Chapter 3

Throughout the action the entire absence of any return fire had a most heartening effect upon the personnel of the Imperial fleet, who were thus enabled to work under what may be called conditions ideal to the German fighting spirit. I cannot refrain from expressing my sense of how greatly the magnificent result of the action was due to the patriotic foresight of my chief officer, Fire-direktor Von Ketch, who, having met with a motor accident when touring in England so lately as last spring at the gates of Shrimpington Hall, had the good fortune to be the guest for several weeks of the Frau Squire and her daughters. Not only was the information thus obtained of the greatest assistance in the general conduct of the operations, but we were enabled to place our first six-inch shell exactly on the dining-room of the Hall at an hour when the occupants were almost certainly assembled for lunch.

The entire action occupied twenty-five minutes, and concluded with the approach of the British patrol, when, acting in accordance with the dictates of Imperial policy, we ran like hares. So satisfactory has been this glorious and civilian-sanguinary encounter that our brave fellows are now eager to try conclusions with the bath-chairs of Bournemouth or the lobster-pots of Llandudno. It is indeed with true sentiments of fraternal pride that the Imperial Navy is now able to place the torn fragments of the Hague Convention beside those of the Treaties so gloriously deleted by our brothers of the Imperial Army.

I have the honour to be, Sir, etc., etc.

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"Note.--A kilometre is, roughly, five-fifths of a mile."--_Newcastle Evening Chronicle._

The Press Bureau, while not objecting....

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VICTORINE.

Victorine, our new general, is a Belgian refugee. She was naturally somewhat broken in spirit on first entering our establishment, but as the days went by she became happier, and so enterprising and ingratiating that we hastened to smother in its infancy a shameful doubt as to whether or not we had introduced into our sympathetic bosoms a potential viper. Morning, noon and night there was continuous scrubbing, polishing and beeswaxing; at all moments one was meeting a pink and breathless Victorine, and the house echoed to an interminable stream of information in the French tongue.

At mealtime, the verdict having been duly pronounced on each successive dish, Victorine would stand by while we ate, and unburden herself confidentially. 'Mon mari' (Jean Baptiste, a co-refugee who had searched all London for a place as _valet de chambre_) was lightly touched upon. Belgium was described in glowing terms, a land of wonders we had not dreamt of.

"Miss will not believe me, but when first we arrive in England all the world cries, 'Oh! regard then the little sheep!' For Mademoiselle must know that in Belgium the sheep are high and big as that" (Victorine sketches in the air the dimensions of a good-sized donkey). "Monsieur mocks himself of me? Monsieur should visit my _pays_ where dwell the sheep of a bigness and a fatness to rejoice the heart, and whose wool is of a softness incredible; Monsieur would not then smile thus in his beard." Victorine assumes an attitude of virtuous indignation, disturbed by the ringing of the telephone bell.

"I save myself," she murmurs.

Through the half-open door we hear as usual only scraps of dialogue, all on one side, and very unsatisfying.

"Alloa! J'écoute! Madame, je ne parle que le français--hein?" Long pause. "Alloa! Alloa!" Victorine rattles the instrument impatiently. "Ah! ça y est! Si Madame désire que j'appelle Miss----? Quel nom? Hein? Meesus Tsch--arch--kott. Mon Dieu----"

Victorine lays down the receiver and comes back flushed into the room.

"C'est Meesus Arch-tsch-kott qui demande Miss au téléphone. She desire to know if Miss will take the dinner with her. Are they difficult these English names!"

But English names are not Victorine's sole difficulty. She wrestles (mentally) from time to time with the butcher and the baker and the milkman. The milkman, it seems, is "un peu fou." Victorine greets him in the mornings in voluble French, and he in return bows elaborately and pretends to drop the milk. We have watched the process from an upper window. Victorine takes a step backward, her hand flies to her heart, and, as she afterwards informs us, "her blood gives but a turn" at this exhibition of British wit. We have been wondering whether it would be judicious to teach her to say, "Get along with yer."

She is very prolific in "ideas," and seems to be chiefly inspired when engaged in the uncongenial pastime of cleaning the grate.

"Know you, Miss, that I have an idea, me?"

"No, really, Victorine."

"Yes," says Victorine, mournfully shaking her head, "but only an idea." Victorine lays down her implements and places her hands on her hips. "If," she says slowly, "this Meesus Schmeet who was with Mr. and Miss before my arrival was a German spy, hein?"

"But why, Victorine?"

Victorine assumes an air of owl-like wisdom.

"See here," she says, placing the forefinger of one hand on the thumb of the other, "first she depart to care for the niece who is suffering--it is generally the mother, but that imports not. Then," counting along her fingers, "during three months she is absent, and, thirdly," sinking her voice, "she sends for her _malles_, which contain doubtless--who knows?--plans of London, designs of the fortresses, and perhaps a telegraphy without wires--Marconi, what do I know? Mademoiselle must admit that it has the air droll?"

We do our best to allay Victorine's anxiety. She however is not at all convinced, and evidently reserves to herself full liberty of action to protect us from German espionage and the effects of our own guilelessness at a later date.

In the rare moments when not at work she is pensive, but her imagination is by no means at rest. She gazes languidly out of the window into "_ce brouillard_," as she fondly calls a slight morning mist. The sparrows interest her.

"See, Miss, a sparrow who carries a piece of bread big as a house; is it then an English sparrow that accomplishes such prodigies?"

Not quite fathoming the drift of Victorine's meditations we suggest that it is perhaps a Belgian refugee sparrow, at which her amusement is so intense that she is obliged to leave the room.

Sometimes her fancy takes great flights, for she is very high-minded. Her weekly bath gives rise to much lofty philosophical reflection, and she has come to the firm conclusion that it is "mieux que manger." Also she has great taste, of which she occasionally gives us the benefit. She laughs scornfully at certain _objets d'art_ and praises others. Ornaments, if they meet with her approval, are arranged in rigid lines of continuous beauty, less favoured ones being pushed into the background, and books are disposed with assumed carelessness in thoughtful postures. Though it is plain she thinks little of our taste in general, her disapproval is usually silent. It is therefore with almost choking pride that we receive her praise, though it is often, we fear, of a disingenuous nature.

"It is plain that Miss has the eye artistic: that sees itself well in the new basin she has bought to replace the one that fell by hazard and burst itself. Monsieur also has the eye straight. In effect the picture there that Monsieur designs is of a justness, but of a justness! One would say the place itself," leaning back and half closing her eyes. "In Belgium could it not be better done. No. It is I, Victorine, who say it. If Monsieur has the false digestion, by contrary it is evident that he has the head solid."

But Victorine has a fault dark and grievous in the British eye. She jibs at fresh air.

"Surely Mr., and above all Miss, will take a congestion with the window grand-open of that fashion? As for me I have the neuralgias to make fear! Figure to yourself that in the kitchen the three windows (where one would well suffice, go) if open make to pass a hurricane!"

A short lecture follows, in which the ill effects of stuffiness are pointed out, and Victorine is reduced to unconvinced and mutinous silence. As the days pass a little acquiescence in "cette manie pour les courants d'air" is visible, but at the slightest approach of cold every aperture through which air may possibly find its way is surreptitiously closed, and it is only when she is out with her husband taking a walk or refreshing the inner man in a "café" with "un peu de stoot" that we can penetrate by stealth into her bedroom and air it.

Jean Baptiste is for the moment in disgrace because he has not been to see Victorine for a week. He is threatened with all sorts of penalties when he finally decides to present himself. Primarily Victorine is going to present him with _savon_, which appears in the vernacular to be the Belgian equivalent for beans. She is also going to wash him the head.

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)

_Sir John Lubbock_, whose Life, by Mr. HORACE HUTCHINSON, MACMILLAN publishes in two volumes, was one of the most honourable men who figured in public life during the last half-century. He was also one of the most widely honoured. Under his name on the title-page of the book appears a prodigious paragraph in small type enumerating the high distinctions bestowed upon him by British and foreign literary and scientific bodies. Forestalling the leisure of a bank-holiday I have counted the list and find it contains no fewer than fifty-two high distinctions, one for every week of the year. These were won not by striking genius or brilliant talent. Sir JOHN LUBBOCK, to preserve a name which the crowning honour of the peerage did not displace in the public mind, was by nature and daily habit constitutionally industrious. After Eton he joined his father's banking business. In his diary under date Christmas Day, 1852, being the nineteenth year of his age, he gives an account of how he spends his day. It is too long to quote, but, beginning by "getting up at half-past six," it includes steady reading in natural history, poetry, political economy, science, mathematics and German. Breakfast, luncheon and tea are mentioned in due course; but there is no reference to dinner or supper. These functions were doubtless regarded by the young student as frivolous waste of time.

I knew LUBBOCK personally during his long membership of the House of Commons. He had neither grace of diction nor charm of oratory. But he had a way of getting Bills through all their stages which exceeded the average attained by more attractive speakers. In his references to Parliamentary life he mentions that GLADSTONE, when he proposed to abolish the Income Tax, told him that he intended to meet the deficiency partly by increase of the death duties. That was a fundamental principle of the Budget Lord RANDOLPH CHURCHILL prepared during his brief Chancellorship of the Exchequer. It was left to Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT to realise the fascinating scheme, later to be extended by Mr. LLOYD GEORGE. Another of Lord RANDOLPH'S personally unfulfilled schemes was the introduction of one-pound notes. In a letter dated 16th December, 1886, he confidentially communicated his project to LUBBOCK. When his book reaches its second edition Mr. HUTCHINSON will have an opportunity of correcting a misapprehension set forth on page 48. He writes that, on June 21st, 1895, "all were startled by an announcement that Mr. GLADSTONE had resigned and that Parliament was to be dissolved." The surprise was not unnatural since Lord ROSEBERY was Prime Minister at this memorable crisis.

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I can see some good in most people, but none whatever in those chairmen of meetings who, being put up to introduce distinguished speakers, thoroughly well worth listening to, feel called upon to delay matters by making lengthy speeches themselves. I propose to be quite brief in announcing PROFESSOR STEPHEN LEACOCK on _Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich_ (LANE). Conceive this arch-humourist let loose, if so rough a term may be applied to so delicate a wit, among the sordid and fleshly plutocracy of a progressive American city; imagine his polished satire expending itself on such playful themes as the running of fashionable churches on strictly commercial lines, dogma and ritualism being so directed and adapted as to leave the largest possible dividends on the Special Offertory Cumulative Stock, and your appetite will be whetted for an intellectual feast of the most delicious flavour. For myself, I found a certain quiet but intense delight in the first five stories, episodes in the lives of individual billionaires; but when I came to the last three, which dealt with the class as a collective whole, then I became frankly and noisily hilarious. I am not given to being tiresome in the reading-room; it is another of the unforgivable offences; but I defy any man of intelligence to read those chapters and retain even a fair remnant of self-control.

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_The Lighter Side of School Life_ (FOULIS) is one of the merriest and shrewdest books that I have met for a long time. Mr. IAN HAY pleasantly dedicates his work "to the members of the most responsible, the least advertised, the worst paid, and the most richly rewarded profession in the world"; and you will not have turned two pages before discovering that the writer of them knows pretty thoroughly what he is writing about. For my own part I claim to have some experience both of schoolmasters and boys, and I can say at once that the former at least have seldom been dealt with more faithfully than by Mr. HAY. His chapter on "Some Form Masters" is a thing of the purest joy; bitingly true, yet withal of a kindly sympathy with his victims. One would say that he knows boys as well, were it not for the conviction that to imagine any kind of understanding of Boydom is (if my contemporaries will forgive me) the last enchantment of the middle-aged, and the most fallacious. As for the Educational experts, he has all the cold and calculated hate for them that is the mark of experience. I admired especially his treatment of the "craze for practical teaching," the theory which holds, for example, that, instead of postulating a fixed relation between the circumference of a circle and its diameter, a teacher should supply his boys with several ordinary tin canisters, a piece of string and a ruler, and leave the form to work out their own result. Decidedly, Mr. HAY has seen _The Lighter Side of School Life_ with the eye of knowledge; and when I mention that your own eyes will here encounter a dozen pictures by Mr. LEWIS BAUMER at his delightful best--well, I suppose, enough said.

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At one time, I hope for ever gone, Mr. PERCY WHITE'S sense of irony ran away with him. He seemed to have said to himself, "I can write witty dialogue and I have a shrewd eye for foibles, and if you are not satisfied with that you can take it or leave it." I for one took it, but always with a feeling that he was offering me a sparkling wine of a quality not first-rate, whereas with a little more trouble and expense he could have offered me an unimpeachable brand. Now that _Cairo_ (CONSTABLE) has provided me with what I have been waiting for, I am more than delighted to present my acknowledgments. Mr. WHITE'S subject is pat to the moment; moreover it is handled with such unobtrusive skill that one absorbs a serious problem without being anxiously conscious that all the play of intrigue and adventure is covering a much deeper motive. When Mr. WHITE sent _Daniel Addington_ to Egypt to meet _Abdul Sayed_, who had been at Oxford and was a leader of the Young Egyptian party, he gave himself a chance of which he has taken full advantage. It is true that _Addington_ cried a pest on all politics as soon as he fell a victim to the charms of _Ann Donne_, a widow of excessive sprightliness; but by that time he was too deeply enmeshed in the nets of intrigue to escape the just reward of those amateurs who dabble with critical situations. _Abdul_ regarded him as a "milksop," and so he was from _Abdul's_ full-blooded point of view; but I can also see in him a fresh testimony to the courage of our race. For he married the widow _Ann_, and that was a very plucky thing to do.

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The only thing that I didn't like about _Molly, My Heart's Delight_ (SMITH, ELDER) was the title. But to allow yourself to be put off by this will be to miss one of the pleasantest books of the season. What I might call true fiction has always held a peculiar charm for me. In the present work that clever writer, KATHARINE TYNAN, has been lucky and astute enough to find an ideal heroine, ready made to her hand, in the person of the charming woman who married DEAN DELANY. Upon the basis of her diaries and letters the romance has been built up, with the excellent result of a blend of art and actuality that is most engaging. _Molly_ is the gayest of creatures in her girlhood. We see her character develop gradually, tamed and half broken by her unhappy first marriage (an episode exquisitely treated, so that even the ugly side of it bears yet some precious jewels of charity and long-suffering), tried in the fire of romantic adoration, and finally reaching its appointed destiny in the comradeship with "kind, tender, faithful D.D." Lovers of diaries and memoirs, equally with those who like a graceful tale well told, will find what they want here, from the moment when its heroine goes, a girl-bride, to the romantically gloomy house of Rhoscrow, to that other moment when the placid mistress of the Deanery hears of the death of _Bellamy_, the man whom all her life she really loved. This book of _Molly_ should be a "heart's delight" to many.

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"ARIZONA BILL VIOLATES TREATIES."--_New York Times._

So does Potsdam BILL.

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PUNCH IN THE TRENCHES.

_Mr. Punch_ drew another letter from the heap on his office-desk and opened it.

_Polwheedle, Cornwall._

DEAR _Mr. Punch_,--An amusing incident happened here yesterday. I was talking to an old countryman, a great character in the village, and I happened to make some remark about the War. "What war?" asked old Jarge. "The European War," I answered in surprise. "Well," he said, "they've got a fine day for it." I thought this would interest you.

Yours etc., JOHN BROWN.

"Two hundred and eighteen," said _Mr. Punch_ to himself, and took the next letter from the heap.

_Wortleberry, Sussex._

Mr. William Smith presents his compliments to _Mr. Punch_ and begs to send him the following dialogue which occurred in this village yesterday:--

_Myself._ "Well, what do you think of the War, Jarge?"

_Jarge._ "What war?"

_Myself (surprised)._ "The European War."

_Jarge._ "They've got a fine day for it, anyhow."

Mr. Smith thought you would like this.

"Two hundred and nineteen," said _Mr. Punch_ to himself, "not counting the South African or Crimean ones." He sighed and selected a third letter.

_Sporransprock, Kirkcudbrightshire._

DEAR _Mr. Punch_,--How's this? I asked a native what he thought of the War. On being told which war, he replied, "Eh, mon, ye ken, but they've got a gran'----"

At this point _Mr. Punch_ rose from his chair and began to pace the room restlessly.

"There must be more in life than this," he said to himself again and again; "this can't be all."

He looked at his watch.

"Yes," he murmured, "that's it. I shall just have time."

Hastily donning the military overcoat of an Honorary Cornet-Major of the Bouverie Street Roughriders, he left for the Front.

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Mud, and then again mud, and then very much more mud.

"Halt! Who goes there?" "Friend," said _Mr. Punch_ hopefully. "It's _Mr. Punch_," said a cheerful voice. "Come in."

The Cornet-Major of the B.S.R. glissaded into the trench and found himself shaking hands with a very young subaltern of the ----th ----s. [_Censored._]

"Thought I recognised you," he said. "Glad to see you out here, Sir."

"That's really what I came about," said _Mr. Punch_. "I want your advice."

"My advice! Good Lord!... Sure you're comfortable there? Now what'll you have? Cigar or barley-sugar?" _Mr. Punch_ accepted a cigar.

"We're all for barley-sugar ourselves just now," the subaltern went on. "Seems kiddish, but there it is."

_Mr. Punch_ lit his cigar and proceeded to explain himself.

"I say that I have come to consult you," he began. "It seems strange, you think. I am seventy-three, and you are----"

"Twenty-two," said the subaltern. "Next November."

"And yet Seventy-three comes here to sit at the feet of Twenty-two, and for every encouraging word that Twenty-two offers him Seventy-three will say 'Thank you!'"

"Rats," said Twenty-two for a start.

"Let me explain," said the Venerable One. "There come moments in the life of every man when he says suddenly to himself, 'What am I doing? Is it worth it?'--a moment when the work of which he has for years been proud seems all at once to be of no value whatever." The subaltern murmured something. "No, not necessarily indigestion. There may be other causes. Well, such a moment has just come to me ... and I wondered." He hesitated, and then added wistfully, "Perhaps you could say something to help me."

"The pen," said the subaltern, coughing slightly, "is mightier than the sword."

"It is," said the Sage. "I've often said so ... in Peace time."

The subaltern blushed as he searched his mind for the Historic Example.

"Didn't WOLFE say that he would rather have written what's-its-name than taken Quebec?" he asked hesitatingly.

"Yes, he did. And for most of his life the poet would have agreed with him. But, if at the moment when he read of the taking of Quebec you had asked GRAY, I think he would have changed places with WOLFE very willingly.... And in Bouverie Street," added _Mr. Punch_, "we read of the takings of Quebecs almost every day."

The subaltern was thoughtful for a moment.

"I'll tell you a true story," he said quietly. "There was a man in this trench who had his leg shot off. They couldn't get him away till night, and here he had to wait for the whole of the day.... He stuck it out.... And what do you think he stuck it out on?"

"Morphia?" suggested _Mr. Punch_.

"Partly on morphia, and partly on--something else."

"Yes?" said _Mr. Punch_ breathlessly.

"Yes--_you_. He read ... and he laughed ... and by-and-by the night came."

A silence came over them both. Then _Mr. Punch_ got up quietly.

"Good-bye," he said, holding out his hand, "and thank you. That moment I spoke about seems to have gone." He took a book from under his arm and placed it in the other's hands. "I generally give this away with rather a flourish," he confessed. "This time I'll just say, 'Will you take it?' It's all there; all that I think and hope and dream, and that you out here are doing.... Good luck to you--and let me help some more of you to stick it out."

And with that he returned to Bouverie Street, leaving behind in the trench his

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