Part 3

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THE QUARTERMASTER.

A WORD OF ADVICE TO NEW OFFICERS.

How delicate must be the young man's dealings With those who hold the regimental reins; How sensitive he finds the Major's feelings, How constantly the Adjutant complains; Yet any youth of reasonable phlegm Should be at ease with some at least of them, But, mind you, there is only one Q.M., And he, I think, requires the greatest pains.

For he provides his own peculiar terrors, His own pet penalties, his special scores; He little recks your mere strategic errors, He marks unmoved the feeblest kind of fours; 'Tis naught to him how Private Thompson shoots, Only he must not wear civilian boots; And all the officers may act like brutes If they commit no sin against the Stores.

Then, like the octopus, that all day dallies In loathly caverns, loving not the sun, Till prying trespassers provoke his sallies, He waddles forth and gives the culprit one; Unrolls, like tentacles, by fold and pleat, Some hoary form, some long-forgot receipt, And stamps the fellow liar, thief and cheat-- There is no argument; the man is done.

And evermore, however slight the caper, His name, his credit in the Stores is black; If he but supplicate for emery-paper, Or seek small articles his soldiers lack, He will be lucky if they fail to look His record up in some avenging book, And say, "I thought as much--the man who took A bar of soap and never brought it back."

Be careful, then, and court the man's compassion; Note how the gods, in old Olympian years, Would woo Hephaestus's, that used to fashion Stout shields and suchlike for his godly peers; How upstart deities, who feared not Zeus And gave Poseidon something like abuse, Approached him sweetly and were quite profuse, Lest he be cross and serve them out no spears.

Nor in the trenches should your tact diminish, For there, still stern with casual issue notes, _He_ will determine when the food must finish, And stint his rum to undeserving throats; And what if in some struggle he should say, "Look here, this battle can't go on to-day; You'll get no hand-grenades, no S.A.A., Till Simpson signs for all those overcoats"?

* * * * *

Mormonism in England?

"A Minister's Wives' Meeting will be held at Whitefield's, Tottenham Court Road."

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FROM THE FRONT.

"Hurrah!" I said, "I've got a letter from the Front."

"Well done!" said Francesca. "Who's it from?"

"From Walter. It's not a very long one."

"That doesn't matter a bit. The great thing is to have one from the Front, even if it's only to thank you for a pair of socks."

"Mine's better than that," I said. "It runs into nearly two pages."

"Yes," she said, "but it doesn't tell you much, now does it?"

"No, to tell you the truth it doesn't. They're under an honourable obligation, you know, not to reveal things."

"Poor boys! It isn't much a Second-Lieutenant could reveal, is it. There's nothing said in your letter about Sir DOUGLAS HAIG having called Walter up to Headquarters----"

"You mustn't say Headquarters; you must say G.H.Q. if you want to impress people."

"I'm not talking to people; I'm talking to you. There's nothing said in your letter, is there, about Walter having been asked by Sir DOUGLAS HAIG to draw up a plan for the Big Push?"

"No, there isn't; but Walter would draw up a dozen if he were asked. He's that sort."

"Don't talk about my first cousin once removed in that flippant way."

"I'm not."

"You are, and it's most ungrateful of you."

"Ungrateful?"

"Yes, ungrateful. He's written you a letter that you'll be able to chat about for a fortnight. I can hear you mentioning it to your train-friends, Major Boger and Dr. Apthorpe. You'll bring it in in a careless kind of way. 'I've had a letter,' you'll say, 'from a chap at the Front, a cousin of my wife's, and he tells me they're expecting a move now at any moment.' Then they'll both say, 'Ah,' as if they didn't think much of your chap, and each of them will produce a chap of his own with some highly private information about the CROWN PRINCE having been taken to a lunatic asylum in a motor-car so heavily iron-clad that nobody could see who was inside, but he was recognised by his shrieks; and Dr. Apthorpe will cap it all with some cock-and-bull story about German ships having bombarded one another in the Canal last week. And so you'll get to London."

"Francesca," I said, "you are a holy terror. How do you know all these things? You have never travelled to London with Major Boger and Dr. Apthorpe, and yet you're able to misrepresent them as if you'd heard them speak every day of your life. It's wonderful."

"Clever fellow," said Francesca; "we won't pursue the question of your boastings. They're innocent enough, I dare say. Let me hear what Walter actually does say in his letter."

"Well," I said, "he doesn't actually say very much. The weather is fine, he says, and his particular lot have been having rather a slack time lately. There was a stampede of horses last week, but his Battery was not involved in it, and would I mind sending him a packet or two of chocolate, some strong brown boot-laces and a briar-root pipe, he having broken his last one, and he's never felt fitter in his life, and anybody who wants to know what health is had better come out to France at once. That's about all; but you can read it for yourself." I handed it over to her and she skimmed through it.

"I'll tell you what," she said, "I strongly advise you not to show this letter about."

"I certainly shall show it," I said, "but only to friends."

"Well," she said, "I wouldn't even do that, unless you want to get Walter into trouble."

"What nonsense!" I said. "It's the most discreet and honourable letter I ever received.".

"Yes," she said, "but it's so cheerful. If certain newspapers got hold of it there wouldn't be any peace for Second-Lieutenant Walter Carlyon. He'd be told he was like all other Englishmen--he didn't take a serious view of the War. Then they'd say that he was one of the men who were responsible for the French not understanding us, and for the Russians failing to appreciate our efforts, which, indeed, could hardly be called efforts at all, and for the Italians despising us as we deserved to be despised for tolerating such a Government as we were afflicted with--and lots more of the same sort, all because poor Walter doesn't go about in a state of perpetual gloom, as if he expected the whole of Great Britain to be sunk into the sea the next minute."

"Francesca," I said, "your warmth is excusable, and there's a good deal in what you say, but I shall show Walter's letter all the same."

"Well," she said, "when the storm bursts I shall let him know whom he's got to thank for it."

"I shall write to him," I said, "and warn him to write a really pessimistic letter next time, so that I may show it to influential people and get his name up."

"It'll be no good," she said. "Walter isn't one of that sort. He 's cursed with a profound and unreasoning belief in his country, and, being an Englishman, he'll go to his grave if necessary believing that England is bound to win the War."

"And, by Jove," I said, "I thoroughly agree with him."

"Yes," she said, "and so do I, but it doesn't do to say so to everybody nowadays."

R. C. L.

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SPEED THE PLOUGH: A COUNTRY SONG.

As I was a-walking on Chilbolton Down I saw an old farmer there driving to town, A-jogging to market behind his old grey, So I jumped up beside him, and thus he did say:--

"My boy he be fightin', a fine strappin' lad, I gave he to England, the one boy I had; My boy he be fightin' out over the foam, An' here be I frettin' an' mopin' at home.

"But if there be times when 'tis just about hard Wi'out his strong arm in the field an' the yard, Why, I plucks my old heart up an' flicks the old grey, An' this is the tune that her heels seem to say:--

"'Oh the hoof an' the horn, the roots an' the corn, The flock in the fold an' the pigs in the pen, Rye-grass an' clover an' barns brimmin' over, They feed the KING'S horses an' feed the KING'S men!'

"Then I looks at my furrows to see the corn spring Like little green sword-blades all drawn for the KING; An' 'tis 'Get up, old Bess, there be plenty to do For old chaps like me an' old horses like you.

"'My boy be in Flanders, he's young an' he's bold, But they will not have we, lass, for we be too old, So step it out lively an' kip up your heart, For you an' me, Bess, be a-doin' our part--

"'Wi' the shocks an' the sheaves, the lambs an' the beeves, The ducks an' the geese an' the good speckled hen, The cattle all lowin', the crops all a-growin', To feed the KING'S horses and feed the KING'S men.'"

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

Except by keen politicians the fourth volume of Mr BUCKLE'S _Life of Benjamin Disraeli_ (MURRAY) may be found a little dull in comparison with its predecessors. That is not the fault of the biographer, who has done his best with a vast mass of somewhat dry material, but could not make this portion of his record so enthralling as that which preceded it or--we may confidently hope--that which will follow it. In 1855 DISRAELI had arrived at respectability, but had not yet attained power. The Conservative Party recognised that he was indispensable, but continued to withhold its full confidence, with the result that, although his brain still teemed with the great schemes formed in his hot youth, he had to defer their practical accomplishment and to devote himself to educating his party and its titular leader, Lord DERBY, for the day when the swing of the pendulum might give it a majority in the House of Commons. Only one great triumph came to him during these years in the wilderness. DISRAELI had never visited India, but, owing perhaps to his Eastern ancestry, he had a truer intuition of Oriental needs than most contemporary statesmen; and it was fortunate that it fell to him in 1858, during one of the brief periods when the Conservatives held office on sufferance, to carry the Bill which transferred the government of India from "John Company" to the Crown. The principles which he then laid down, and which eighteen years later he carried a stage further in the Imperial Titles Act, justify Mr. BUCKLE in claiming the Coronation Durbar of 1911 as "the logical conclusion of Disraeli's policy." Apart from this one episode the volume is mainly concerned with the reconstruction of the Conservative party--"at about the pace of a Tertiary formation"--with which DISRAELI'S voluminous correspondence with Lord DERBY was mainly concerned. Happily he had other correspondents, and, though too self-conscious to be a perfect letter-writer, he could be playful enough when writing to his wife or to Mrs. BRYDGES-WILLIAMS. In this volume Mr. BUCKLE has given us a careful portrait of the Politician DISRAELI; in his next we look to see a little more of the Man.

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It is probable, I think, that you will not have turned many pages of _Brenda Walks On_ (HUTCHINSON) before being struck by a certain pleasing incongruity between its matter and style. Sir FREDERICK WEDMORE is such an artist in words, so punctilious in the niceties of their employment, that to find him writing a story of modern stage-life, and using for it--with, as it were, a certain delicate deliberation--phrases peculiar to the jargon of the class of which it treats, gives one a series of small shocks. It is like hearing slang from a Dean. As a matter of fact, though, I was wrong in calling _Brenda Walks On_ a story. It is rather a disquisition about stage people, stage art and life, and anything else whatever upon which Sir FREDERICK wishes to talk at the moment, from the beauties of the North-Eastern coast (the Scarborough part of the book carried me back to the far-off days of _Renunciations_) to the treasures of Hertford House. Even _Brenda's_ chief suitor is capable of breaking off the avowal of his love to deliver a few well-chosen remarks about theatrical rents and the hazards of management. This suitor, _Penfold_, is perhaps the nearest approach to an actual character that the book contains. He was a writer of papers upon the drama of whom the author observes, "With a ready pen, indeed, Heaven forbid that he should have been cursed! It was better to have a careful one, faithfully ordered, allowing him to make sensible utterance of some part of the knowledge and thought that were in him." Which, by a happy coincidence, is exactly my verdict author's method in this graceful causerie.

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_Christina's Son_ (WELLS GARDNER) is a disarming book. It overcomes criticism by the direct simplicity of its attack, in which only later do you begin to suspect a concealed art. Miss W. M. LETTS tells a tale that (you might say) has nothing in it; nothing certainly at all sensational or strikingly original. But this story of a middle-class North-country woman grips the attention, and holds it, by some quality hard to define. _Christina_, as wife of a man she can never greatly love, and, later, as mother of a son whom she adores but only half understands, becomes, for all her commonplace environment, a figure that dwells in the memory because of what you feel to be its absolute truth. The atmosphere of the story is so crystal clear that every detail of its chief characters stands out with the distinctness of a landscape after rain. And because, by all the rules, these characters should be so little interesting, and the very provincial society in which the thirty or so years of the book pass is so entirely undistinguished, you are faintly astonished all the way through (at least I was) at not being bored. I see that one critic has praised a previous story by Miss LETTS for its humour, should not have picked this out as a characteristic of _Christina's Son_. Rather has it a certain gravity and sobriety of aim, which in part explains its appeal; if there is humour it is generally below the surface and never insisted upon. There is a moment when its rather restrained style rises suddenly to rare beauty, where the theme is old age; and throughout there is a maturity of judgment in the writing that will make it perhaps less attractive to the young than to those whose outlook has reached the same stage.

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If I were to give away the plot of Miss MARY L. PENDERED'S _The Secret Sympathy_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL) I think that you would sniff. It is not likely to cause animated discussion in intellectual circles. We are introduced to a girl who, finding herself reduced from affluence to poverty, takes a garage and runs it with success, and we become acquainted with a chauffeur and a peer, and the former turns out to be--but that is just what I am not going to tell you. If you want a book in which the hero is a very perfect gentleman indeed and the villain really is a villain, then here you are. Miss PENDERED'S scheme is not too subtle, but what she has set out to do she has done, and done well. Although her characters play their part in the War, she resists the temptation to smother them with V.C.'s and other decorations, and for this abstinence and for _Miss Chetwynd_, a middle-aged spinster of shrewd sense and humour, I warmly commend her. I confess myself in love with _Miss Chetwynd_ and should dearly like to hear her candid opinion of _The Secret Sympathy_. But I feel sure that, if she smiled a little at the wonderfulness of it all, her final verdict would be as benevolent as mine.

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Mr. RICHARD MAHER'S _The Shepherd of the North_ (MACMILLAN) looks a little like one of those rather elaborate Catholic tracts in form of a novel of which we have so many classic examples. _Mgr. Winthrop_, the Bishop of Alden, way up in the Adirondacks, was indeed a noble old fellow, somewhat given to long speeches, but with a great heart in the right place, and wise and tolerant withal. He was known and loved by the small farmers and lumber-men as _The White Horse Chaplain_ for a deed of valour done in his youth in the Civil War. And he carried that high quality of courage into his work of defending his people against the machinations of the U. & M. Railroad, which swept down upon them and stuck at nothing, not arson on a Teuton scale or judicial murder, to get the prize it was after--valuable iron ore in the hills through which its track ran. However, it was the Bishop's oar, dexterously thrust in, which finally won the victory. There is a point which puzzles me considerably. The crisis of the story turns on the secret of the Confessional. A young man is accused of murder, and the Bishop, his friend, has heard the confession of the real murderer, so that his lips are sealed. But his fiancée also unwittingly overheard the essential of the confession screamed by the dying man. Mr. MAHER seems to think her bound by the same sacred ties as the Bishop, even to the point of allowing her lover to go to the chair because of her silence. But is that sound moral theology? I should doubt it. I ought to add that there's nothing to shock the most sensitive evangelical conscience, and quite a good deal to edify, instruct and entertain.

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Overheard at a fashionable restaurant:--

_1st Guest._ I read in one of the Sunday papers that BENJAMIN FRANKLIN discovered the Daylight Saving Bill by noticing that the sun shines the moment it rises, and not several hours afterwards, as is popularly supposed.

_2nd Guest._ How interesting! By the way, FRANKLIN'S body has never been found since he discovered the North Pole.

_3rd Guest._ No, poor fellow, although STANLEY went in search of him.

_1st Guest (correcting)._ He found him right enough, but FRANKLIN preferred to stop where he was. Rough on STANLEY.

[Transcriber's Note:

Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]