Chapter 3

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Our Official Pessimists.

From an Admiralty notice:--

"It is to be particularly noted that entries are only being made for 12 years' service, and not for duration of war."--_Evening Paper_.

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"Summoned at Barry for having driven a horse whilst drunk, Antonio Millonas was stated to have narrowly missed a policeman and two children."--_Western Mail_.

We are all in favour of prohibition for horses.

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=IN A GOOD CAUSE.=

The Newport Market Army Training School, Greencoat Place, Westminster, which has for over fifty years been training homeless and destitute boys to become soldiers of the KING, and has sent over two thousand into the Army, is in great need of funds. Mr. Punch cordially supports the appeal of the President of the School, H.R.H. the Duke of CONNAUGHT, who "sincerely hopes the public will generously support an Institution that has for so many years quietly and unobtrusively furnished a Christian home and education to poor and outcast lads, and has supplied the Army with so many good and gallant soldiers."

Donations and inquiries should be addressed to the Secretary, the Rev. H.A. WILSON, 20, Great Peter Street, Westminster, S.W.1.

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A Credit to the Commonwealth.

"COCKATOO, Australian, splendid talker, does not swear."--_Newcastle Evening Chronicle_.

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=THE HAT AND THE VISIT.=

"Francesca," I said, "does my hat really look all right?"

When I put this momentous question we were in a train, being bound on a visit to Frederick at his preparatory school. A sudden doubt had just assailed me as to my presentability. Should I, as a father, be looked upon as a credit or a disgrace to my son? Francesca took some time before she answered my question. Then she spoke.

"Your hat," she said, "is well enough."

"I see what it is," I said; "you think I ought to have worn a top-hat. There are still occasions when a top-hat may, nay, must be worn; and this, you think, is one of them. There are solemnities and venerations that only a top-hat can inspire in the naturally irreverent mind of youth. A father in any other hat is a ridiculously youthful object and has no business to inflict himself on his son. Very well. I would not for worlds spoil Frederick's half-holiday by shaming him in the eyes of his schoolfellows."

"What do you propose to do about it, then? You can't alter your hat now."

"No," I said, "I can't; but I can get out of the train at the next station and go home and leave you in your comparative spickness and your relative spanness to spend your afternoon with the boy. Or, stay, there must be a shop in Belfield where top-hats can be bought. It is a cathedral city and possesses dignitaries of the Church who still wear top-hats, and----"

"But those are special top-hats. You couldn't go to Frederick in a bishop's hat, now could you?"

"No-o-o," I said doubtfully, "perhaps I couldn't. But suppose I wore the gaiters too--wouldn't that make it all right?"

"I should like," she said, "to see Frederick's face on perceiving the new bishop."

"Francesca," I said, "you talk as if no boys ever had bishops for their fathers. Let me assure you, on the contrary, that there are many bishops who have large families of both sexes. I once stayed with a bishop, and I never heard anybody attempt to make a mockery of his gaiters."

"But they were his own. He couldn't be a bishop without them."

"That fact doesn't render them immune from laughter. My present hat, for instance, is my own, and yet you have been laughing at it ever since I called your attention to it."

"Not at all; I have been admiring it. I said it was well enough, and so it is. What more can you want?"

"I only hope," I said, "that Frederick will think so too. It would be too painful to dash the cup of half-holiday joy from a boy's lips by wearing an inappropriate hat."

"You're too nervous altogether about the impression you're going to make on Frederick. Take example by me. I've got a hat on."

"You have," I said fervently. "It has grazed my face more than once."

"It is feeding," she said, "on your damask cheek. But I'm quite calm in spite of it."

"But then," I said, "you never knew Rowell."

"No. Who was he?"

"Rowell," I said, "was a schoolfellow of mine, and he had a father."

"Marvellous! And a mother too, I suppose."

"Yes," I said, "but she doesn't come into the story. Rowell's father had a passion, it appears, for riding, and one dreadful afternoon, when we were playing cricket, he rode into the cricket-field. _He was wearing trousers, and his trousers had rucked up to his knees._ It was a terrific sight, and, though we all pretended not to see and were very sorry for young Rowell, he felt the blow most keenly. I hope my hat won't be like Rowell's father's trousers."

"It isn't a bit like them yet," said Francesca.

R.C.L.

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"Fireman wanted; consuming under 50 tons; wages 30s."

Under the present system of rationing, this demand for moderation does not seem excessive.

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=OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.=

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks_.)

It is my deliberate verdict that Mr. E.F. BENSON is (as my old nurse used to express it) "in league with Somebody he oughtn't." I hope, however, that he will understand this for the extorted compliment that it is, and not magic me into something unpleasant, or (more probably) write another book to prove to my own dissatisfaction that I am everything I least wish to be. That indeed is the gravamen of my charge: the diabolic ingenuity with which he makes not so much our pleasant vices as our little almost-virtues into whips to scourge us with. All this has been wrung from me by the perusal of _Mr. Teddy_ (FISHER UNWIN). Even now I can't make up my mind whether I like it or not. The first half, which might be called a satire on the folly of being forty and not realising it, depressed me profoundly. I need not perhaps enlarge upon the reason. Later, Mr. BENSON made a very clever return upon the theme; and, with a touch of real beauty, brought solace to poor _Mr. Teddy_ and consolation to the middle-aged reader. I need give you only a slight indication of the plot, which is simplicity itself. Into the self-contained little community of a provincial society, where to have once been young is to retain a courtesy title to perpetual youth, there arrives suddenly the genuine article, a boy and girl still in the springtime of life, by contrast with whom the preserved immaturity of _Mr. Teddy_ and his partner, _Miss Daisy_, is shown for an artificial substitute. Baldly stated, the thesis sounds cynical and a little cruel; actually, however, you will here find Mr. BENSON in a kindlier mood than he sometimes consents to indulge. He displays, indeed, more than a little fondness for his disillusioned hero; the fine spirit with which _Mr. Teddy_ faces at last the inevitable is a sure proof of the author's sympathy.

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You will hardly have traversed the passages of our underground railway system without being hurriedly aware in passing of a picture in reds and browns, representing a faun-like figure piping to an audience of three rather self-conscious rabbits. This pleasing group does not portray an actual scene from _Autumn_ (LANE), but is rather to be taken as symbolic of the atmosphere of Miss MURIEL HINE'S latest book. The faun, I imagine, stands for _Rollo_, the middle-aged lover of the country, into whose happy life other, more human, loves break with such devastation. What the rabbits mean is a more difficult problem. I jest; but as a matter of fact I should be the first to admit that Miss HINE has written a story that, despite a certain crudity of colouring, is both unconventional and alive. The attitude of the characters towards their parents, for example, is at least original. _Deirdre_, the heroine, frankly despised her mother, to whom she owed a marriage with the man whom she hated. The gift of a country cottage enabled her to escape from him to rabbits (figurative) and the simpler life. There, however, she fell in with _Rollo_, who loved her at sight, and whose daughter, _Hyacinth_, adored her father, but quite blandly deceived him about her own amorous adventures. A pretty tangle, you observe, and I am not sure that I can wholly acquit the author of some cowardice in her manner of cutting it. But undoubtedly _Autumn_ remains a story to read, and remember.

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Since Mr. H. PERRY ROBINSON'S name must be familiar to most of us by now as that of one of the very select company of journalists who monopolise seats at the Front, one naturally turns with interest from his daily despatches to a sustained narrative. His account of last year's battle of the Somme, which he names _The Turning Point_ (HEINEMANN), is as lively and vigorous a recital as can well be imagined of events hardly the less thrilling because already well-known. Although he disclaims expert knowledge of strategies, he is at least uncommonly well qualified to appraise the things he saw. "Before July, 1916, our Army," he says, "was like a small hoy hoping to grow up and be big enough to lick a bully some day. Told to attack him before he felt sure of his own strength, the small boy would not have been sorry to wait a bit longer, but the pressure against Verdun and against the Russians had to be relieved, and so with steadily increasing skill and confidence the attack was made, and day after day fresh units proved themselves more than a match for the enemy." The result was a series of victories--Mametz, Contalmaison, Pozières, Guillemont, Thiepval, Beaumont-Hamel--and the writer is able to associate with each immortal name the regiments there engaged, all heroes, for "there were no stragglers." Indeed, if there is a weakness in the book it is that the insistent recording of the individual heroism of different battalions tends to become monotonous. But what a fault! It is a monotony of British valour crowned by a monotony of British triumph.

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A point that will hardly avoid your notice in the plot of _In the Night_ (LONGMANS), by Mr. R. GORELL BARNES (now Lord GORELL), is the exiguous part played in its elucidation by the Great Investigator, who (as usual) happens to be on the spot and able to place his services at the disposal of the local authorities. It is, I suppose due to the Sherlockian tradition these unhappy persons, the local detectives, must always be supplemented by a superior and high-handed expert. I think, from his preface, that the author does not quite share my own taste in such matters, since he promises that his Investigator shall keep no secrets and observe nothing withheld from the eye of the reader. So faithful is the author to this undertaking that he practically keeps his expert hanging about with the unenlightened crowd, while another character, in light-hearted amateur enthusiasm, does all the work. But of course, in a tale of this kind, the only thing that really matters is the one question of spotting the criminal, or who killed Cock Robin. Naturally I am not going to spoil your fun over this by any officious whisperings. As you probably know, the one safe rule in such matters is to concentrate upon Cæsar's wife; and even in repeating this antique maxim I may have betrayed too much. Forget it, and you may find what happened _In the Night_ a sufficiently intriguing problem to provide a pleasant bedtime entertainment that will leave your subsequent repose unimpaired.

In deciding to add to what one may call the fiction of Metropolitan Adventures, whereof _The New Arabian Nights_ may be regarded as both the model and the prototype, the author of _The London Nights of Belsize_ (LANE) has undertaken a task which is both easy and difficult--easy because a sophisticated style and a lively imagination are the only essential qualifications, and difficult because it involves competition with a perfect galaxy of distinguished authors. There is always room for more of it, however, and, if Mr. VERNON RENDALL disappoints us, it is not merely because the standard has been set unusually high. His style is smooth and assured, and, though somewhat lacking in humour, his touch is light and pleasing. He begins well and interests us in his principal character so that we look forward with zest to the adventures of a personality which is everything that this sort of fiction requires. Here unfortunately the matter ends. _Belsize_, who promises so much, has no adventures worth the name. It is true that he rescues the _Prince of Mingrelia_, runs to earth a gang of highly-educated and æsthetic criminals, and does other things that we properly expect such men to do. But there is no excitement about his methods. Not to put too fine a point on it, the author of _Belsize_ lacks the true imagination that makes the unreal seem real--a very different thing from the imagination which merely clothes realities in a garment of mystery. Notwithstanding this defect, _The London Nights of Belsize_ should wile away an hour or so very pleasantly.

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If _A Regimental Surgeon in War and Prison_ (MURRAY) does not create so profound an impression as it would have done two years ago, the reason must be that our capacity for disgust at Hunnish cruelty is exhausted by the demands already made upon it. Captain DOLBEY was in the Mons retreat and assisted at what he calls "the Miracle of the Marne," and in writing of these events he shows a real knowledge of both friend and foe. Taken prisoner under circumstances entirely creditable to himself, he saw the inside of German prison-camps, and suffered the indignities and horrors for which these places have so justly become infamous. His experiences are described with an almost judicial calmness. In one case of childish revenge I trust that the sufferers were sustained by a sense of humour. When the picture of a "Prussian family having its morning hate" appeared, the prisoners were punished by having their deck-chairs confiscated. Mr. Punch, while deeply regretting this vicarious expiation of his offence, cannot help deriving some solace from the thought that he succeeded in penetrating the hide of these Teuton pachyderms. When, for a change, Captain DOLBEY received a kindness from German hands he acknowledges it frankly. He also makes one or two suggestions which I sincerely hope will be considered by those who are in a position to deal with them. Altogether an illuminating book.

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