Reference Garrison Order 664 of 16th April, 1915. Officers above the rank of 2nd Lieutenant may wear trousers when in the town."—Garrison Orders, Weymouth.
"A week ago the Liberal Government, with Lord Kitchener as War Minister, Mr. Churchill and Lord Fisher at the Admiralty, and most of the other offices held by well-tired statesmen, appeared to be firmly established and likely to last as long as the war."
Daily Sketch.
Truth will out, even in a misprint ofHuman Fortresses.
Human Fortresses.
"The Germans rained bombs in rapid succession in the central part of the town. Three fell almost at the same moment in Burdett-avenue, one hitting and scorching a tree on the pavement, one—a shrapnel bomb—striking the roof of a special constable and flying upwards instead of downwards."
Daily News.
"During the advance of General Mackensen from Gorlitze by Jaroslav to Naklo, north-east of Przemysl, an officer holding a responsible position received within a short space of time 10,000 bombs on his front."
Newcastle Evening Mail.
"Darjeeling, May 8.
Mr. Sherlock Holmes was arrested on the evening 1st at Kurseong for impersonating a Police Officer and has been bailed."
Bengalee (Calcutta).
A case of professional jealousy, no doubt. We are waiting to hear what Watson has to say about it.
"Dorset Coast.—Furnished, inaccessible fifteenth century Cottage; four bedrooms, bath-room, kitchen, sitting-room; twelfth century chapel; no neighbours; sea two minutes; station five miles."—The Friend.
And three centuries between cottage and chapel. No, it is too inaccessible for our taste.
THE PATRIOT'S SACRIFICE.
Barber. "Anything else, Sir?"
Customer (who has been shaved). "I'll get you to trim my hair a little less Kaiserish."
THE STAMPS OF FORTUNE.
Our Great New War Serial.
A Romance of Love, War and Philately.
(Concluded.)
[Synopsis of preceding chapters and characters in the story, which takes place in the autumn of 1914.
Emilia Watermark, a sweet young English girl, possessor of a magnificent Stamp Collection inherited from her father, which includes a unique set of San Salvador 1896 issue (unused).
She is in love with
Harold Poolwink, a splendid young English athlete and enthusiastic philatelist, employed in Steinart's Grand Emporium.
Steinart, a wealthy naturalised merchant, only interested in stamps as a side-line on which money might be made. He presses his unwelcome attentions on Emilia, but has no real love for her, his only wish being to obtain possession of the priceless Salvadors.
He really loves
Magda Ivanovitch, a beautiful adventuress, whom he employs to abstract valuable stamps from famous collections. She cherishes a secret passion for Harold, and hopes to tempt him from his Emilia by pandering to his craving for hitherto unobtainable specimens.
Steinart, having discovered that his employé dares to be his rival with Emilia, has sent him on a special mission to Germany, and in his absence calls on Emilia. During the interview, which takes place in the room containing the famous collection, Steinart suddenly informs Emilia that war has been declared between England and Germany, and that Harold has been interned in Germany as a spy.
Emilia faints with the shock of the announcement, and when she recovers finds that the German has taken his departure, along with the priceless case of San Salvadors!
Meanwhile Harold Pootwink, immured in the prison fortress Schweinoberundunterwolfenberg, has had a midnight visit from Magda Ivanovitch, who by the offer of some specimens of marvellous rarity tries to induce him to leave his prison with her in her airship.
Harold nobly resists the temptress, who in rage and despair revenges herself by throwing his precious stamp album into the river flowing past the castle walls. The loving work of a lifetime is lost for ever, and Harold resigns himself to hopeless grief.]
Chapter XLVIII.
Magda Ivanovitch had returned to London, after her unsuccessful attempt to seduce Harold Pootwink from his early love, with a heart full of bitterness and disappointment. Even the unhealthy excitement of abstracting rare specimens from public or private Stamp Collections had palled on her. In this mood the capricious beauty welcomed the devotion of Steinart, whom she had formerly despised, and allowed him to regard himself as her accepted lover.
Some weeks after the events narrated in the last chapter she was sitting in her luxuriously furnished flat in Brixton, listlessly looking over some of the philatelic treasures she had risked so much to obtain. Her pet snake looked on over her shoulder, and there was a noticeable similarity in the steely glitter of their eyes when any particularly superb specimen was handled.
Her maid announced a visitor, and Magda, laying aside her cigarette and throwing the snake to the other end of the couch, made room beside herself for Steinart.
"You are late, my friend," she said coldly. Then, noticing his wild hunted appearance, "What has happened?" she cried. "Do not say you have lost the Salvadors!"
"The Salvadors! Bah!" he replied. "Gott strafe England! Donnerwetter! Not the Salvadors alone, but all I possess, mine life itself, are in danger. For some times past haf I by a figure draped in black closely followed been. Last night, as I out of the secret entrance to the cellar creep, I think I glimpse it. To-day, when I send a message by the wireless in the wastepaper basket of mine private office concealed, I haf a haunting feeling I am by those unseen eyes observed. We must leaf the country at once, before all is discovered." With a groan he sank down on the end of the couch occupied by the snake, and rose again hurriedly.
"Calm yourself, my friend," returned Magda a trifle contemptuously. "I also have seen your veiled figures, not once or twice, but I snap the fingers only. I am too clever to be caught; and as for your cellar and your wireless no living soul can know of them but ourselves, and your secret is safe with me."
"But it is not safe with me," cricd Emilia Watermark, as she flung open the door to admit a file of special constables. "Officers, do your duty!"
As this is the last we shall hear of the villain and villainess we may add that, three Zeppelins, complete with their crews and bombs, having been discovered in his cellar, Steinart was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment under the Act for Prevention of Cruelty to Women and Children.
Magda Ivanovitch was interned on a lonely island in the Pacific, where she was out of temptation, the island having no collection—on Sundays or any other day—while the pet snake received naturalization papers and was given an honest English home in the Zoo.
Chapter XLIX.
When Steinart and his accomplices had been safely disposed of, Emilia awoke to the fact that she was almost penniless. For months she had lived for nothing but to complete the evidence against her enemies. Money had been spent like water, and to gain her object she had even sold part of the famous collection at a sacrifice. The Salvadors had of course been returned to her by the police, but, alas! in the meantime a secret hoard of the same issue had been discovered in an obscure pawnshop, and the once unique stamps were hardly worth the paper they were printed on, the market price quoted being 1s. 9d. for the entire set. She was now keeping body and soul together on a miserable pittance of £300 a year.
Her only link with the past was a large tin trunk filled with the letters which Harold had written her daily, nay, almost hourly, since his departure for Germany. The very envelopes were dear to her and were numbered from 1 up to 325, this being the last one Harold had posted before his arrest.
One evening, as had become her custom, she was seated on the floor beside the trunk, re-reading the precious words of the lover she might never see again, when a manly step outside her door made her heart beat high with a new hope. In an instant she was on her feet, in another she was in Harold's arms.
[There will now be an interval of ten minutes, and we will rejoin the happy pair when their conversation becomes intelligible...]
"But you have not yet told me how you escaped, darling," went on Emilia, her voice sounding muffled and far away owing to the position of her face on Harold's breast.
"Simply enough," he replied. "As soon as the Commandant realised that I was a stamp-collector my trials were at an end. He said he could never conceive of a genuine philatelist being guilty of any other crime. And you, dearest," he asked tenderly, "how has it been with you under the terrible strain of my absence?"
In return Emilia made him acquainted with all that had happened, and when she described the final scene in the Brixton flat Harold was deeply moved. Now that Steinart, Magda and the pet snake were safely provided for he felt that the last obstacle to their immediate marriage was removed, and drew her even closer to his breast as he told her so.
Emilia answered with a troubled look. "You forget, dearest, that I am practically a pauper, that Steinart's Emporium is in dissolution, and that you are out of employment."
In the joy of their reunion Harold had forgotten these points, and now in utter despair he sat down heavily on the tin trunk.
Suddenly his eyes sparkled, he grasped a few dozens of the envelopes scattered over the floor and exclaimed, "My angel girl! We are saved! We are rich! What good spirit told you to preserve these German stamps? Why, every one of them is now obsolete. The German Empire exists no longer! All stocks of stamps in the post-offices were destroyed by order of the Allies as they advanced to Berlin, and the dealers are offering unheard-of figures for the few specimens that remain."
There is little more left to add.
Harold and Emilia disposed of the German Empire stamps for a princely sum. Their marriage took place immediately, and their lives, which had been so troubled, flowed on together in a happy dream of love.
*****
It is at the close of a golden Summer day that we catch our last glimpse of the devoted pair.
"Have you forgotten, dearest," says Emilia softly, "that Tuesday next is our darling little Harold's fourth birthday?"
'No," replies her husband. "I am just now thinking over what present we could give him."
"Only last week," Emilia returns, I found him trying to suck the stamp off an old envelope! Don't you think it is quite time the little dear had a stamp album of his very own?"
And Harold, with tears of happiness in his eyes, embraces the kindred spirit whose every finer impulse accords so sweetly with his own.
"Can you wonder that our statesmen sometimes make mistakes? Why, only yesterday I got into a 'bus that was going in the wrong direction!"
Shakspeare on the Alien Peril.
The Huns' Proverb.
The hand that wrecks the cradle rules the world.
Political Fashions.
"Sir Edward Carson, in black, with black Trilby hat, looking very grave; Mr. Clavell Salter in a bowler hat;.... Mr. Hayes Fisher in an elegant green motor-car; and several members of Parliament almost hidden by khaki disguise, were among the first on the scene."—Evening Standard.
Mr. Hayes Fisher's remarkable costume was doubtless intended to distinguish him from the ex-Ministers "in the cart."
"It is still stated in certain circles professing to be well informed that Lord Fisher will return to the Admiralty as Fish Sea Lord."
Worcestershire Echo.
This is a fish-story that we decline to believe.
ON THE SPY-TRAIL.
VI.
Jimmy says that when his bloodhound Faithful has picked up the trail of a German spy he sometimes adopts a ruse in order to approach his victim. Jimmy says Faithful is a good ruser, and he has often seen him scratching his head—and his back—thinking hard.
Jimmy says Faithful thought of a splendid way of coming up to a spy under cover; it was like they did to Macbeth with some laburnum woods, only it wasn't woods, it was a wild Cow.
Jimmy says the wild cow had been taking a walk all by itself, and when it turned in at his gate he thought at first that it had come to deliver the milk itself because of the War. Jimmy says the cow didn't seem to know what it had come in for until it saw Faithful.
Jimmy says as soon as he saw the way Faithful looked at the cow he knew Faithful was going to use it for a purpose, and that Faithful had got some ruse up his sleeve.
Jimmy says they first started wagging tails at one another. Jimmy says the cow was a better wagger than his bloodhound, because it could do fancy loops, and it was all Faithful could do to keep his end up. Jimmy says the wild cow got a bit cocky over it, and lifted up its stomach and coughed right in Faithful's face. Jimmy says it was awful, because you know what bloodhounds can do with wild cows. They just catch them by the nose and fasten on there tight for ever, and in time the wild cow dies of hunger, because it is unable to browse with a bloodhound like that; and then the bloodhound goes home just as if nothing had happened, and you say, "Where have you been all this time?"
But Faithful's training came to his aid and helped him to deny himself the nose-grip, Jimmy says, and he could see Faithful bending the cow to work his will.
Jimmy says Faithful's first rush made the wild cow tilt up and down and swing its bulk about just to show off its agility. But it made no difference to Faithful; he simply went behind the kennel and began pulling himself together until the cow had got over it. Faithful just kept one eye round the corner of the kennel biding his time. Jimmy says the cow tried to throw its head at Faithful, but it couldn't work it loose enough, and then Faithful, rushing round, made a fearful grab at the cow's ankle and drove it right back into the corner of the garden.
Jimmy says it made the cow get desperate and it bit off the top of a cabbage and began wagging its ears and working its lower jaw from side to side at Faithful, like you do when you want to mesmerise anyone. But it was no good, so the cow sounded the horn for Faithful to get out of the way and made a fearful plunge; Faithful hurled himself to one side and gave a bay that shook the cow to its core, and the cow took a standing jump right through the hedge into the next garden.
Jimmy says the cow went mad when it got into the next garden; it began swinging its head loose and looping the loop over flower-beds and things. Jimmy says it was because it felt so relieved; but, when it had straightened itself out again and saw Faithful making a bee-line for it, it pushed up its tail in the air as high as it could get it, just to say good-bye, and then went right through another hedge into a garden where a man was watering seeds. Jimmy wondered whether this was the spy Faithful was using the cow for.
Jimmy says the man wasn't thinking of bloodhounds and wild cows, and all he could do at first was to open his mouth wide and pour the water from the watering-can into one of his slippers. Jimmy says it took the man nearly half a minute to throw the watering-can at the wild cow, and then he only thought of it because his slipper wouldn't hold any more water and the wild cow was trying to walk the tight rope over some black cotton he had put down to keep the sparrows off his peas.
Jimmy says the cow began to look unstrung. It's awful to think a bloodhound is tracking you down, Jimmy says. It's like a rabbit when a stoat is after it; no matter how far it runs there the stoat is coming along after it three fields away and so the rabbit just lies down and squeals. Jimmy says the cow kept looking for a place to lie down and squeal in, but the man would keep on bothering it with flower-pots, Bo the cow wormed its way through another hedge. Jimmy says the man said it was a horned cow and he gave Faithful leave to eat it alive.
Jimmy knew the boy in the next garden, and when the boy saw the cow and Jimmy and Faithful he sat down and laughed nearly as much as Jimmy did. You see the boy's father and mother had gone out, and they had the cow all to themselves, and it was a nice bright day and there was a wall on the other side of the garden.
Jimmy says they played with the cow, whilst Faithful, who had cast aside all disguise, flung himself openly on the nil of the lurking spy.
Jimmy says the boy knew all about wild cows; you do it with a lasso made out of the clothes-line, and you don't want a saddle because you don't stay on long enough.
Jimmy says the man who owned the cow easily tracked it down because so many people kept showing the cow's imprints to him.
Jimmy says when the cow saw the man it ran up to him and asked him to take care of it.
Jimmy says they were just going to ask the man what the cow's name was when they heard the deep baying of Jimmy's bloodhound. Jimmy says he always feels excited when his bloodhound has worked out his ruse; it's like when you work out a problem in arithmetic and then look at the answer at the end of the book—it's the surprise, Jimmy says.
Jimmy_says they soon found the traces of Faithful's deadly work; they were in the coalhouse and it was the cook. They found her with her nose pressed against a lump of coal. When the cook came to she said that all she remembered was going to fetch some coal to make up the fire, and she had just shovelled up a nice piece and was carrying it out when it put up its wet nose against her face and barked at her.
Jimmy says you should never try to shovel up bloodhounds; it only makes them worse.
Jimmy asked the boy if he knew the cook must be a German, and then the boy told him. He said his father and mother had gone to the War Office to get them to send a regiment of soldiers to intern the cook because she was a German, but she had been born in Ireland.
Jimmy soon found his bloodhound; they could hear him tracking for more spies in the larder, and when they got to him he was searching a cold rice pudding.
"Against that ambition England will always send forth her last ship and her last man."
"The Times' " Literary Supplement.
Excellent for a single occasion; but we can't keep on doing it.
From a list of the new Cabinet in a French local paper:—
"Intérieur: Sir Mac-Kenne. Premier lord de l'amirauté: Sir Balfour. Sécretaires d'Etat pour l'Irlande et l'Ecosse: Sirs Birrel et Macchinnon. MM. Wood Attorney, général Edward Carson, Winston, Churchill restent définitivement dans le nouveau cabinet."
The military title conferred upon Sir Edward Carson is a reminder of unhappy far-off days and battles (in Ulster) long ago.
Youth. "It's all very well to talk about policewomen. But what could they do against us men?"
One of the three ladies (promptly). "I suppose the authorities think that they would be quite a match for those who have remained at home."
THE WATCH DOGS.
XX.
My dear Charles,—No doubt you are feeling it is just about time I had a battle for you. Very well, then.
The most important feature in our daily routine, next to the tinned meat and vegetable ration, is the possibility of poisonous gas. You have already heard from me as to the ration, a choice mixture of cooked meat, vegetable and gravy, which is eaten cold by the lazy soldier, hot by the industriously luxurious, but without the gravy by the cautious dyspeptic. So much for that. Of the gas you have heard much, but you cannot have heard as much as we have. Ever since it first spread itself, our life has been one long lesson, theoretical and practical, as to how to be prepared for, to avoid, to neutralise, to cure, or, failing all else, to cough up again the revolting vapour. We have lectured and been lectured so incessantly and remorselessly on the subject that every member of the audience always knows what word to expect next and is never disappointed. We have had Chlorine Parades and Bromine Drill ad infinitum. We wear respirators attached to all parts of our person and equipment, and are suddenly ordered to fit them on at the most unusual and uncomfortable moments. So rigorous is the discipline in the matter that Lieutenant-Colonels beyond number are said to have been reduced to the rank of unpaid Lance-Corporals ("at their own request") in consequence of their being discovered not wearing these respirators while performing their morning ablutions. One officer, of rank so high that I dare not mention it, looks, when enclosed in his black muslin attachment, like The Girl Who Took the Wrong Turning, but even so he has no dispensation. With all this, and more, what wonder that the mere thought of gas lies as heavily on our minds as the gas itself is said to lie on its victim's chest or as the meat and vegetable ration (if eaten hot with gravy) lies on the consumer's?
It had been, on the whole, a peaceful evening; I suppose we had not expended more than a few hundred pounds' worth of ammunition upon the German trenches or received more than a fair return in precious metals. At any rate, neither side had shown any real animosity or malice, and I for my part retired, as did all officers and men of the first watch, and rested at my usual hour of midnight in my handsomely furnished apartment in the East Wing. The details of what happened I have mostly compiled from the immediate actors in the drama; for the best of the time I was gazing over the parapet, convincing myself that I was not in a punt in a Thames back-water, as I had supposed two minutes ago.
It appears that a sentry away to our left had been diligently watching at his post when he felt himself being overcome. (He is quite form that he saw the gas, lots of it, but is not very vivid with his details.) With one supreme effort he managed to shout the fateful word "Gas!"—the most recent and least difficult of military operations, and then collapsed. Down the line came the word, starting in a whisper, ending in a yell. I myself heard the call repeated in every possible accent, surprise, indignation, interrogation, curiosity, incredulity, amusement, interesting information, command; or as if to say "We've been told to shout 'Gas!' Gas!' when anyone else shouts 'Gas!' and so we now shout but we do so without prejudice and accepting no personal responsibility in the matter." And a private was heard to ask amidst all the bustle, "I say, Len, is it all correct about this gas they're talking of?" Of one thing I was persuaded as I set about waking up thoroughly; wherever I was and whoever I might be, the leading topic of the moment was undoubtedly gas. All else was a mêlée of men gagging themselves and each other with their hands and apparently working the bolts of their rifles in rapid fire with their feet.
Besides the personal precautions, there were also a hundred things to be done and a hundred men to do them. The darkness was no obstacle, efficiency was everywhere. In less than no time the man with the ammonia pump had sprayed the parapets and all things tangible with his powerful lotion, and had got upwards of a pint of it down the neck of his section commander, with whom, by a curious coincidence, he had not been on speaking terms during the previous day. Within about the same time our Company Sergeant-Major had "crimed" seven privates for breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth, instead of breathing, as directed, in through the mouth and out through the nose. It is said that our Adjutant was overheard shouting thickly through his own apparatus, "Fix... respirators! One: one, two." I believe that one of the anti-gas-bomb party was so rapid in throwing the bombs out that his colleague and assistant had no time to find, much less fix, the fuses, and I can speak from bitter experience of the activity of the man with the flares, whose apparatus is locally known as the joy pistol. He operated so close to me on this occasion that I'll swear I felt one of those rowdy stars pass through one of my ears and out through the other. Only one man remained idle, our quaint sanitary man. Hanging at the Sergeant-Major's heels he kept imploring him, with pathetic insistence, "Wot bin I to do, Mister?"
The only other details calling for notice are the case of the excited corporal who found, after it was all over, that he had eaten the bulk of the medicated cotton-waste in his respirator; the "old soldier" who was caught sleeping light and spent the period of action searching for his boots; the curious invisibility of the gas; and the remarkable fact that the wind was in the wrong direction; and the unsatisfactory, if not criminal, conduct of the machine-gun officer, who informed all inquirers that he wasn't going to fire his old machine-gun until he saw something to fire at.
Charles, whatever the sceptics may say, it was a magnificent to-do and an overwhelming victory. Don't you believe anything to the contrary; for the ten who pooh-pooh the idea a hundred will confirm the fact of gas and will tell you exactly what it feels and tastes like. The further we get from the event the more precise the details of it become in the correspondence of my platoon. Men who were once sceptical themselves have since recalled elaborate and convincing details of black clouds and pungent smells. You must not share or even sympathise with the contempt of one incorrigible in my platoon who, as soon as the rapid fire ceased, was heard to call over the parapet in that peculiarly raucous and penetrating voice of his, "Put another shilling in the meter, Allemand!" If it is indeed admitted that that original sentry is notoriously imprudent in his consumption of the Tinned Meat and Vegetable Ration and had, that very evening, excelled all his own previous efforts with the rich gravy, what on earth, I ask you, can that have to do with it all? Yours ever, Henry.
Anxious Wife (watching her husband as he replaces dust-cap after cleaning new rifle). "That's right, dear. You'll always keep the stopper on when you're not using it, won't you? I'm so nervous about the children playing with it."
THE WORD-LORD.
Kaiser (to Uncle Sam). "EVERYTHING CAN BE EXPLAINED: I CAN PUT THE WHOLE THING IN A NUTSHELL, IF YOU'LL ONLY LISTEN TO ME FOR THREE YEARS, OR THE DURATION OF THE WAR."
ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.
(Extracted from the Diary of Toby, M.P.)
THE SOLDIER AND THE MUNITION-WORKER.
"We're both needed to serve the guns!"
[With acknowledgments to a popular poster.]
'House of Commons, Thursday, 3rd of June.—House reassembled after Whitsun Recess. Great things had happened in interval. Liberal Ministry under leadership of Asquith broken up. In its place a Coalition Government, in which Lansdowne, Prince Arthur, Bonar Law and other Unionist chieftains figure.
Result naturally expected to be obliteration of Opposition. Realised as far as organisation goes. But if Premier supposed that because the two Front Benches have become a united force, sharing the good things of Office, Hon. Members below Gangway on either side will relinquish right of free-born Englishmen to criticise, even to oppose, propositions coming from Treasury Bench he was quickly undeceived.
Disillusion came with very first legislative proposal of new Government. Home Secretary (Sir John Simon, vice McKenna, gone to Treasury) moved for leave to introduce Bill suspending statute which requires Members newly appointed to places of profit under the Crown to submit themselves for re-election. Pleading urgency of case in view of desirability of new Ministers getting immediately to their task of grappling with necessities created by War, he asked House to pass the Bill through all its stages at current sitting.
Now or never for the new Opposition. Inchoate in form, lacking a leader, it would by a moment's hesitation have lost its opportunity. The Coalition Government would have enjoyed privilege secured for its predecessor by habit of Bonar Law and his friends of refraining from obstructing measures recommended in interests of public service.
As occasionally happens at great crises, with the striking of the Hour the Man appeared.
It was Mr. Ginnell!
Rising from bench below Gangway, where on a famous occasion he held the Speaker-nominate at bay for half-an-hour by Westminster clock, he denounced the Bill as an affront to the electorate. The proposal to pass it through all its stages at a single sitting he resented as an infringement of rights of Members. Encouraged by cheers from below Gangway on both sides the new Leader of the Opposition-in-the-making went on to describe the measure as put forward by Ministers to suit their private ends, instigated thereto by the Premier, who, "posing as a Liberal, is a Tory at bottom."
This phrase so pleased him that he emphatically repeated it during pauses occasioned by his notes getting mixed up. Device, ingenious in its conception, proved his ruin. After having thrice called him to order the Speaker peremptorily directed him to resume his seat.
This awkward. But did not minimise importance of two facts established at this first sitting under Coalition Ministry. There is still an Opposition party in the House of Commons and it has found its Leader.
Business done.—Re-election of Ministers Bill passed all stages and sent to Lords. Bill creating Minister of Munitions read first time.
Friday.—Premier has keen sense of humour; but it is rather receptive than creative. This makes more striking the one flash that irradiates his construction of new Ministry. Known in advance that the Winsome Winston had severed connection with Admiralty, a department in which at very outset of War he achieved brilliant stroke that materially influenced its course and earned for him what should be everlasting gratitude of nation.
Question everyone asking up to Tuesday in last week was, What Ministerial post will fall to Winston's lot? What field will be assigned to him wherein he may find fresh triumph for his tireless energy and his administrative genius? India spoken of. Suggestion accepted with modified approval. To be Secretary of State for India would mean attainment of high historic position. Just now, with no vital question stirring its multitudes, a little dull after hourly excitement of the Admiralty. Still, compared with anything else available, India would serve.
When official list of re-constructed Cabinet circulated, the Premier's little joke had full success of surprise. The buoyant, occasionally turbulent, tirelessly active, still young Minister, who by sheer merit has won his way to front rank of British statesmen, is to-day Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, custodian of an annual revenue slightly exceeding £100,000, administered by a staff of less than a score—including, it is true, a Coroner.
There is about the arrangement something that recalls the deportation of Napoleon to Elba. "The Duchy," as it is called for short, is a sort of Chelsea Hospital for statesmen past work who have established a claim upon their Party. Towards close of his active career John Bright dwelt in it. Lord James of Hereford and Sir Henry Fowler, after long term of office, in turn succeeded.
And now Winston, scarcely yet in prime of life as years count, drops into the easy chair.
Business done.—Royal Assent given by commission to Reelection of Ministers Bill.
The Baptism of Fire.
"On the font near Seddel Bahr artillery and rifle fire was exchanged."
Liverpool Daily Post.
Extract from a letter from the Front:—
"We are in reserve, not as soft a job as it sounds: Reveille at 5.0; parade at 6.0; Swedish drill till 8.0; parade at 9.0; Swedish drill till 12.0; parade at 2.0; Swedish drill till 3.0. Gott strafe Sweden."
"The next attraction at the Princess's Theatre will be a production of the historical costume drama entitled 'Lady Godiva,' which was recently seen at the Adelphi Theatre, Sydney, and caused something of a sensation."
Melbourne Punch.
As originally presented at Coventry we believe it was not a costume drama.
Special. "One of the bombs fell less than twenty yards from where I was on duty the other night."
She. "Really! How exciting! Did it wake you?"
REPENTANCE.
At the unusual sound of cheering in a London street—at so undemonstrative an hour as 9.15 A.M.—I turned and stopped. Down Charing Cross Road came three taxis, each containing many bags and many young men—certainly seven young men in each, packed high and low—and each containing two or more of that beautiful red-white-and-green flag which flutters so gaily and bravely over public buildings in Rome and Florence and Turin, Venice, Verona and Milan, and on festa days (which come several times a week) in all the villages of the loveliest land on earth.
The young men waved and shouted, and apathetic London, which has never yet cheered its own soldiers through the street, shouted back. For these were young Italians on their way to Italy, and there is something about a foreigner hastening home to fight for his country that would seem to be vastly more splendid than the sight of our own compatriots leaving home for the same purpose. So oddly are we English made.
Still, these young fellows were so jolly and eager, and even in the moment of time permitted by their sudden apparition it was so possible to envisage war's horrors in front of them, that no wonder there was this unwonted enthusiasm in the Charing Cross Road at 9.15. A.M. Besides, Italy had been a long time coming in...
A block brought the taxis to a standstill just by me, and I was conscious of something familiar about the youth in grey on the very summit of the first. He had perched himself on the fixed fore-part of the cab, and knelt there waving a straw hat in one hand and his country's flag in the other. And suddenly, although his face was all aglow and his mouth twisted by his clamour, I recognised him as a waiter at the—well, at a well-known restaurant, whose stupidity had given me from day to day much cause for irritation and to whom I have again and again been, I fear, exceedingly unpleasant. Less than a week ago I had been more than usually sharp. And now I found myself trying to catch his eye and throw into my recognition of him not only admiration but even affection—a look that would convince him instantly that I wished every impatient word unsaid. But he was too excited to see anything in particular. His gaze was for the London that he had lived in and was now leaving, and for that London as a whole; and his thoughts were on his native land and the larger life before him. He had no eyes for a bad-tempered English customer. (And quite right too.)
In a few moments off they all went again, and with them went my thoughts—to their beautiful land of sunshine and lizards, blue skies and lovely decay, and absurd gesticulating men with hearts of gold. With them went my envy too, for it must be wonderful to be young and able to give up waiting and strike a blow for one's country.
Since then I have found myself saying to myself, I don't know how many times, "I wish he had seen me."
Old lady, selling red-white-and-green flags during the passing of the Italian procession through the West-end: "'Ere you are; on'y a penny; all silk; another Alien for England!"
"Why don't you use your brains, Douglas?"
"Because I want them to last."
IMPROVING THE OCCASION.
(Being some metrical suggestions for the encouragement of Home Travel.)
"It is understood that the campaign in Skibbereen and district has been successful, several young men, principally shot assistants, having come forward and volunteered."
Cork Constitution.
Recruits who have already been under fire are, of course, particularly valuable.
"As the result of a vigorous bombardment on Friday the enemy was forced to make a voluntary retreat at one point of his line."
Yorkshire Telegraph.
This manoeuvre resembles what hunting-men call "taking a voluntary."
"One mother, a widow, was asked by her son in Australia for her permission to volunteer for the front. She cabled him at once:—'Join the Austrian contingent.—Mother.'"
Kingston (Jamaica) Daily Chronicle.
Traitress!
AT THE PLAY.
"Armageddon."
THE JACKDAW OF RHEIMS.
Abbé of Rheims Mr. Martin Harvey.
Von der Trenk Mr. Charles Glenney.
In his series of tableaux parlants Mr. Stephen Phillips conducts us on a kind of Rundreise, or circular tour. Starting from Hell and returning to Hell, we assist at the bombardment of Rheims; a domestic scene in an English orchard; the operations of the Official German Press Bureau; and the capture of Cologne by the Allies. Imagination, you will gather, is brought into perilously sharp contrast with the realities of to-day; and it is not confined to the realm of Satan, but permeates the Headquarters of the 5th German Army Corps before Rheims, where the types are almost incredibly un-Teuton in appearance.
In two of his more practical tableaux the author wisely resorts to prose. A third scene, where an English mother learns of the death of her son in action, lends itself more easily to poetic treatment; yet even here we are conscious of the old incongruity of blank verse as a medium for the emotions, however elemental, of the hour that is. The verse suffers by its association with actuality; and the realism of the drama suffers by the literary form in which it is conveyed. The most unlikely people are made to poetize on Hellenic lines. Thus the mother and the girl who is betrothed to the soldier-son hold a sort of antiphonal competition, like the half-platoons of a Greek chorus, on the splendours of military service; and later, when they have heard the tragic tidings (delivered in prose by the boy's late tutor), and are both broken with grief, they start a fresh argument on their comparative claims to the crown of sorrow.
But in the fourth of the terrestrial tableaux there was a chance for heroic declamation. It is true that you might not expect the Generals of the advanced armies of France, Belgium and England to utilize the occupation of Cologne for the delivery of a résumé of the motives actuating their respective countries. But the conditions may be allowed to pass for the sake of the noble eloquence with which the French and Belgian Generals (and in particular the latter) claim the avenger's right to sack the city. The English General, pleading the loftiness of England's cause, opposes himself to their passion for reprisal; and, though shaken by news of the death and mutilation of his own son, reiterates his resolve to forgo revenge, and is confirmed by a vision from the unseen world (Heaven, in this case). The purpose served by the apparition (it was Joan of Arc in full armour) might have had some plausibility if she had presented herself to the French, and not the English, General. And so it was in the original book; but when I tell you that the actor-manager took the part of the Englishman you will understand the reason for this disastrous substitution which was the ruin of the scene. For, apart from the unfortunate relations established a few centuries ago between Joan of Arc and the English, General Murdoch was already inclined to a policy of humaneness, whereas General Larrier stood in plain need of conversion.
The scope for humour—humour, that is, of intention—was naturally limited in a play about Armageddon. But Mr. Phillips found a fairly easy and obvious occasion for it in the scene of the German Official Press Bureau. It had been foreshadowed by Belial, "Lord of Lies," who, along with the shade of Attila, had, in the Prologue, been given a commission on the Headquarters Staff of Hell for the period of the War. His claim had been advanced in the following words:—
So now we know where the Spirit of Comedy comes from. For the humour of Hell is apparently cosmopolitan and not merely Germanic. One catches a hint in it of the manner of our own censorship. Thus:
I don't know Satan really well, in a personal sense, and so cannot say whether Mr. Martin Harvey was a good imitation of him. But I gather that the Master of Hell wears fewer clothes than his subordinates and talks enormously louder than anybody else. His long pointed wings—faintly suggestive of a butterfly existence—afforded good cover when used as an umbrella to keep out the searchlight of Heaven. For the rest, the author made a brave show with his arch-devil, though perhaps a little conscious of the literary effort that was asked of him in view of the fact that Milton had already passed that way.
Satan (Mr. Martin Harvey) takes cover from a searchlight.
The play, as always with Mr. Stephen Phillips' work, contained some great lines, and the actors, with one or two exceptions, did justice both to rhythm and rhetoric. Best, perhaps, was the passage, finely delivered by Mr. Fisher White, in which the Belgian General, clamorous for revenge, rehearses the wrongs of his country. Herr Weiss, Director of the Official German Press Bureau, was almost the only alien enemy who succeeded in suggesting his origin, and Mr. Franklin Dyall was excellent in the part. Mr. Cooke Beresford, as his First Reporter, whose business it was to manipulate the lies about London, was quietly effective. Mr. Glenney, as Count von der Trenk, was blustering and brutal, but might have come from anywhere but Germany. Mr. Edward Sass was very sound and workmanlike as General Larrier, and so was Miss Mary Rorke as an English matron.
Also a word of compliment must be given to the brief performance of Miss Maud Rivers (as a French peasant-girl), who cleverly skirted the fringe of melodrama. As for the supers, Mr. Martin Harvey was always a little provincial in the matter of these accessories.
I cannot close without warning my friends to take their respirators with them when they go to view Armageddon, for there is an asphyxiating shell (three-inch and French) which penetrates the German Headquarters and reduces its occupants to a condition of permanent coma (painless, you will be glad to hear), in which they preserve the attitude of the moment; and its fumes achieve the object of all dramatic art, which is to get across the footlights.
O. S.
"The Angel in the House."
What ought a critic to do when he finds by the continuous ripple of laughter throughout the performance that a play is obviously more attractive to other people than to himself? First, perhaps, to examine the condition of his liver; and next, if he finds nothing amiss there, to ask himself, like the fox-terrier in the advertisement, "What is it that Master likes so much?" Messrs. Eden Phillpotts and Macdonald Hastings, the authors of the new comedy at the Savoy, owe a good deal of their success, I fancy, to the all-round excellence of the cast, the skill of the "producer," and the brightness of the First Act. We are introduced to a fine old English family in a fine old English country house. Sir Rupert Bindloss, Baronet and widower, is one of those benevolent and slightly eccentric old gentlemen whom Mr. Holman Clark plays so well. His household consists of two charming daughters (Miss Vera Coburn and Miss Mary Glynne), their fiancés, and their chaperon, Lady Sarel. But it is presently increased by the Hon. Hyacinth Petavel, son of an old flame of Sir Rupert's, and commended by his mother in a letter written in articulo mortis as "an angel in any house." Preceded by a quantity of luggage, including a parrot, and accompanied by three lapdogs, Hyacinth arrives. He proves to be "a mother's darling" of the most pestilential variety—selfish, hypochondriacal and opinionated—and at once shows his intention of taking command of the family.
In the Second Act, a fortnight later, we find him fully installed as domestic tyrant, with all the household, save the two young men, at his feet. Sir Rupert has acquiesced in the alteration of his meals, the disfigurement of his garden by "topiary" monstrosities, the keeping up of gigantic fires in August, and the banishment of his family portraits and Greek busts in favour of Futurist productions, on which Hyacinth lectures at interminable length. He even persuades the girls that in the interests of Eugenics and the "unborn" it is their duty to break off their engagements and exchange lovers. This is the last straw. The young men plan revenge.
The Third Act finds all the party picnicking at the Temple of Eros on an island in the lake. The lovers arrange that Hyacinth and Lady Sarel shall be left stranded as night falls, reckoning that the "angel's" susceptibility to cold and Lady Sarel's obvious penchant for him will bring them together. So it falls out. A capital scene, in the course of which Hyacinth consents to borrow her ladyship's flannel-petticoat, ends in his proposing marriage on account of her "beautiful temperature." Lady Tree gives an admirable portrait of the amorous widow, and Mr. Irving is absolutely lifelike—in the Second Act I found him almost too lifelike—as the bore. The play would be improved if it were taken a little more quickly, and if the "angel's" speeches were slightly curtailed. Some of the "eugenic" jocosities could perhaps be spared with advantage, though I am bound to say that the audience seemed to enjoy them.
L.
"My friend, I don't like the look of things. They mean business. No one in England now kicks the cricket-ball."
"The French official report shows that the weather has stopped fighting."—Daily Mail.
It is good to hear that our most dangerous enemy is hors de combat. But for how long, we wonder?
UNWRITTEN LETTERS TO THE KAISER.
No. XXIII.
(From John Brown, of London.)
Sir, This letter is intended for your benefit, and, that being so, I ought not, perhaps, to write it. However, you will never receive it—you are too well guarded for that, and I haven't the least doubt that everything calculated to upset your preconceived opinions and to set up the truth in their place will be kept away from you with the utmost rigour. My conscience is therefore clear; I run no risk of doing good to the alien arch-enemy, and can freely write this letter to relieve my own feelings. And even if by some outside chance it should come before your august eyes and penetrate into your heroic mind it would merely make you angry and thus disturb such judgment as is left to you after ten months of war.
In the first place I strongly advise you not to believe implicitly every rumour that may come to you as to the attitude of the British people in regard to this War. We are a peaceable folk and we don't enjoy being at war—that much may readily be granted. But we realise that it is our duty, being in this quarrel, so to bear it that the opposer (yourself) may beware of us. We rejoice certainly in the high courage and gallant bearing of our troops and we rejoice equally in the unquenchable humour and cheerfulness with which they support death and wounds and suffering. It is our business as a nation to see to it that they shall not have fought in vain and that the great cause of liberty shall have been maintained unimpaired against your brutal assaults. This duty, hard and painful as it is, we are firmly determined to carry through, whatever the cost may be to us.
But you may answer that you read occasional numbers of The Daily Gloom, and that you gather from these a very different impression. The Daily Gloom has repeatedly declared and keeps on declaring that our people have hardly realised that a war is going on. We are, it appears, sunk in sloth, and our young men, far from having made an unparalleled effort, are, most of them, waiting timidly at home until they shall be fetched and compelled to don khaki and go into the trenches. They are, in fact, slackers and shirkers, and it is useless for the recruiting-sergeants to din their duty into their ears, for they will only yield to compulsion and not to persuasion. As for the working men, who are the backbone of the nation, they all prefer drink and holidays to work, and they have a special dislike for the making of munitions. They must be nagged and ragged into doing what they ought to do. The inhabitants of England generally, not having seen their cathedrals and their homes destroyed by big guns, are by no means sufficiently Cimmerian to please the critic. In one column they are told to change their minds and lengthen their faces and to take example by the Germans, who in every department of life—at least, so I infer—show a discipline and a despondency worthy both of the highest praise and of our slavish imitation. Yet in another column of the same organ some neutral observer assures us that the German people, having been hypnotised by the lies they have learnt to believe, are serenely happy and quite confident; that they do not despond at all, that their food is ample and that their Professors still discourse on the mild virtues of Germany and the intolerable wickedness of other nations. What are we to believe?
Well, the fact is, of course, that our beloved Daily Gloom does not really want us to despair quite so despairingly as the tone of its articles might imply. It has a policy to promote, and it thinks that unless a certain object is at once secured we shall all go to ruin. And so it writes jeremiads and summons to its aid Bishops and Archdeacons and University dons and angry puzzled patriots. As to the merits of that policy I say nothing here. What I wish to make clear to you is that this attitude of despondency is put on. We do realise the seriousness of the struggle and the strength of our foe as well as his murderous lack of scruple, and while we are not entirely overwhelmed and crushed by the prospect we are still sternly determined to do all that lies in our power to crush you and to overwhelm your cause.
Yours faithfully, John Brown.
THE YOUNGER SON.
Girls are now employed at some of the "Tube" stations to punch the tickets. A susceptible Shakspearean, on encountering one, was heard to murmur:―
Under the heading, "Winston enjoys the Change," The Daily Sketch recently had a picture of Mr. Churchill riding in the Row, to which was appended the momentous information that "he wore his favourite hat." With commendable reticence it made no attempt to explain why he had not been able to get it on before.
Sergeant. "As you was!"
Young Officer. "'As you were,' you should say."
Sergent. "'Scuse me, Sir, I knows my drill. 'As you was' for one man; 'as you were' for two; 'as you was' for a squad!"
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Honestly, The Flame of Daring (Mills and Boon), by Harold Spender, is a very unlikely book. Not merely in such little details as that tête-à-tête in which Nathan Bey of the Turkish Embassy describes a brilliant plan of his for dishing the Greek fleet (first Balkan War) to the adorable Greek maiden, Ione Manetta, who was, as he knew, very good friends with Chrysos, the Secretary at the Greek Legation, but also in such really more important points as the description of a fight. Figure to yourself one Jack Harper, a journalist, struggling inadequately with some Turkish ruffian, indeed "barely holding on to him by his coat," and Sylvia, Jack's best girl, conscious of "a pale livid face, dreadful with hatred, and in front of it the fearful searching muzzle of a revolver, moving round as if in search of its prey" (it was the ruffian's face and revolver). Then a flash and a report, and another villain lying supine on the floor with a hole in his forehead. Then a cry of triumph: "Allah, Allah, so perish all traitors!" And then "slowly, it seemed very slowly, that dreadful muzzle moved round towards her father." Before the new "searching" is complete Jack seems to have let go of the coat, for suddenly "the muzzle flew up, and the white drawn face disappeared. Then there was a sound of blows, a silence, and her next vision was that of Jack Harper standing in front of her father." But what kind of blows, and what happened to the white drawn face? Mr. Spender doesn't say. Because frankly he never saw any such fight in his mind's eye and was never cut out for story-telling in this mode. Then again there was that other scoundrel at the Turkish Embassy, who stirred slightly and cleared his throat, then spoke a sentence of twenty words. "It was one of the longest sentences that Chrysos had ever heard from the mouth of Alexander Romas." Yet three much longer appear but two pages earlier—a trivial detail in itself, but enough to prove that Mr. Spender does not realise his characters, has no sort of conviction about them. And you simply cannot help that defect from spreading to the reader.
Of all titles to take the wind out of the lungs of the critic, commend me to Stilts (Duckworth), because this unkind monosyllable practically sums up all I could find to say against Mr. Adam Squire's novel. Therefore its presence causes me to greet him respectfully as the owner of a sense of humour rather quicker than (to tell the truth) I should have gathered from the story itself. Not but what the persons in this book are quite mildly agreeable company. My complaint is that their author has hardly mastered the art of omission. He tells us little at wholly disproportionate length. And while they chat at foreign hotels or order pleasant drinks at their clubs, in a manner that holds as it were the mirror up to nature, the mirror never reflects anything to make them seem more than cheerfully painted dolls. So the story never gets any grip of me. Perhaps, anyhow, there is hardly enough of it. Some time before the curtain rises, Langton, who was a widower with an infant daughter, had married the widowed mother of Constance Tancred. For some reason he had given Constance a pearl necklace that belonged to his first wife, and when the second wife, Constance's mother, also died Langton wanted it back. However, the leading part in subsequent events belongs, for the little it is worth, not to Langton but to John Inglis, who had known the first Mrs. Langton, and, meeting Miss Tancred at Palermo, tries to induce her to surrender the necklace, and incidentally falls in love with her. There is besides some matter of hypnotism, of no moment, and even the pearls fail to provide anything more thrilling than a muddled incident, which may have been meant for burglary on Inglis' part, but only confused me as to his integrity. Mr. Squire shapes and polishes his material prettily, but I express my hope that he will put a little more stuff into the next consignment.
Humour is such a subjective and unstable quality that a book which professes it must always be faced by the reviewer with some diffidence. From this start you may perhaps guess already that I have found myself baffled by Windmills (Sekcker). Frankly, this is so. Still more frankly, the book not only bewilders me, but causes me a feeling of distress, the more acute because it is signed by so distinguished a name as that of Mr. Gilbert Cannan. How far it is still permissible to be facetious about the War may, I suppose, be a matter of opinion. But, if one must poke fun at it, the least and lowest test is that it should be amusing, and this is precisely what Mr. Cannan's dreary absurdities about "Fatland" and the "Skitish Empire" do not even begin to be. There are other satires in the book, one of which, "Out of Work," is not without beauty. Another, which I will not specify, appeared to me simply disgusting. I am sorry to have to use so painful a candour about a writer of Mr. Cannan's known artistry. But the fact remains that Windmills seems to me a foolish little book, by no means free from offences against what I might call (with no flippant intention) the elementary canons of good taste.
If many more authors take to telling their tales in consecutive books, publishers will have to adopt some kind of synopsis, on the you-can-start-now system. For example, in The Invisible Event, you need a little previous knowledge of the circumstances to understand why Betty is discovered so greatly worried about what answer she is to give Jacob. Of course, however, if you are familiar with the previous books of Mr. J. D. Beresford (as you should be by now, if you are concerned for the best in modern fiction), you will remember that Jacob has just asked Betty to manage and share his life—and this though there was a discarded but undivorced Mrs. Jacob still in the background. The present volume, which is the last of the Jacob Stahl trilogy, tells you what Betty did, and what sort of thing she and Jacob made of their joint existence. Like the other two, it is a piece of work remarkable for a rare gift of insight into personality. The relations between the only two characters that matter are realized with extraordinary truth and detail. One is tempted here, as in all these photographically realistic novels, to wonder how much is autobiography. Mr. Beresford indeed deliberately provokes this temptation by making his hero a novelist, and (rather less excusably) by causing The Morning Post to review Jacob's first novel in precisely the words of the notice of the author's own previous work in that journal, printed here by Messrs. Sidgwick and Jackson in their advertisement pages. As a reviewer I am by no means certain that I approve of this hauling of a brother craftsman out of the critical stalls and over the footlights. That, however, is a small point. Waht matters more is that The Invisible Event justifies those who have saluted Mr. Beresford's earlier volumes as the work of a distinguished writer.
I have an idea that Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Fraser intended me to find points to admire in some of The Pagans (Hutchinson), but I confess that they seemed to me one and all very unpleasant people. Even Nita Hardwick, who "carried her own atmosphere with her," a "spiritual perfume," indulged quite freely in a quantity of minor lies and meannesses which she could fairly easily have avoided, though she showed a dislike of the grosser misdemeanours of the extremely smart circle in which she moved. Tressida Sackwood, on the other hand, infinitely beautiful and intent only on her own game, was a much more thorough-going person, though rather after the manner of a newspaper feuilleton. Then there was a handsome retired naval officer, Tom Carew, the only man whom Tressida had ever loved (Lord Sackwood was an absolute waster, and in any case, being her husband, would hardly have counted). Tom fell deeply in love with Nita, and being unwilling either to give Tressida away or to lower himself in Nita's eyes vainly tried to arrange to be on with the new love without the old love's noticing anything. I was not sorry that he failed; but he did so more dismally than I should have expected in a man of some wits and a good deal of experience. The real dramatic intent came at the end. Tom Carew, who was a widower, had a daughter, who loved and was loved by his friend Cochrane. Forgiven at last by Nita for his offence and its concealment, Carew was brought suddenly up against the same offence in Cochrane, lately freed from Tressida's toils. Could he too forgive? The authors stated this more painful problem, but it was obviously impossible for them to deal with it in a book of this kind, where the whole thing is on the melodramatic rather than the tragic plane. The conclusion therefore hardly cleared things up. But I was not really keen enough on any of the people to care very much.
A Railway Ticket Collectress has an unhappy moment with her coiffure.