Chapter 2

_Scene_.--A Battalion "Orderly" Room in France during a period of "Rest." Runners arrive breathlessly from all directions bearing illegible chits, and tear off in the same directions with illegible answers or no answer at all. Motor-bicycles snort up to the door and arrogant despatch-riders enter with enormous envelopes containing leagues of correspondence, orders, minutes, circulars, maps, signals, lists, schedules, summaries and all sorts. The tables are stacked with papers; the floor is littered with papers; papers fly through the air. Two type-writers click with maddening insistence in one corner. A signaller buzzes tenaciously at the telephone, talking in a strange language apparently to himself, as he never seems to be connected with anyone else. A stream of miscellaneous persons--quarter-masters, chaplains, generals, batmen, D.A.D.O.S.'s, sergeant-majors, staff-officers, buglers, Maires, officers just arriving, officers just going away, gas experts, bombing experts, interpreters, doctors--drifts in, wastes time, and drifts out again.

Clerks scribble ceaselessly, rolls and nominal rolls, nominal lists and lists. By the time they have finished one list it is long out-of-date. Then they start the next. Everything happens at the same time; nobody has time to finish a sentence. Only a military mind, with a very limited descriptive vocabulary and a chronic habit of self-deception, would call the place orderly.

The Adjutant speaks, hoarsely; while he speaks he writes about something quite different. In the middle of each sentence his pipe goes out; at the end of each sentence he lights a match. He may or may not light his pipe; anyhow he speaks:--

"Where is that list of Wesleyans I made? And what are all those people on the stair? Is that my pencil? Well, they _can't_ be paid. Tell the Marines we have no forms to spare. I cannot get these Ration States to square. The Brigadier is coming round, they say. The Colonel wants a man to cut his hair. I think I _must_ be going mad to-day.

"These silly questions! I shall tell Brigade This office is now closing for repair. They want to know what Mr. Johnstone weighed, And if the Armourer is dark, or fair? I do not know; I cannot say I care. Tell that Interpreter to go away. Where is my signal-pad? I left it there. I think I _must_ be going mad to-day.

"Perhaps I should appear upon parade. Where is my pencil? Ring up Captain Eyre; Say I regret our tools have been mislaid. These companies would make Sir DOUGLAS swear. A is the worst. Oh, damn, is this the _Maire?_ I'm sorry, Monsieur--_je suis désolé_-- But no one's pinched your miserable chair. I think I _must_ be going mad to-day.

ENVOI.

"Prince, I perceive what CAIN'S temptations were, And how attractive it must be to slay. O Lord, the General! This is hard to bear. I think I _must_ be going mad to-day."

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THE MUD LARKS.

If there is one man in France whom I do not envy it is the G.H.Q. Weather Prophet. I can picture the unfortunate wizard sitting in his bureau, gazing into a crystal, _Old Moore's Almanack_ in one hand, a piece of seaweed in the other, trying to guess what tricks the weather will be up to next.

For there is nothing this climate cannot do. As a quick-change artist it stands _sanspareil_ (French) and _nulli secundus_ (Latin).

And now it seems to have mislaid the Spring altogether. Summer has come at one stride. Yesterday the staff-cars smothered one with mud as they whirled past; to-day they choke one with dust. Yesterday the authorities were issuing precautions against frostbite; to-day they are issuing precautions against sunstroke. Nevertheless we are not complaining. It will take a lot of sunshine to kill us; we like it, and we don't mind saying so.

The B.E.F. has cast from it its mitts and jerkins and whale-oil, emerged from its subterranean burrows into the open, and in every wood a mushroom town of bivouacs has sprung up over-night. Here and there amateur gardeners have planted flower-beds before their tents; one of my corporals is nursing some radishes in an ammunition-box and talks crop prospects by the hour. My troop-sergeant found two palm-plants in the ruins of a chateau glass-house, and now has them standing sentry at his bivouac entrance. He sits between them after evening stables, smoking his pipe and fancying himself back in Zanzibar; he expects the coker-nuts along about August, he tells me.

Summer has come, and on every slope graze herds of winter-worn gun-horses and transport mules. The new grass has gone to the heads of the latter and they make continuous exhibitions of themselves, gambolling about like ungainly lambkins and roaring with unholy laughter. Summer has come, and my groom and countryman has started to whistle again, sure sign that Winter is over, for it is only during the Summer that he reconciles himself to the War. War, he admits, serves very well as a light gentlemanly diversion for the idle months, but with the first yellow leaf he grows restless and hints indirectly that both ourselves and the horses would be much better employed in the really serious business of showing the little foxes some sport back in our own green isle. "That Paddy," says he, slapping the bay with a hay wisp, "he wishes he was back in the county Kildare, he does so, the dear knows. Pegeen, too, if she would be hearin' the houn's shoutin' out on her from the kennels beyond in Jigginstown she'd dhrop down dead wid the pleasure wid'in her, an' that's the thrue word," says he, presenting the chestnut lady with a grimy army biscuit. "Och musha, the poor foolish cratures," he says and sighs.

However, Summer has arrived, and by the sound of his cheery whistle at early stables shrilling "Flannigan's Wedding," I understand that the horses are settling down once more and we can proceed with the battle.

If my groom and countryman is not an advocate of war as a winter sport our Mr. MacTavish, on the other hand, is of the directly opposite opinion. "War," he murmured dreamily to me yesterday as we lay on our backs beneath a spreading parasol of apple-blossom and watched our troop-horses making pigs of themselves in the young clover--"war! don't mention the word to me. Maidenhead, Canader, cushions, cigarettes, only girl in the world doing all the heavy paddle-work--that's the game in the good ole summertime. Call round again about October and I'll attend to your old war." It is fortunate that these gentlemen do not adorn any higher positions than those of private soldier and second-lieutenant, else, between them, they would stop the War altogether and we should all be out of jobs.

PATLANDER.

* * * * *

COMMERCIAL CANDOUR.

"---- & Co.

The Leading Jewellery House. Grand Assortment of Cut Glass." _Advt. in Chinese Paper_.

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PICCADILLY.

_Gay shops, stately palaces, bustle and breeze,_ _The whirring of wheels and the murmur of trees;_ _By night or by day, whether noisy or stilly,_ _Whatever my mood is--I love Piccadilly._

Thus carolled FRED LOCKER, just sixty years back, In a year ('57) when the outlook was black, And even to-day the war-weariest Willie Recovers his spirits in dear Piccadilly.

We haven't the belles with their Gainsborough hats, Or the Regency bucks with their wondrous cravats, But now that the weather no longer is chilly; There's much to enchant us in New Piccadilly.

As I sit in my club and partake of my "ration" No longer I'm vexed by the follies of fashion; The dandified Johnnies so precious and silly-- You seek them in vain in the New Piccadilly.

The men are alert and upstanding and fit, They've most of them done or they're doing their bit; With the eye of a hawk and the stride of a gillie They add a new lustre to Old Piccadilly.

And the crippled but gay-hearted heroes in blue Are a far finer product than wicked "old Q," Who ought to have lived in a prison on skilly Instead of a palace in mid Piccadilly.

The women are splendid, so quiet and strong, As with resolute purpose they hurry along-- Excepting the flappers, who chatter as shrilly As parrots let loose to distract Piccadilly.

Thus I muse as I watch with a reverent eye The New Generation sweep steadily by, And judge him an ass or a born Silly Billy Who'd barter the New for the Old Piccadilly.

* * * * *

A CLEARANCE.

"WANTED.--Lady shortly leaving the Colony is desirous of recommending her baby and wash Amahs, also Houseboy."--_South China Morning Post_.

* * * * *

"Though the King's birthday was officially celebrated yesterday, there were no official celebrations."--_Daily Express_.

It seems to have been a case of unconscious celebration.

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"We shall want a name for the American 'Tommies' when they come; but do not call them 'Yankees.' They none of them like it."--_Daily News_.

As a term of distinction and endearment Mr. Punch suggests "Sammies"--after their uncle.

* * * * *

"Petrograd.

The local Committee of the Soldiers' and Workmen's Delegates announces that it will take into its hands effective power at Cronstadt. and that it will not recognise the Provisional Government, and will remove all Government representatives.

This fateful decision was adopted by 21 votes to 40, with eight abstentions."--_Provincial Paper_.

The trouble in Russia just now is the tyranny of the minority.

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ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

_Tuesday, June 5th_.--In listless and dejected mood the House of Commons reassembled after its all-too-brief recess. Members collectively missed their MARK, for Colonel LOCKWOOD, the only popular Food Controller in history, had been summoned upstairs and left the Kitchen Committee to its fate. The shower of Privy Councillorships, baronetcies and knighthoods which had simultaneously descended upon the faithful Commons afforded little compensation for this irreparable loss; and even the sight of the ATTORNEY-GENERAL'S immaculate spats appearing over the edge of the Table was insufficient to dispel the prevailing gloom.

Mr. PEMBERTON-BILLING made a gallant effort to galvanize his colleagues into life. Remembering that it was an air-raid that got him into the House--some people will never forgive the Germans for this--he seldom allows a similar incident to pass without endeavouring to improve the occasion. As his policy of "two bombs to one" failed to intrigue Mr. BONAR LAW he sought to move the adjournment, but when the Question was put only five Members, instead of the necessary forty, rose in its support.

If Sir H. DALZIEL has his way, and the consumer is allowed to purchase his sugar unrefined, the British breakfast will become a most exciting meal. Lice, beetles and, on one occasion, a live lizard have been found in the bags arriving from Cuba. Even with meat at its present price, Captain BATHURST doubts whether such additions to our dietary would be really welcome.

In the pre-historic times before August, 1914, the POSTMASTER-GENERAL was wont to give on the Vote for his department a long and discursive account of its multifarious activities, and to enliven the figures with anecdotes and even with jokes. Mr. ILLINGWORTH knows a better way. With deliberate monotony he reeled off his statistics to a steadily diminishing audience. Only once did he evoke a sign of animation. He has abolished the absurd rule that the person presenting a five-pound note at a post-office should be required to endorse it; and, in defending this momentous change, he remarked that he himself had endorsed many such notes, "but never with my own name." For a moment Members were startled by this cynical admission of something which seemed to their half-awakened intelligence very like a confession of forgery. But the POSTMASTER-GENERAL soon put them to sleep again, and by nine o'clock had got his vote safely through.

_Wednesday, June 6th_.--Nothing short of a revolution, it was supposed, would cause Whitehall to empty its precious pigeon-holes, in which so many millions of pious aspirations and abortive complaints sleep their last sleep. But the War has penetrated even here, and Mr. BALDWIN was able to announce, with a cheerfulness that some of the older officials probably regard as almost indecent, that already a vast quantity of material has gone to the pulping-mill.

In the course of the debate on the Representation of the People Bill, Sir FREDERICK BANBURY explained that he resigned his membership of the SPEAKER'S Conference because he found that he and his party were expected to give up everything and to get nothing in return. If so the Liberals on the Conference were very short-sighted, for a little concession then would have saved them a lot of trouble now. What Sir FREDERICK does not know about the art of Parliamentary obstruction is not worth knowing, and he evidently means to use his knowledge for all it is worth. He even succeeded--a rare triumph--in drafting an instruction to the Committee which passed the SPEAKER'S scrutiny and took a good hour to debate. In vain Sir GEORGE CAVE and Mr. LONG reminded the House that it had already approved the main principles of the Bill. You can't ride a cock-horse when BANBURY'S cross.

Another old hand at the game is Lord HUGH CECIL. His particular grievance against the Bill is, I fancy, that it alters the character of his constituency, and, should it pass, will oblige him to appeal for the votes of callow young Bachelors with horrid Radical notions instead of being able to repose in confidence upon the support of a solid phalanx of clerical M.A.'s. He possesses also an hereditary antipathy to extensions of the franchise. Lord CLAUD HAMILTON must have thought himself back in 1867, listening to Lord CRANBORNE attacking the Reform Bill wherewith DIZZY dished the Whigs. Lord HUGH, like his father, is a master of gibes and flouts and jeers, and used most of the weapons from a well-stocked armoury in an endeavour to drill a fatal hole in the Bill.

At one moment he chaffed the HOME SECRETARY for seeking to turn the House into a Trappist monastery, where Ministers alone might talk and Members must obey; at the next he was reminding the House, on a proposal to raise the age of voters, that a great many of the persons who took part in the massacre of St. Bartholomew were under twenty-two years of age. But though Members listened and laughed they refused, for the most part, to vote with him. The Bill came almost unscathed through the first day of its ordeal in Committee.

_Thursday, June 7th_.--If all the hundred and sixty-eight Questions on the Order Paper had been fully answered the German Government would have learned quite a number of things that it is most anxious to know, for the Pacifist group were full of curiosity regarding the war-aims of the Allies. Several of the most searching inquiries had to be met by such discouraging _formulæ_ as "I have nothing to add to my previous reply," or "The matter is still under consideration."

Mr. SNOWDEN, however, learned from the HOME SECRETARY that the Government, the House and the Country were in full sympathy with the war-policy laid down by the French Government, and that we were prepared to go on fighting until it was achieved. Here is something for his colleagues to tell the Stockholm Conference, if they can get there.

For some occult reason the word "cheese" always excites Parliamentary merriment. Mr. GEORGE ROBERTS'S announcement that the Board of Trade had made arrangements by which a quantity of this commodity would be available for public use next week was greeted with the customary laughter. Upon Army requirements, he added, would depend the quantity to be "released." Colonel YATE was perturbed by this Gorgonzolaesque phrase, and anxiously inquired to what species of cheese it referred.

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CAUTIONARY TALES FOR THE ARMY.

III.

(_Private Whidden, who ate his Iron Rations and came to an untimely end_.)

Private Tom Whidden had a passion For eating of his iron ration-- A thing, you know, which isn't _done_ (Except, just now and then, for fun), Because there is a rule about it And decent people rarely flout it. But Tom was greedy and each day He'd put a tin or two away, Though duty told him, clear and plain, To keep them safe as brewers' grain, For eating _as a last resort_ When eatables were running short. His Corporal said, "My lad, don't do it!" His Sergeant groaned, "I'm _sure_ you'll rue it!" But still he never stopped. At last His Captain heard and stood aghast.... Then he said sternly, "Private Whidden, Really, you know, this is forbidden. Some day, Sir, if you _will_ devour Your ration thus from hour to hour, You'll find yourself in No Man's Land With neither bite nor sup at hand. Yes, when it _is_ your proper fare, Your iron ration won't be there; Then in your hour of bitter need You will be sorry for your greed."

He ceased. But Private Thomas Whidden, Being thus seriously chidden, Said simply (with a Devon burr), "Law bless us! do 'ee zay zo, Zur?" Then with an uncontrolléd passion He went and ate his iron ration.

So, since he chose, from day to-day, Persistently to disobey, As you'd expect, the man is dead, Though not the way his Captain said. The fate of starving out of hand, Or nearly so, in No Man's Land-- Alas! it never came in question. He died of chronic indigestion.

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WITH OR WITHOUT A MEDIUM.

"William Henry Gadd, said to have left Middlesex in 1812 for South America, or anyone acquainted with his whereabouts, will oblige by communicating at first opportunity with H.M. Consul-General, 25 de Mayo 611, this city."--_The Standard_ (_Buenos Aires_).

* * * * *

A correspondent informs us that the male gasworker is familiarly known as "Cokey," and asks us whether the ladies who have recently entered the business ought to be described as "Cokettes." We think it very probable.

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THE GOD-MAKERS.

The financial success of Mr. H.G. WELLS' punctuality and enterprise in looking into the vexed question of the Deity, even in war time, has had the usual effect, and many literary men are feverishly pursuing similar studies. In due course some of these will no doubt take practical shape. Meanwhile it has seemed desirable for a _Punch_ man to make a few inquiries among our leading philosophers and readers of the future with regard to the same engrossing topic. For England will ever be the wonder and despair of other nations in its capacity, no matter with what seriousness its hands are filled, for pursuing controversial distractions.

To run Mr. ARNOLD BENNETT to earth was no easy matter, for in these days he is behind every scene, and no statesman, however new, can get along without his counsel or correction. But, since to the good _Punch_ man difficulties exist only as obstacles of which the circumvention acts as intellectual cocktails or stimuli, the task was accomplished. Mr. BENNETT agreed that the book of the other famous Essex fictionist was a meritorious and ingenious work, but he found it far from exhaustive. The idea of God, he held, still needed handling in a capable efficient way. What was wrong with religion was, he said, its mystery; if only it could be pruned of nonsense and made practical for the man in the street, it might become really useful. He personally had not yet thought finally on the subject of God, having just now more tasks on hand (including a new play and universal supervision) than he could count on the Five Fingers, but directly he had time he meant to attend to the matter and polish it off. It was a case where his intervention was clearly called for, since omniscience could be handled only by omniscience.

The _Punch_ man has, however, to admit himself beaten in the matter of Sir OLIVER LODGE. On inquiring at Birmingham University he was told that the illustrious Principal was absent, no one knew where, but it was believed that he was visiting the higher slopes of Mount Sinai. All that the _Punch_ man could obtain was one of the black velvet skull-caps which the seer wears, but, as it refused to give up any of its secrets, he must confess to failure--at any rate until Sir OLIVER returns.

Being in Brummagem (as it has been wittily called), the _Punch_ man bethought him of the Rev. R.J. CAMPBELL, once the very darling of the new gods--in fact the arch neo-theologian. But Mr. CAMPBELL, erstwhile so articulate and confident, had nothing to say. All he could do was to lock himself for safety in his church and look through the keyhole with his beautiful troubled wistful orbs.

Mr. G.K. CHESTERTON loomed up to a dizzy height amid a cloud of new witnesses. Greeting the _Punch_ man, he laid aside his proofs.

"I was just deleting the abusive epithet 'Lloyd' from all the references to the PREMIER," he said, "but I have a moment for you. I find a moment sufficient time for the assumption of any conviction however lifelong."

The _Punch_ man asked if he had read the Dunmow evangel.

"I have read Mr. WELLS'S book, _God, the Invisible Man_, with the greatest interest," said Mr. CHESTERTON.

The _Punch_ man ventured to correct him. "_God, the Invisible King_," he interposed.

"Very likely," replied the anti-Marconi Colossus. "But what's in a title anyway? Books should not have titles at all, but be numbered, like a composer's operas, Op. 1, Op. 2, and so on."

"Whether or not the opping comes, some of them," said the _Punch_ man, "are certain to be skipped."

The giant was visibly annoyed. "You're not playing the game," he said. "It's I who ought to have said that. Not you. You're only the interviewer. You'd better give it to me anyway."

"And what," the _Punch_ man asked, "are your views respecting God?"

"I consider," he said instantly, "that an honest god's the noblest work of man."

"I felt sure you would," the _Punch_ man replied. "In fact, I had a bet on it."

The Rev. Sir WILLIAM ROBERTSON NICOLL, Editor of _The British Weekly_, said that for many years his paper had supported Providence, to, he believed, their mutual advantage, and it would continue to do so. He personally recognised no need for change. Still, no one welcomed honest analysis more warmly than himself, and he had read Mr. WELLS'S masterpiece with all his habitual avidity and delight.