Chapter 3

Few people, I think, realise the tremendous significance of waterproof overalls in a war like the present. I was talking to one of our most prominent Midland manufacturers at Sheringham the other day and he remarked confidentially [passage deleted by the Censor] at fifteen per cent. reduction to our soldiers for spot cash.

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Which reminds me of a stifling Malta afternoon, when I first saw the good ship _Sheringham_ steam slowly up through the haze of Sliema Creek. It was in the early days of the Navy's grey-paint era. The change was a drastic one, as all service-men admitted. And why grey? I make no secret of the fact that I have always advocated ultramarine for the Mediterranean station; but the Grey Water School, you know--well, there, I must not be indiscreet.

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Life on a cruiser may be the tally for some, but give me the nimble t.b.d.! There you have none of "the great monotony of sea" which drove W.M.T. to his five meals a day. Nothing but the charming _fraternite_ of the ward-room, the delightful inconsequences of the chart-house kitten, and the throb of the oil-fed turbine! Unless I am greatly mistaken [passage deleted by the Censor--which shows that I wasn't].

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I was dining the other evening at the Buckingham Palace with a friend who is well known in Foreign Office circles. The conversation turned, naturally enough, on the dangers in our midst from foreign waiters. The English waiter who was attending us happened at the moment to dislodge with his elbow a wine-list which, in falling, decanted a quantity of Sauterne into the lap of my _vis-a-vis_, who remarked [passage deleted by the Censor].

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I learn from reliable sources that one wing of our "contemptible little army" is resting upon ----. Dear old ----! How often have I wandered down your sleepy little High Street to the _epicerie_ of our lively old _Therese_! But that was in the old days, before the black arts of Kaiserism transformed the peace of yesterday into the Armageddon of to-day. Next week I shall deal more intimately with life behind the scenes in German frontier towns; but you must wait with what patience you can for these further confidences.

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Illustration: "NO, SIR, THEY WOULDN'T TAKE OUR FRED, 'COS THEY SAID HE'D A-GOT BELLICOSE VEINS."

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GREY GIBBONS.

With fingers too canny to bungle, With footsteps too cunning to swerve, They swing through the heights of the jungle, These stalwarts of infinite nerve; Blithe sailors who heed not the breezes Which play round their riggings and spars, Lithe gymnasts who live on trapezes And parallel bars.

In ballrooms of plantain and mango They scamper, they slither and slide In the throes of a tropical tango, In the grip of a Gibbony glide; 'Tis thus in these desolate spaces, Away from humanity's ken, They mimic the civilised races And strive to be men.

As the grey little acrobats patter O'er creepers of myriad shapes, They mouth not the meaningless chatter Of dull and demoralised apes; But, proud of their portion as creatures Who know not the stigma of tails, They screw up their weather-worn features And practise their scales.

And oft in this primitive Eden When I study some antic that hints At the physical fitness of Sweden, The speed of American sprints, I dream of the wreaths and the ribbons Their prowess would certainly win, If there weren't any war, and my gibbons Could go to Berlin.

J. M. S.

* * * * *

MY FAVOURITE PAPER.

BY A VORACIOUS READER.

All day long I read the papers that keep this little island noisy and tell us how we ought to be governed. I can't help it. I want to know the latest, and reading the papers seems (more or less) the way to get at it. The best way of all, of course, is to meet a man at a club or a resident in a locality favoured by retired colonels; but, in default of those advantages, one must buy the papers. And then of course it follows that one reads far too many papers and gets one's head far too full of war news. Still, what would you have? The war is so eminently first and everything else nowhere that this is inevitable.

Outside suggestion has its share, too. Morning papers are a matter of course. One reads one's regular morning papers and no others. But after that the trouble begins with the evening paper placards, each with its lure. How can one resist them? The progress of the Allies! The repulsing of the enemy! The ten miles gained! The Russian advance! A German cruiser sunk! Each newsman has a different bait, and as the day goes on they become more attractive, so that one goes to bed at night filled with optimism. Well, these all have to be bought.

Speaking as a reader of too many of them I must admit to a grievance or two; and the chief is the difficulty that we have in finding the fulfilment of all the promises which are set out in the headings to the principal war news. For example, I find among these headings on the day on which I write a reference to a German admission of failure and dismay. But can I find the thing itself? I cannot. It may be there, but again and again has my eye travelled up and down the columns seeking the nutritious morsel and not yet has it alighted thereon, and that is but one case out of many. Sometimes after a long hunt I do track these joyful tit-bits down, and then discover that they are separated from the heading by several columns. Some day a newspaper editor will arise who can achieve a really useful index to his contents. _The Times_ used to have something of the sort, but under the stress of battle that has gone.

Another grievance--but I shall say no more on that subject. Grievances are for peace time, when a general huffiness and stuffiness about the way that everyone else conducts business is natural and indeed expected. In wartime no one should be harassed by criticism. So I pass on to the paper which I like best of all those now being published. I like it because it contains the news I most want to read, and every day, or rather every night, it gets better and will continue to get better until the Brandenberg gate opens to let the Allies in. This paper is not a morning paper and not an evening paper. It is published at night, in the smallest of the small hours, and I am its sole subscriber, for it is the paper of my dreams. Whether or not I am its editor I could not say. That question leads to the greater one which would need a volume for its decision: Do we compose our own dreams, or are they provided by Ole Luk Oie or some other dream-spinner? Anyway, no one can read the paper of my dreams but I, and it is, after all, the best reading. It contains the oddest things. Last night it had a fine article about a football match in the North of England. Twenty-two terrific fellows, whose united salaries came to a respectable fortune and whose united transfer fees, should their Clubs ever let them go, would be sufficient to build a _Dreadnought_, had been charging up and down the ground in a series of magnificent rushes, while ten thousand North of England lads roared themselves hoarse to see such glory. Suddenly a newspaper boy, reckless of his life, dashed on to the ground with a placard stating that a whole regiment of British soldiers had been trapped by a German ruse and annihilated. In an instant the game was broken up and every player and every spectator who was of age ran like hares to the nearest recruiting office and enrolled themselves as soldiers. They had seen in a flash that the only chance for England to get rid of this German menace was for every eligible man to do his share.

In another part of the paper I read of a young and powerful man in an English village who, on being asked if he did not think that England was in danger, replied "Yes." He was then asked if he did not think that it was necessary to fight for her, and he replied "Yes" again. He was then asked who in his opinion were the most suitable volunteers to come to her aid, and he replied, "Other people." So far the story is not appreciably different from a story that you might read anywhere. But the version in my paper stated that he was seized by all the company present and not only ducked in the nearest horse-pond but held under the water for quite a long time, and then held under the water again.

And another article--a most exciting one--described the success of a British aviator who flew over Essen and dropped five bombs on KRUPP'S gun factory and did irreparable damage. I forget his name, but, although he was pursued, he got clear away and returned to the Allies' lines. There was a fellow for you!

So you see that I get some good reading out of my favourite paper. And more is to come!

* * * * *

THE PRICE OF WAR.

Now woe is me! My treasure, my delight, My guerdon after many toilsome days, Shall gladden me no more. It was a sight To bid men gape in wonderment, and praise My patient courage that endured despite The gibes of friends and Delia's pitying ways. Ah, cruel fate that forced my hand to snip Such costly growth as graced my upper lip!

Moustache most cherished! Not as other men That let their lush growth riot as it will, With just a formal waxing now and then, Did I maintain it. Nay, with loving skill And all the precious oils within the ken Of cunning alchemists I strove until Its soaring points aspired to pierce the skies, And I was martial in my Delia's eyes.

Great store of gold I lavished. Yea, I went To one that works in metals and I bought A kind of dreadful iron instrument With leathern straps, most wonderfully wrought, And wore that horror nightly, well content To bear such anguish for the prize I sought. And all this patient toil was thrown away-- They stoned me for the KAISER yesterday!

* * * * *

At a time when every penny that can be spared is needed for the help of our soldiers in the field and of our wounded, or to relieve the distress of the Belgian refugees or our own sufferers from the War, a public appeal is being made to the citizens of Newcastle-on-Tyne for subscriptions to a fund for presenting a testimonial to their Lord Mayor, on the ground that he has done his duty. We beg to offer our respectful sympathy to the LORD MAYOR of Newcastle-on-Tyne.

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Illustration: _Colonel of Swashbucklers._ "NAH THEN, SWANK! THE WIMMIN CAN LOOK ARTER THEIRSELVES. YOU 'OP IT AND JINE YER REGIMENT."

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A TOBACCO PLANT.

I had done the second hole (from the vegetable-marrow frame to the mulberry-tree) in two, and was about to proceed to the third hole by the potting-shed when I thought I would go in and convey the glad news to Joan. I found her seated at the table in the breakfast-room with what appeared to be a heap of tea spread out upon a newspaper in front of her. Little slips of torn tissue-paper littered the floor, and on a chair by her side were several empty cardboard boxes. The sight was so novel that I forgot the object of my errand.

"What's all that tea for, and what are you doing with it?" I asked.

"It isn't tea; it's tobacco," Joan replied, "and I'm making cigarettes for the soldiers at the front."

"Where on earth did you get that tobacco from, if it _is_ tobacco?" I went on.

"Let me see now," mused Joan, pausing to lick a cigarette-paper--"was it from the greengrocer's or the butcher's? Ah! I remember. It was from the tobacconist's."

Joan gets like that sometimes, but I do not encourage her.

"But what made you choose this Hottentot stuff?" I enquired.

"The soldiers like it strong," Joan replied, "and this looked about the strongest he'd got."

"What does it call itself?"

"It was anonymous when I bought it, but you'll no doubt see its name on the bill when it comes in."

"Thanks very much," I said. "That's what I should call forcible fleecing. Not that I mind in a good cause----"

"Isn't it ingenious?" interrupted Joan. "You just put the tobacco in between the rollers, and twiddle this button round until--until you've twiddled it round enough; then you slip in a cigarette-paper--like that--moisten the edge of it--twiddle the button round once more--open the lid--and shake out the finished article--_comme ca!_"

An imperfect cylindrical object fell on to the floor. I stooped to pick it up and the inside fell out. I collected the _debris_ in the palm of my hand.

"How many of these have you made?" I asked.

"Only three thoroughly reliable ones, including _that_ one," she replied. "I've rolled ever so many more, but the tobacco _will_ fall out."

"Here, let me give you a hand," I suggested. "I'll roll and you lick."

"No," said Joan kindly but firmly. "You don't quite grasp the situation. I want to do something. I can't make shirts or knit comforters. I've tried and failed. My shirts look like pillow-cases, and anything more comfortless than my comforters I couldn't imagine. I wouldn't ask a beggar to wear an article I had made, much less an Absent-Minded Beggar."

"What about that tie you knitted for me last Christmas?" I said.

"Yes," said Joan; "what about it? That's what I want to know. You haven't worn it once."

It was true, I hadn't. The tie in question was an attempt to hybridise the respective colour-schemes of a tartan plaid and a Neapolitan ice.

"That," I explained, "is because I've never had a suit which would set it off as it deserves to be set off. However, if I can't help I won't hinder you. I only came in to say that I had done the second hole in two. I thought you would like to know I had beaten bogey." And I retired, taking with me the little heap of tobacco and the hollow tube of paper.

When I reached the seclusion of the mulberry-tree I found that the paper had become ungummed, so I placed the tobacco in it and succeeded after a while in rolling it up. The result, though somewhat attenuated, was recognisably a cigarette. I lit it, and when I had finished coughing I came to the conclusion that if only I could induce Joan to present her gift to the German troops instead of to our Tommies it would precipitate our ultimate triumph. I had to eat several mulberries before I felt capable of proceeding to the third hole. When I got there (in two) I found it occupied by a squadron of wasps while reinforcements were rapidly coming up from a hole beneath the shed. Being hopelessly outnumbered I contented myself with a strategical movement necessitating several stiff rearguard actions.

* * *

Joan, growing a little more proficient, had in a couple of days made 500 cigarettes. I had undertaken to despatch them, and one morning she came to me with a neatly-tied-up parcel.

"Here they are," she said; "but you must ask at the Post Office how they should be addressed. I've stuck on a label."

I went out, taking the parcel with me, and walked straight to the tobacconist's.

"Please pack up 1,000 Hareems," I said, "and post them to the British Expeditionary Force. Mark the label 'Cigarettes for the use of the troops.' And look here, I owe you for a pound of tobacco my wife bought the other day. I'll square up for that at the same time. By-the-by, what tobacco was it?"

"Well, Sir," the man replied, "I hardly like to admit it in these times, but it was a tobacco grown in German East Africa. It really isn't fit to smoke, and is only good for destroying wasps' nests or fumigating greenhouses, which I thought your lady wanted it for, seeing as how she picked it out for herself. Some ladies nowadays know as much about tobacco as what we do."

I left the shop hurriedly. The problem of the disposal of Joan's well-meaning gift was now solved. I returned home and furtively stole up the side path into the garden. Under cover of the summer-house I undid the parcel and proceeded rapidly to strip the paper from those of the cigarettes that had not already become hollow mockeries. When I had collected all the tobacco I went in search of the gardener, and encountered him returning from one of his numerous meals.

"Wilkins," I said, "there is a wasps' nest on the third green, and here is some special wasp-eradicator. Will you conduct the fumigation?"

As Joan and I were walking round the garden that evening before dinner Joan said--

"I don't want to blush to find it fame, but--do you know--I prefer doing good by stealth."

A faint but unmistakable odour was borne on the air from the direction of the third green.

"So do I," I said.

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OUR NATIONAL GUESTS.

My wife attributes our success (so far) in the entertainment of Belgian Refugees solely to the fact that we have not, and never have had, a vestige of a committee. We all work along in the jolliest possible way, and we have no meetings, or agenda, or minutes, or co-opting of additional members, or remitting to executives or anything of that kind. We just bring along anything that we think will be useful. Some of us bring clothes and others butter or umbrellas, or French books, or razor-strops or cigarettes. Hepburn, the dairy farmer, keeps sending cart-loads of cabbages; old Miss Mackintosh at the Brae Foot sends threepence a week. And when we are short of anything we just stick up a notice to that effect in the village shop. I issued a call for jam yesterday and ever since it has rained pots and pots. We have three large families of Belgians and we have already got to the stage where the men are at work and the children at school--though no one really has the least idea what they do there.

But although I admit that it is magnificent to be without a committee--we escaped from that by the simple plan of getting the Belgians first and trusting to the goodwill of the Parish to take care of them afterwards--there are other important factors in our success. There is our extraordinary foresight--of course it was a pure fluke really--in obtaining among them a real Belgian policeman. You can have no idea what a fine sense of security that gives us in case anything goes wrong. We have already enjoyed his assistance in a variety of ways, and we have something still in reserve in the very unlikely event of his being professionally called in--his uniform. When we put him into his uniform the effect will be tremendous.

Then again we have the advantage of being Scotch. I simply don't know how English country people are going to get on at all. Here we find that by talking with great emphasis in the very broadest Scotch--by simply calling soap _sape_ and a church a _kirk_ you can quite frequently bring it off and make yourself understood. I had a most exhilarating hour of mutual lucidity with the one that makes furniture in the carpenter's shop. It seemed to me that he called a saw a _zog_, which was surely quite good enough; and when he referred to a hammer as a _hamer_ it might surely be said to be equivalent to calling a spade a spade.

Still the language difficulty remains, and the worst of it is that it gives an altogether unfair advantage--where all are so anxious to help--to the few select people in our neighbourhood who happen to be able, fortuitously, to talk French. They are--(1) Dr. Anderson, whose French is very good; (2) my wife, who is amazingly fluent in a crisis, though her constructions simply don't bear thinking of; (3) the school-master, who is weak; (4) the joiner, who is bad; (5) myself, who am awful. Several of our Refugees talk French.

Of course we all have pocket-dictionaries, but even they don't always help us out. I found my wife once engaged in a desperate hand-to-hand encounter with the one who does the cooking about some household necessity that was sadly lacking. She was completely baffled. It was pure stalemate, a deadlock. I pulled out my dictionary and suggested to the cook (by illuminative signs) that she should look it up and point to the English word. There was some rejoicing at this, and she at once called upon the collective wisdom of her whole family. At last they got it with much nodding of heads and exhibited the book, buttressed with an eager finger at the place. And we looked and read "A young gold-finch;" so you will see that that didn't help us much. It was only by the almost miraculous emergence of the word _Fat_ in the course of their own private conversation shortly afterwards that light came to us.

That they are quite at a loss to understand the meaning of honey in the comb did not greatly surprise us--though it was rather queer--but the Parish is deeply distressed at their total ignorance of oatmeal. They are quite at sea there, and so far have only employed it for baiting a bird-trap: and that touches us closely, for the very foundation of our being in these parts is oatmeal. Even their beautiful devotion to vegetables of all sorts cannot, we feel, compensate for their attitude of negation towards this very staple of existence. There is a strong party among us bent on their conversion. We hope with all our hearts that they will be comfortable and contented among us till the day comes when they can return to their own country; and we feel that their exile will not have been entirely wasted if they have learned to appreciate the purpose fulfilled by porridge in the Divine Order of things.

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Illustration: WORD PERFECT.

_Sentry_ (_on duty for first time_). "'ALT! WHO GOES THERE? ADVANCE TO WITHIN FIVE PACES, AND GIVE THE COUNTERSIGN 'WATERLOO.'"

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

In the good old days when that royal pipsqueak, our FIRST JAMES, came to the throne, if you were a physician of a little more than common skill and furnished with theological opinions of a modernist complexion, or a lonely woman with (or without) some cunning in the matter of herbs, who cherished a peculiar (or normal) pussy-cat, you were quite likely to be burnt out of hand. And, in her competent way, MARY JOHNSTON, in _The Witch_ (CONSTABLE), deals with this dark blot on the escutcheon of Christianity. Through what suffering and what joys _Dr. Aderhold_, the kindly free-thinking mystic, and _Joan Heron_, the simple village maid, found their ultimate and, for the times, merciful release by halter in place of fire, readers who have nerves to spare for horror will read with eagerness. It is indeed a dreadful story. Miss JOHNSTON is not one of your novelists who lets herself off the contemporary document, and on her reputation you may take it she is not far out. The grim tale serves to show to what lengths the force of suggestion will, in times of excitement, carry folk otherwise sober and truthful. Manifestly preposterous evidence, freely given, was freely admitted by trained legal minds--evidence on which innocent lives were sacrificed at the average rate of over a thousand a month in England and Scotland in the two centuries of the chief witch-baiting period. But, after all, have we not, most of us, near relations who saw a quarter-of-a-million of astrakanned Russians steal through England in the dead of an August night? And have we not---- But I grow tedious. _The Witch_ is an eminently readable story of adventure of the coincidental kind.

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