Chapter 3

I've come to the conclusion that this Army isn't really fair. Some regiments I've met always seem to be doing three weeks' rest down Boulogne or Nice or somewhere like that. Thrice and four times have I come and come back to this battalion, and every blessed time they've been either in trenches when I arrived, or situated directly behind the trenches and going up, it might be, to make some more.

Sometimes we go up to dig, sometimes to carry, sometimes both. On the night of my re-arrival I went up with the digging party, and have the honour to report the following conversation between a certain one of our diggers and a friend who loomed up carrying about four engineer dug-outs, two coils of barbed wire, and a maul. You could just make out the man under it all as he stumbled erratically along a mud-ridden track.

"'Ello, Steve," says the digger, "wot's yer game to-night?"

Steve stopped for a second to look at his interrogator and then observed genially as he moved on,

"Oh, just killin' time, you know."

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* * * * *

TERCENTENARY TWITTERINGS.

The letters that follow are only a small selection from those that have been inadvertently forwarded to us in response to the appeal of _The Westminster Gazette_ for suggestions as to the most appropriate method of celebrating SHAKSPEARE'S tercentenary:--

A HINT TO GREATER BRITAIN.

The name of the new capital of the Australian Commonwealth is not irrevocably fixed, and it seems to me that a splendid opportunity is now offered our brethren overseas to commemorate the genius of the foremost British man of letters by linking his name with the new Antipodean metropolis. I should not venture to dictate the exact form which it should take, but "Willshake" seems to me to meet the requirements of the case very happily, though the claims of "Avonbard" also deserve consideration.

PHILLIBERT HARKER.

BIRD AND BARD.

As SHAKSPEARE overtopped all other men, so should his memorial tower over all other monuments. I cannot help thinking that the re-erection of the Wembley Tower in the form of a gigantic swan soaring into the empyrean to the height of say two or three thousand feet would prove a satisfactory solution of the problem. Whether it should be black or white is a question which might be referred to a small committee of experts, such as Sir SIDNEY LEE, Sir HERBERT TREE and Miss MARIE CORELLI.

MILE END.

P.S.--A good alternative method of celebrating the tercentenary of SHAKSPEARE would be the execution on Shakspeare Cliff, at Dover, of a colossal portrait of the immortal dramatist, somewhat on the scale of the famous "White Horse." Once the outline had been marked out by a competent artist the rest of the work could be easily completed _gratis_ by the Volunteers, and the total cost would be negligible.

A FRUGAL SUGGESTION.

I venture to think that no better way of paying homage to the genius of SHAKSPEARE could be devised than for all the newspapers throughout the country to devote their best pages on the day to suitable extracts from his works. This arrangement has the extra inducement of being economical as well as appropriate.

REGINALD JOBSON, _Registrar in Bankruptcy_.

A GREAT SCIENTIST SPEAKS OUT.

What we want is to convert SHAKSPEARE into a genuine educational instrument, and that is impossible so long as he is only available in his present archaic form. A new edition of the Plays, purged of their classicism and romanticism and expressed in language of scientific accuracy, is peremptorily demanded in the interests of national efficiency.

X. RAY, F.R.S.

A FASTIDIOUS CRITIC.

You ask me, "What are my own personal plans in connection with the anniversary?" It is on record that a very distinguished divine stayed in bed on the day following the announcement of the death of Lord BEACONSFIELD, so as to avoid the horrid temptation of reading what was said about him in the newspaper, which was the divine's pet aversion. I propose to follow this excellent example on Shakspeare Day.

T. H.

AMERICA'S GREATEST POET SENDS GREETING.

From across the stormy ocean, Prompted by a deep emotion, I despatch my salutation on a card; For although I cannot meet thee In the flesh, I still can greet thee, WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE, as a worthy brother bard.

In these times of stress and passion, When the sword is all the fashion, Only minstrelsy can keep the world in tune; For the poet is a healer, And both WILL and ELLA WHEELER Are a blessing and a comfort and a boon.

A CEMETERIAL CELEBRATION.

No memorial to SHAKSPEARE can be adequate which does not express in some concrete shape the universality of his appeal. This end might be attained by erecting a cenotaph in his honour in every churchyard and cemetery in England. I admit that such a scheme would cost money and so might be contrary to the spirit of economy which ought to animate everyone at this hour. But a beginning might be made even now, and I have composed a Funeral March in _Hamlet_ the proceeds of which I would gladly devote to the purpose,

ALGERNON BROOKWOOD.

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* * * * *

A SHORT WAY WITH LECTURERS.

"To-morrow the Central Methodist Mission will celebrate the anniversary of its rescue and social work. The Sisters of the people are to take part in the morning service, and in the afternoon Mr. ---- is killed for an address on 'The Social Outlook.'"--_Sydney Daily Telegraph._

* * * * *

The KAISER to FERDINAND:--

"I have begged your Majesty to accept the dignity of Prussian Field-Marshal, and I am with my Amy happy that you, by accepting it also in this sense, have become one of us."--_Irish Paper._

GERMAN EMPRESS, to her husband: "And who is Amy?"

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"PLEASE HELP EMILY."

The date at which _Emily_ needed so much assistance was clearly _ante bellum_, for there is no mention of hostilities, no gun-fire is heard from the direction of Westende, and Belgium is still bathing. But it must have been only just before the War, for the emancipation which the female sex here enjoys is marked by an extreme modernity. A decade or two ago we might have been shocked at the spectacle of a young lady turning up at a bachelor's flat at 9 A.M. on a Sunday in a ball-frock, after a night out at a dancing-club. Lately we have learnt to bear such escapades without flinching. But it was not so with _Emily's_ guardian, _Sir Samuel Lethbridge_, very Victorian in his stuffy prejudice in favour of the decencies; and it was necessary to put him off with a tale of her sudden departure to Brussels to render first aid to an aunt stricken with mumps. In order to give colour to this fabrication _Emily_ urges _Dick Trotter_, the bachelor of the flat (as soon as he returns from his own night out), to conduct her to the alleged invalid. He consents, but not without protest, for he is a _roué_ of the old school and cannot approve of these platonic adventures; besides, he is about to _se ranger_ by marriage with somebody else and (a matter of detail, but most inconvenient) is under contract to take her to Brighton for the day.

A fairly preposterous start, you will say; yet the delightful naturalness which Miss GLADYS COOPER and Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY bring to the situation gives it almost an air of possibility. But, once we are at Ostend, and have been introduced to _Trotter's_ incredibly inappropriate fiancée (she is a niece of the same aunt and has followed under protection of a tame escort), we are prepared to launch freely and fearlessly into the rough and tumble of farce.

It is in vain that Miss GLADYS COOPER, over her _petit déjeuner_, preserves a natural demeanour, even to the point of talking with her mouth full; the light humour of the First Act declines to the verge of buffoonery. The devastating confusions which ensue in the matter of identity and relationship (in our author's Ostend you assume, till corrected, that all couples are married); the intervention of the local gendarmerie, headed by a British detective; the arrest of half the party (including the aunt, arrived in perfect health and ignorance _en route_ for England) on a nameless charge in connection with _Emily's_ suspected abduction--all this is in the best Criterion manner.

In the Third Act, though we never recover the rapture of the First, the humour touches a higher level; but what it gains in _finesse_ it loses in spontaneity. Here we meet _Emily's_ father, returned from lecturing in the States on social ethics. The scandal of his daughter's conduct leaves him indifferent, for a long and varied experience of the morals of many lands, in the course of which he has married as many as eighteen wives, having made a point of adopting for the time being the system--polygamous or other--of the country in which he happens to find himself, has taught him that nothing is right or wrong except as local opinion makes it so. We are allowed to gather that heredity may have had some influence in the moulding of _Emily's_ character; and if we may hope for its continuance into the next generation there seems every prospect that the children she may bear to _Trotter_ (now released from _Julia_ and free to marry the right woman) will not have their development hampered by excess of prudery.

Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY as _Trotter_ played with his old easy skill and seemed to take a more than usual interest in the play. He was supported (as they say) by a particularly brilliant cast, including Miss LOTTIE VENNE as the aunt, Mr. ERIC LEWIS as _Emily's_ father, Mr. FREDERICK KERR as _Sir Samuel_, Miss HELEN HAYE in the thankless part of _Julia_, and Mr. NIGEL PLAYFAIR as a self-effacing phantom of a lover. All were in great form; but, next to Miss GLADYS COOPER, whose natural charm and ingenuous _espièglerie_ were a perpetual delight, I offer my profoundest compliments to the short but extraordinarily clever performance of Mr. H. R. HIGNETT as _Trotter's_ man _Francis_. This is the day of stage valets, but he was an exceptional treasure. To a quiet taste for philosophy he added an infinite tact; and by the lies which he poured into the telephone to cover his master's breach of engagement to _Julia_ he moved _Emily_, herself a gifted artist, to admiration.

The author, Mr. H. M. HARWOOD, must be congratulated on a farce that at its best was really excellent fun. And he may take it for flattery, if he likes, when I say that a good deal of his dialogue might be adapted into the French without offending our gallant Allies on the ground of a too insular squeamishness. O. S.

* * * * *

THE INDURATION.

Think not, dear love, because my cheek With grief grows neither grey nor hollow, Because no pharmacist I seek In quest of arsenic to swallow, Because I do not wince and weep By day and night for cardiac pains, That my fond passion falls on sleep, Or, secondly, my worship wanes.

For these are strenuous days of strife That steel the soul of every Briton; Sterner and stronger grows our life Till simple bards become hard-bitten; So when, each Thursday, I propose (As usual) to wed my fair, I frankly find her changeless "No's" Not half so poignant as they were.

* * * * *

From an almanack of appropriate quotations:--

"JANUARY 27. Thursday. _German Emperor born_, 1859.

O welcome, pure-ey'd Faith, white-handed Hope, Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings.--_Milton._"

* * * * *

"If men well up in years would cultivate a habit of breathing properly and always holding themselves erect when walking and sitting, we would find fewer elderly people bent double when we do."--_Daily Express._

Our gay contemporary has been caught bending on this occasion.

* * * * *

"He asked the Government not to muzzle the ox that laid golden eggs."--_The Daily Argosy (Demerara)._

It wasn't really an ox; it was a bull.

* * * * *

From a country retail chemist's appeal to the Local Tribunal for his son's exemption from Military Service:

"I cannot dispense with him"--or, presumably, without him.

* * * * *

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

When _Hargrave Ladd_, who was a solicitor in a very fair way of business, with an agreeable but unemotional wife, happened to be getting into an omnibus at the moment when _Stella Rayne_ fell off the top of it, he unconsciously put himself in the way of a lot of bother. Naturally, as a gentleman and the male protagonist of a novel--_Let Be_ (METHUEN)--he could do no less than pick the girl out of the mud and see her home in a cab. Whether, quite strictly speaking, he need have called next day to see how she was getting over the accident is another matter. Certainly his interfering aunt, _Mrs. Dering_, was of the opinion that _Hargrave_, as a married man, was displaying an excess of courtesy towards the pretty tumbler. As for Miss SYBIL CAMPBELL LETHBRIDGE, who has written the tale, she gives no indication of her views one way or the other. Indeed this attitude of humorous tolerance for humanity is Miss LETHBRIDGE'S most striking characteristic. It is at once a source of strength and weakness to the book, making, on the one hand, for the reality of the characters, and, on the other, for a certain non-conductiveness of atmosphere that robs their emotions of warmth. Anyhow, the inevitable happens, and _Hargrave_ falls in love with _Stella_, who in turn reciprocates his passion up to almost the last page in the book, when, having come to the edge of the precipice and made every preparation for her leap into the gulf of elopement, she does a mental quick-change and walks away as the contented betrothed of Another. So _Hargrave_, making the best of a good job, rejoins _Mrs. H._; and one may suppose that, if any more distressed damsels fall off omnibuses in his presence, he will prudently "let be." You may think with me that this abrupt finish lessens the effect of an otherwise well-written and entertaining story.

* * * * *

Miss MURIEL HINE in _The Individual_ (LANE), essaying a problem novel, does not disdain the old-fashioned way of the woven plot and the dramatic incident. Her hero, _Orde Taverner_, surgeon by trade and eugenist by profession, falls in love with _Elizma_, a Cornish beauty and rare fiddler. His inquiries as to her eugenical fitness having been answered satisfactorily but inaccurately, he marries, to find that _Elizma's_ mother really died insane. His principles conquer his desire for children, and his decision is communicated to the fiery _Elizma_, who, fierce maternalist that she is and coming of a wild stock that never stuck at anything, undertakes a desperate flirtation by way of solving the difficulty in her own heroic way--at least you will certainly make this kind of a guess, but on investigation you may find that you've been wrong! Happily in the end a deathbed confession proves the second version of her birth as inaccurate as the first. She really comes of quite untainted stock, so the eugenist is satisfied and husband and wife reconciled. That is to say the author runs away from her problem, which was perhaps, all things considered, the wisest thing to do. She has some eye for character and has made a good thing of her _Elizma_, but has let herself scatter her energies over a team too large to be driven with a sure hand. And why, oh why did she drag in the War? Or call her butler _Puffles_? But she keeps the interest of her story going, and you mustn't skip or you may be set off on a hopelessly wrong tack.

* * * * *

So great is my admiration for the humorous gifts of Mr. WILLIAM CAINE and so strong my gratitude to him for such books as _Boom_ and _Old Enough to Know Better_, that I have decided to erase from my memory with all possible speed his latest effort, _Bildad the Quill-Driver_ (LANE.) A man with so many bull's-eyes to his credit may be forgiven an occasional miss; and, to be candid, _Bildad the Quill-Driver_ seems to me to come nowhere near the target. Most of Mr. CAINE'S work would be the better for a certain amount of condensation, but this is the only occasion on which he has really lost control of his pen. He has had the unfortunate idea of writing a comic _Arabian Nights_ in close imitation of the style of the original translation, even to the insertion of short poems at every possible opportunity. Now, this is one of those ideas which at first blush would seem to contain all the elements of delightful humour; but it has the deadly flaw that it involves a monotony which becomes after a few pages more than irritating. For a while the novelty is entertaining, and then the reader becomes crushed by the realisation that he has got to rely for his amusement on the same sort of joke repeated over and over again for more than three hundred pages. And, once that happens, the doom of the book is sealed, for the adventures of _Bildad_ are not in themselves diverting--his love-affair with the giantess is as unfunny a thing as ever I yawned over--and if you cease to chuckle at the burlesque pomposity of the style there is nothing left. There are some things which do not lend themselves to sustained parody, and the manner of the _Arabian Nights_ is one of them. But, as I say, I am not going to allow this book to shake my opinion that Mr. CAINE is one of our most engaging humorists.

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* * * * *

I recommend, absolutely without reserve, a war book entitled _Day by Day with the Russian Army_ (CONSTABLE). It is written by Professor BERNARD PARES, the Official British Observer with the Russian Armies in the Field, and is the real thing. Although incidentally it is to be praised as a modest and lucid piece of writing, well in keeping with the character of an author whose habit of viewing an action from the most dangerous, because the most interesting, point can be discovered only by reading between the lines, primarily it is to be prescribed as a sovereign tonic against German-made depression. The writer, after being present at the conquest of Galicia and the triumphant advance to the top of the Carpathians, after witnessing much of the historical Russian retreat under pressure of overwhelming artillery superiority, and after conversing freely with his friends of all ranks on different sectors of the Front whilst offering greetings in the name of their English comrades in arms, announces finally, in a wholly satisfactory fashion, his unalterable conviction as to the unqualified supremacy of our Allies when on anything like equal terms with their opponents as regards munitions of war. And that is a matter which, though never in doubt, it is pleasant to hear again in tones of authority at a time when we believe the Russian lack of supplies is at last being made good. The evidence is the more complete because not only do we learn of the interrogation of many prisoners, but because a long extract from the diary of one of them, an Austrian officer, is included, to point the difference in spirit between the two armies. The demoralisation of the Austrian forces, even when advancing, is so strikingly presented that one cannot doubt their dependence on German domination and German batteries to hold them together at all. Although Professor PARES attaches several excellent maps, he is not really much concerned with questions of strategy, but has devoted himself to just two points--_moral_ and munitions.

* * * * *

I am afraid that Mrs. HODGSON BURNETT is in a little danger of overdoing it. She knows (who better?) the briskness of the popular demand for long-lost heirs; and she may well have argued that the longer he has been lost, the more squalid his present environment, and the more brilliant his heritage, the more assured would be the heir's welcome. Perhaps indeed this may be so in America; but for this side, as I say, I have my doubts. I daresay your own intuition will tell you that the hero of _The Lost Prince_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is a prince who has been lost. In fact so effectually had the branch of the regal house to which _Prince Ivor_ belonged been mislaid that the story opens upon him dwelling in a London slum with no companions but a mysterious father and a crippled playfellow (called _The Rat_). All sorts of mysterious things are constantly happening just out of sight; and presently the dynastic intrigues of Mrs. BURNETT launch the two boys upon a secret journey through Europe, to convey to a number of pleasantly melodramatic conspirators the message that "The Lamp is Lighted!" As their object is expressly stated to be protection for a small principality, the fact that the interviews include one with Emperor of AUSTRIA has in these days a quaintly anachronistic effect, and at least serves to emphasise the neutral origin of the story. However, they are of course successful; and in the last chapter _Prince Ivor_ manages to be enormously astonished at finding that the mysterious monarch of Samavia, for whom he has been working, is none other than his own father--an obvious fact that, with truly royal tactfulness, he had contrived to ignore throughout the story. My advice to the author is to write up her villains (at present they haven't a chance) and make the whole thing into a film play. The wanderings of the two boys offer a fine opportunity for scenic variety; while the sentiment is of precisely the nature to be stimulated by a pianoforte accompaniment. As a three-reel exclusive, in short, I can fancy _The Lost Prince_ entering triumphantly into his appropriate kingdom.

* * * * *

"UNFURNISHED ROOM to Let in Clyde Road; quiet house; convenience for washing once a week if necessary; rent 3s."--_Hastings and St. Leonards Observer._

It sounds dirt-cheap.