Chapter 1

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PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI

VOL. 150

MARCH 8, 1916

CHARIVARIA.

Germany is declared to have built a submarine that can go to the United States and back. Future insults therefore will be delivered by hand.

***

Municipal fishshops are to be established in Germany. They will be closely associated, it is understood, with the Overseas News Agency, and will make a speciality of supplying a fish diet to sailors who are unfortunately prevented by circumstances from visiting the high seas.

***

In his lecture before the Royal Institute last week Dr. E. G. RUSSELL told his audience that there are 80,000,000 micro-organisms in a tablespoonful of rich cucumber soil. If we substitute German casualties for micro-organisms and deduct the average monthly wastage as shown by the private lists from the admitted official total of available effectives--but we are treading on Mr. BELLOC'S preserves.

***

The Government has announced itself as "satisfied with the measures taken to prevent Canadian nickel from reaching the Germans." Except, of course, in oblong pellets of insignificant size.

***

Answering a question of Sir ARTHUR MARKHAM in the House of Commons last week, Mr. TENNANT said, "If there was a large force of troops in Egypt, as to which it is undesirable that I should make any statement, it is quite conceivable that the presence of a hundred and seventeen Generals might be necessary." After all, if every one of them were just a Brigadier-General, they wouldn't require more than half-a-million men to keep them occupied.

***

Naval inspectors of cookery, it is officially announced, will hereafter wear a narrow stripe of white cloth on their cuff. This is a simplified form of the ancient heraldic emblem of the cook's guild, which was a hair _frizzé naiant_ in a dish of soup _maigre_.

***

All kinds of cleaning and washing are to be dearer, and a patriotic movement is already on foot among the younger set to do away with these luxuries altogether in the interests of patriotic economy.

***

As a reward of its efforts to save the lives of war-horses, the R.S.P.C.A. has now been officially recognized by the A.V.C. Some hindrance to their work is however feared as the result of strong protests lodged by the Westphalen Pie-makers' Association of Rotterdam, which the Government, in its anxiety not to deal harshly with the neutrals, is said to be carefully considering.

***

The owners of certain proprietary whiskeys have decided to put them up sixpence a bottle. In response to this move the owners of certain proprietary sixpences have decided not to put them down.

***

A correspondent of _The Times_ states that large numbers of Owls have taken to visiting the trenches in Flanders. The War Office, strangely enough, professes to know nothing of the circumstance.

* * * * *

* * * * *

For Conscientious Objectors.

"VARICOSE VEINS.--We stock all sizes, in best quality only."--_Advt. in Irish Paper._

* * * * *

British Frightfulness.

"A young woman was fried as a spy in London the other day."--_Sunday Pictorial._

* * * * *

A Leap-Year Reminder.

"February 29, 1916.--Last day for single men."--_Liverpool Daily Post._

* * * * *

"We ... are no haters of peace. We want it more than anything in the world--except the triumph of evil."--_Star._

"A fallen star," we fear.

* * * * *

"Mr. Lloyd George said that Cabinet Ministers had agreed to take one-fourth of their salaries in Exchequer bombs."

_Provincial Paper._

The times call for strong measures, but we think this is going a little too far.

* * * * *

TEUTON OVERTURES.

As seen through Teuton Eyes.

These English--who can know their ways? When, flushed with triumphs large and many, We condescend with tactful signs To hint of peace on generous lines They answer in a flippant phrase That they're "not taking any."

When from our conquering High-Seas Ark (Detained at home by stress of weather) We loosed the emblematic dove, Conveying overtures of love, Back came the bird with that remark, Minus its best tail feather.

They said they never wanted war; Yet, when we talk of war's abating, And name the price for them to pay, They have the curious nerve to say That, when they please, and not before, They'll do their own dictating.

How can you deal with minds so slow, With men who give no indication That we by any further shock Into their heads can hope to knock Enough intelligence to know That they're a beaten nation?

Odd that we cannot make it clear That we have won; and even odder That other markets seem to jump, While our exchange is on the slump, And everything's starvation-dear (Excepting cannon-fodder). O. S.

* * * * *

RECONSTRUCTION.

In that dim happy past, the Summer of 1913, I first saw him idly seated in a deck-chair on the firm sands of----, on the East Coast. A quiet detached figure amid a crowd of joyous children. Hard by a boy and girl were building a moated fortress, but, alas! the swiftly incoming tide eroded its foundations until the frowning battlements tottered to destruction.

Turning, the children faced him. He smiled.

"D'you know this one, Jacky?" he ventured.

"He's Dick," the little maid protested, "and I'm Betty."

"Now we're introduced, do you know this one?" he asked again.

Straightaway he plunged into the new game, moving back to where a smooth stretch of sand lay invitingly. Immediately two minute shapes were etched with his stick on its surface.

"What's those?"

"Hairpins, of course! You _always_ start with hairpins. And this," indicating a narrow oblong, "why, this must be that silver tray someone's always leaving her hairpins lying about on. Now for the hair-brushes--two of those--" (unerringly symmetrical)--"then the comb--" (equipped with most effective sand-teeth)--"then a powder-box? Well, a very little one----"

As fast as he thought of them, fresh articles (or their symbols) came into being. There was no pause. "The shoe-horn, the button-hook, oh! and a clothes-brush----"

Immediately following the last hair of the clothes-brush a rectangle put in an appearance around these assorted objects.

"Mummy's dressing-table," asserted Master Dick authoritatively.

"Sound man! What else do we want?"

The children suggested alternately and in chorus the completion of the plan. An armchair with cushions incredibly soft, a fire-place pokered and tonged, a wardrobe (disproportionately enormous), two colossal hat-boxes, and detail after detail, with finally the door, the key-hole and the key.

* * * * *

The little hamlet somewhere in France had been shelled spasmodically for months. Possibly there was something faintly familiar in the seated figure of that Captain of Engineers that caught my eye; one did not often come across Captains of Engineers sitting on _débris_ in the village street. He squatted on a pile of granular masonry before a rudely prepared space surrounded by three small ragged children gazing round-eyed at something he was drawing with half a Nilgiri cane in the powdered rubble. I paused to look, and there arose before me the picture of a man with a boy and girl on a bygone day in happy England.

"On commence avec le sel," he was explaining as he indicated the shape of a salt-cellar. "Eh b'en, après ça quat' assiettes, des couteaux, des fourchettes----" All the appurtenances of a homely table were quickly put in. "Et puis la table, n'est-ce pas? Et surtout faut pas oublier quelqu'chose à manger, eh, Jeanne?"

"Non, monsieur." But the little girl was busy pointing to where a small brown bird pecked fruitlessly in the dust. "Regardez, donc, le p'tit oiseau; il n'a pas mangé, c'lui là."

"Y a pas grande chose à manger; les Boches, vous savez, ont passé par ici," added one of the two boys quite impersonally.

The Captain of Engineers continued quickly, "Maintenant il faut mettre le--" he paused for the word--"le--table-cloth." The children grasped his meaning from the comprehensive gesture. Rapidly he outlined chairs, a delightful baby's cradle, a clock with cuckoo complete, a fire-place, until at length a complete pictorial inventory had been made of the contents of the living-room of just such a cottage as had obviously been buried beneath the rubbish heap upon which he sat. Those children of the stricken country-side entered with keenness into the spirit of the make-believe. The little girl, searching for an appropriate stone to place on the imaginary table for imaginary bread, thrust her hand down among the _débris_ and, withdrawing it, exposed a relic. It was the faded remnant of a baby's shoe, grotesque in the autumn sunshine.

"Oui, par exemple, les Boches ont passé par ici," said the little boy as impersonally as before.

* * * * *

In a Good Cause.

An auction of stamps will be held on the 13th and 14th of March at 47, Leicester Square, in aid of the National Philatelic War Fund, the proceeds to be given to the Societies of the British Red Cross and St. John of Jerusalem. Collectors should seize this chance, as the Allies may shortly be arranging to modify the map of the world.

* * * * *

"The year 1914 showed a drop of 441 million eggs in the year." _Trade Paper._

Taking our population as 46 millions this means 9-1/2 eggs dropped per head in the year. Under the influence of the thrift campaign a great effort is being made to drop only half an egg per head this year, but should there be a General Election there may be a rise in the drop.

* * * * *

* * * * *

* * * * *

THE GREAT MAN.

Every Saturday, about four P.M., I am to be found worshipping at the Shrine of the Open Mind. Once within its portals I put off the subfuse vestments of J. Watson, Esq., Barrister-at-Law, and become simply Uncle James. This alone is a tonic. To-day as I ascended the steps of the temple there floated down to me the voices of the priestesses chanting, evidently in a kind of frenzy, and to the air of a famous Scottish reel, this rhyme----

"Daddy is a Sergeant, a Sergeant, a Sergeant! Daddy is a Sergeant, a Sergeant of Police."

So I opened the nursery door and went in. An uncle has no honour in his own country, and my two small nieces assaulted me immediately. Phyllis dragged me to a chair, while Lillah shrieked unrelentingly in my ear that Daddy was a sergeant.

"So the special constables have seen that your father is a born policeman?" I said as I sat down.

"The _special_ ones," nodded Phyllis with profound pride.

"Magnificent," I murmured. "He has at last justified his choice of the law as a profession."

"Tell us," said Lillah, with the air with which one speaks of a self-made man who has just appeared in the Honours List--"tell us how Daddy started."

"He went to the Bar," I said.

"Bar?" echoed Lillah.

"Why, yes," I said; "it's a place where people wait."

"Like a station?"

"Only the trains don't always come in. Anyway, on one side of the bar are a lot of young men waiting for something to turn up, and on the other a lot of old men writing autobiographies."

"But aren't there any middling-olders?" This is Phyllistian for men of middle age.

"Not allowed," I said. "At the Bar you are either a junior or a reminiscer."

"What's that?"

"It's an illness that attacks people who aren't really famous."

Phyllis stared. "Like measles?"

I nodded.

"Oh," cried Lillah eagerly, "do the reminiscers go all pink?"

"They ought to," said I.

There was a silence. The round eyes of Phyllis were full of suspicion.

"Daddy said," she remarked slowly, "that he did law."

"So he does," I answered.

"Well, what's that, then?"

Small girls ask questions in two words which wise men must write books to answer.

"The law," I answered warily, "gives reasons for things that are unreasonable."

"Like what?" said Phyllis.

I laughed a little uneasily. This was getting difficult.

"Oh--er--things like getting married," I said, "and refraining from shooting little girls who ask questions."

I admit that this sort of joke is the last infirmity of an uncle's otherwise noble mind. They regarded me sadly.

Then Lillah turned to Phyllis with a detached air. "Uncle James is being grand," she said, "because he doesn't know what law is."

"Don't you?" said Phyllis.

"Perhaps not," I murmured feebly. The nursery makes very small beer of the cynic. There was a moment's silence.

"You've told us wrong," said Phyllis sternly. "Daddy isn't ever wrong."

"So he's risen from his bar to be a sergeant," added Lillah, with the air of one finishing a story with a moral.

I'm afraid I chuckled. It was in very bad taste, of course, but I couldn't help it. I suppose George is one of the most egregious Micawbers of the English Bar, whereas I---- why, I remember noticing a brief on the mantelpiece in my chambers only last month.

"Poor Uncle James," said Phyllis in her best drawing-room tones, "perhaps if you tried very hard----"

They had mistaken my laughter for that bitter disappointed kind you get in the theatres.

"I know," said Lillah; "we'll play Germans, and Uncle James can pretend he's a sergeant."

Yes, they were sorry for me. The table was pushed into the window and became a waterworks of importance.

The invidious part of the alien enemy fell to Lillah. It was admitted that she could glare best. "Besides," said Phyllis, "Lillah can make growly noises come up from her tummy."

The complete Hun, as you perceive.

Phyllis became a "special," while I was her sergeant, the star part of the piece. But the show was a frost, though Lillah gave an excellent imitation, with the aid of a toy spider, of a Hun inserting bacilli into the nation's _aqua pura_. Yes, I'm afraid I was the failure. I couldn't get to grips with my part, and the whole thing was so obviously a charity performance, with Phyllis ordering herself sternly about to try and help me through.

We were halfway through the second house when a well-known step was heard on the stairs.

Lillah turned, her eyes ablaze with worship. Phyllis trembled with excitement. As I sat down I couldn't help thinking that we grown-ups are just a little absurd. There is more than one thinks in the relativity of things.

Adoration? George was never going to get anything like it again in this world. My mind mused on ambition. Why, the CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER himself----

The door-handle turned and I heard the small voice of Phyllis in my ear.

"Mummie says," she whispered, "we can't all be great."

Nice little maid!

Then we all lined up to receive the Sergeant.

* * * * *

* * * * *

"TURKISH COMMUNIQUE.

Constantinople, Saturday.--On the Canadian front there were outpost duels and local fighting at several points. These skirmishes are still going on."--_Evening Paper._

Forthcoming volume by Sir MAX AITKEN--_Canada in Turkey._

* * * * *

From a description of a new enemy aeroplane:--

"The whole machine is armoured, and the supper part is shaped like a reversed roof." _Provincial Paper._

Trust the Germans for looking after the commissariat.

* * * * *

AN EMBARGO ON INK.

Great Public Meeting.

Mr Runciman, President of the Board of Trade, having stated that the Government was following up its restrictions on the importation of paper by drastic new rules concerning our supplies of ink, a public meeting of protest was immediately called. Mr. T. P. O'Notor, M.P., took the chair, and he was supported by many of the most illustrious ink-men of the day.

The Chairman, having first read a number of letters apologising for absence, one of which was, of course, from Lord Southbluff, who specialises in this epistolary form, proceeded to pour scorn on the Board of Trade's decision. How can the Board of Trade, he asked pointedly, know its business as well as we do? If it hopes, by curtailing the supplies of ink that come to England, to make room for the more important necessaries of life, it is mistaken. There is nothing more important than ink. (Cheers.) Without ink what are we? (A voice: "Not much.") Without ink, how can advertisements be written? (Cries of "Shame!") Among all forms of human endeavour none was nobler than putting one word after another. (Applause.) That is what SHAKSPEARE did. (Hear, hear.) Always with the assistance of ink. (Cheers.) And what would England be like without SHAKSPEARE? (Renewed cheers.) Had Mr. RUNCIMAN thought of that? He (the speaker) would venture to say he had not. In any case ink must be saved. (Loud applause.)

Mr. Harry Austinson, Editor of _The English Revue_, rose to protest against the Board of Trade action. To put an embargo upon ink was, he held, nothing less than an outrage. Ink was the life-blood of British liberty, and he for one would never hesitate to spill the last drop, either in his own select periodical or in a Sunday paper for the masses. The mere fact that the feeling against ink was inaugurated by a Member of the Government automatically proved it wrong. No good could come from such a corrupt agglomeration of salary-seekers as the Coalition Ministry. Speaking as one who knew Germany from within, he would say that to put any obstacle in the way of the public expression of opinion in England was to help the foe. (Hear, hear.)

Mr. Bernold Pennit said that the Government's action paralysed him. For years he had been in the habit of writing his ten thousand words a day. It did not much matter what they were about; the point was that they were written. Otherwise he could not keep in good health. Where another man might do Swedish exercises, ride, walk, eat or play golf, he, Mr. Pennit, wrote. (Hear, hear.) It might be an attack on British stupidity; it might be a eulogy of Mr. ASQUITH; it might be a description of the arrival of a ton of coal at an auctioneer's private residence in Handley and its transference to the cellar and the discovery that there was one hundredweight one stone short. Whatever the theme, there were ten thousand words in any case, and unless he could write them daily he was lost. The tragic thing was that he could write only in ink and with his own hand. (Sensation.) Before meddling with ink there were all sorts of things for the Government to forbid. Golf balls, for one. He wished to express his complete dissatisfaction with Mr. RUNCIMAN's insane proposal. (Cheers.)

Mr. Bolaire Hillock thought that a great deal too much fuss was being made about ink. The Board of Trade was, of course, an ass; that goes without saying (_ça va sans dire_); but it is childish of literary men to come there and pretend to be nonplussed. Let them rather show themselves superior to such trumpery legislation. As an old campaigner he could tell them what to do. When he was an artilleryman in France, and writing a series of articles on the Reformation at the same time, he mixed an excellent substitute for ink out of the ashes of his pipe and claret. There were countless things that could be utilised, including blacking, seethed mushrooms, boiled ash-buds, and the juice of the pickled walnut. With such resources as these we intended to go on writing and drawing diagrams long after Mr. RUNCIMAN was forgotten. (Loud cheers.)

Lord Penge said that one of the purest pleasures of life was writing to _The Times_, and how could that be done if there was no ink? Some people doubtless could use pencil; but he personally could not. Others had typewriters or dictated to typists, but that was beyond him. To him there were few delights more complete than to dip his pen in the forbidden fluid and begin, "Sir." (Applause.)

The Rev. R. Trampbell said that not during his whole career as a clergyman of the Church of England could he remember a more monstrous proposal than this one to reduce the supply of ink. To him ink was more precious than radium, for it enabled him to express his thoughts and thus come into intimate relationship with his fellow-beings. It might be within the knowledge of the meeting that he was in the habit of contributing every week an article on the War to the Sunday papers. It was not on tactics, but on some subject of spiritual interest connected with the War, and he had reason to believe that thousands, he might say millions, of his fellow-countrymen and fellow-countrywomen found it helpful. Was that to cease? England had too few inspired teachers for this article to be lightly disposed of. He felt sure that he had the great weight of his beloved Church of England at the back of him when he uttered this protest.

Mr. Chester Gilbertson said that neither the restriction on ink or paper would worry him. There was nothing he couldn't write _with_, and nothing he couldn't write _on_. He had written many of his best articles with a piece of chalk on one of his black coats, and many of his worst on cab and railway-carriage windows with a diamond ring which he had compelled a commercial traveller to relinquish. (Cheers.) Rather than not express an opinion on whatever was forward, he would carve his views on a rock and himself carry the rock to the printing office. (Loud cheers.) The Runcimen of this world were created purely in order to be defied.

Mr. Bernard Jaw said that of course for the Government to pretend that the cargo space now occupied by ink was needed for something else was rubbish. The Government's real reason was that they were terrified of the critics and thought to muzzle them in this way. But he for one--and he knew for a fact that the Government dreaded his genius acutely and would give much if they could still the blistering accuracy of his pen--he for one would not be daunted.

At this point a special messenger arrived bearing a letter for the Chairman, who, after reading it, asked leave to put the meeting in possession of its terms, as it somewhat altered the situation. It was, in fact, from the Board of Trade, and stated that, owing to a misprint, the recent decision concerning ink had been misunderstood. It was not ink that was to be restricted, but zinc. (Cheers.) In the circumstances perhaps they might adjourn.

The meeting then broke up peaceably, although Mr. Bernard Jaw did his best to collect an audience for a new speech on the monstrosity of interfering with zinc.

* * * * *

"Count Bernstorff finds that the Washington Government has left him in the air. Seemingly he is at sea."--_Morning Post._