Chapter 2

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"Classical Master for endurance of war wanted."--_Scotsman_.

Humane letters are very sustaining.

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"MARCHING ON!

"The council of the Chippewa tribe of North American Indians, by a two to one majority, have accorded the suffrage to their squaws."--_The Vote_.

As SHAKSPEARE was on the point of saying, "Suffrage is the badge of all our tribe."

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THE SPOIL-SPORT.

["The Town Clerk of Colwyn Bay informs us that the fish caught there the other day by two youths was a dogfish and not a shark, as reported, and that its size was much overestimated."--_Manchester Guardian_.]

O gallant youths of Colwyn Bay, With what unmitigated rapture Did I peruse but yesterday The story of your famous capture!

Alone ye did it, or at least 'Twas next to being single-handed; No other helped to catch the beast, No strength but yours the monster landed.

But now comes in the cold Town Clerk, Who has meticulously stated It was a dogfish--not a shark-- In size much overestimated.

So ye intrepid striplings, who Made all your school-fellows feel humble, Are mulcted of your honours due By an officious Cambrian Bumble.

But, though your generous hearts be sore, Take comfort: all the true patricians Of intellect have been at war With frigid, rigid statisticians.

I too have suffered from the rule Of sceptics, icily pedantic, Who blighted, ere I went to school, My dreams when they were most romantic.

For once, when swinging on a gate, With hands that doubtless daubed it jammily, I saw a lion, sure as fate, And fled indoors to tell the family.

But when I told them, all agog, My aunt, a lean and acid spinster, Snapped out "the doctor's yellow dog"; And nothing I could say convinced her.

"'Twas ever thus from childhood's hour--" Since HOMER, HANNIBAL or STRONGBOW, Men of outstanding mental power Are charged with drawing of the long bow.

Great travellers--not your GRANTS or SPEKES-- Who lived with dwarfs, or tamed gorillas, Or scaled imaginary peaks Upon the backs of pink chinchillas,

Or in some languorous lagoon Bestrode the awe-inspiring turtle, Or in the Mountains of the Moon Saw rocs athwart the zenith hurtle--

All, all have had their fame aspersed By rude Town Clerks or senior wranglers; But those who have been treated worst Are the heroic tribe of anglers.

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THE NEW GOLF.

"Let's go and play the new golf," said James.

Now as I understand it there are four kinds of golf. First, the ordinary golf, as played by all people who are not quite right in their heads; second, the ideal golf, to be played by me (but not till I get to heaven) on a bowling-green with a croquet-mallet, the holes being sixty-six feet apart and both cutting-in and going-through strictly prohibited; third, the absurd golf, as played by James in pre-war days on his private nine-hole course; and fourth, it seemed, the new golf, such as James would be liable to create during a recovery from shell-shock.

James is one of those people who, possessing what _Country Life_ would call one of the lesser country-houses of England, has an indeterminate bit of ground beyond the garden, called, according to choice of costume, "the rock-garden," "the home-farm," "the grouse moor," or "no rubbish may be shot here." James calls his own particular nettle-bed (or slag heap) "the golf-course."

When anyone went to stay with James, he was adjured to "bring-your-golf-clubs-old-man-as-I-can-give -you-a-bit-of-a-game-on-my-own-course-only-a-nine-hole-one-you understand." And when James went--far more willingly--to stay opposite the Germans, until an interesting visit was short-circuited by shell-shock, he showed himself so wonderfully at home in dug-outs and shell-holes and mine-craters, so completely undisturbed by the weariful lack of any green on the course over which his battalion was playing, that he rose from Second-Lieutenant to Lieutenant with almost unheard-of celerity in the space of two years and nine months. And now the absurd figure-of-eight nine-hole course, the third hole of which was also the seventh, and the first the ninth, had been complicated into a war kitchen-garden, and James, bored with ordinary difficulties and discomforts, had evolved the new golf.

"Come on," said he, burning with the zeal of a martyr-burner, "I'll show you the ground."

"Can't I see it by standing up in the hammock?" I protested.

We approached the dark demesne, which was now pretty decently clothed with potatoes, artichokes, rhubarb, raspberry-canes, marrows and even cucumber-frames. In the midst was a large open cask which filled itself by a pipe from a former six-inch water-hazard. Here James began to propound the mysteries.

"The game," he said, "is a mixture of the old golf, tiddleywinks, ludo and the race game."

"Not spillikins?" I protested. "A game I rather fancy myself at."

"For your information, please," continued James in his kindliest military manner, "I may remark that a mashie is the club mostly used--except when it is necessary to keep low between, say, two clumps of potatoes."

"So as not to rouse the wireworms," I nodded. "Yes--go on."

"The conditions of the game are governed by the necessity of paying due respect to the vegetable hazards. There is only one hole on the course."

"If you remember," I said, "I told you long ago that that was all there was room for, but you would persist in making it nine."

"The hole," said James, "is the water-butt. You have to get into that. By the way, your balls are floaters, I hope?"

"Only six of 'em," I said. "However, I dare say you won't mind if I grub up a few potatoes to carry on with afterwards. So we hole out in the water-butt? That's the tiddleywinks part of it, I suppose? Go on."

"There are various penalties," he explained. "If you get among the potatoes, you add ten to your strokes and start again at the tee. If you are bunkered in the raspberries, you lift out--"

"Step back three paces out of sight and pick one over your left shoulder?" I inquired hopefully. "I shall often find myself in the raspberry hazard."

"And if," concluded James sternly, "you are so clumsy as not to avoid the cucumber-frames--"

"Say no more," I begged. "I understand. I shall ask for the time-table, shake hands, thank you for a most delightful visit, and express my regrets that any little _contretemps_ should have arisen to hasten my departure."

"--you add fifty to your strokes. Five for the marrows and the rhubarb--in each case returning to the tee."

"And the artichokes," I asked, surveying a thick forest of them guarding the right flank of the water-butt--"what is their market value?"

"No penalty," said James grimly, "except staying there till you get out."

"One last piece of information. What is bogey for this hole?"

"About two hundred, I think," said James; "but no doubt you'll lower it."

"I don't know," I replied. "That's about my usual at the old game." And therewith I made my tee, drove and went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf. * * * * * After hoeing the vegetables with a mashie for a hot two hours, I fought my way out of the rhubarb on all fours, with a golf-ball between my teeth, and then strode doggedly back to the tee and drove into the virgin artichoke forest. While I toyed there with the sub-soil, the unwearied James went to earth among the marrows. Hastily I heeled my ball into the ground (to be retrieved by James months later and announced as a curious scientific result of growing artichokes on a golf course), uttered a cry of triumph, and strolled out into the open.

"A hundred and seventy-nine. My game, I think," I announced.

James extricated himself and walked with me to the butt.

"Hullo!" I said, "it's sunk. Thought it was a floater. It ought to be for a half-crown ball."

"You mustn't lose it," said James suspiciously. "Well let off the water and get it out."

"No, no," I protested. "It's not one that I really valued. Oh, very well," I added indifferently, feeling in my pocket for a non-floater.

James stooped to open the tap, and I popped the new ball in unobtrusively.

It floated. And the next instant James stood up and saw it.

After that of course there was nothing left to do but to ask for the time-table, shake hands, thank James for a most delightful visit, and express my regrets that any little _contretemps...._

W. B.

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"----'s new Pattern Books of WALLPAPERS will be sent on loan free of charge.

"N.B.-- ----'s use adhesive paste, which has been expressly prepared to conform with the Food Controller's regulations."

_Advt. in Evening Paper_.

So it is no use waylaying the paper-hanger on the chance of getting a free meal.

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ANSWER TO CORRESPONDENT.

_"Anti-Reprisal."_--If you are out walking, and enemy aeroplanes are dropping bombs on your side of the street, it is advisable to cross over to the other side. Never shake your umbrella at the enemy 'planes. A taxi-driver might think you were signalling to him.

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Some of our street urchins are quite bucking up in their education. The other day a small boy called out to a Frenchman, "Pourquoi n'êtes-vous pas en bleu? _Slackeur!_"

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"Unique Old-World Cottage (big), about 30 min. door to West End, yet rural seclusion; frequent express trains, last 12 p.m.; nothing like it so close town; suit antique lover."

_Observer_.

This should make a beautiful retreat for an elderly _Lothario's_ declining years.

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"The Basement Tea Room is near the Boot Dept., where Afternoon Teas at moderate prices are obtainable."--_Advt. in Evening Paper_.

Very _à propos--des bottes_.

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THE BOMBER GIPSY.

Come, let me tell the oft-told tale again Of that strange Tyneside grenadier we had, Whom none could quell or decently constrain, For he was turbulent and sometimes bad, Yet, stout of heart, he dearly loved to fight, And spoke his fellows on a gusty night In some high barn, where, huddled in the straw, They watched the cheap wicks gutter on the shelf, How he was irked with discipline and law, And would fare forth to battle by himself.

This said, he left them and returned no more; But whispers passed from Vimy to Verdun, Where'er the fields ran thickliest with gore, Of some stray bomber that belonged to none, But none more fierce or flung a fairer bomb, Who ran unscathed the gamut of the Somme And followed Freyberg up the Beaucourt mile With uncouth cries and streaming muddy hair; But after, when they sought his name and style And would have honoured him--he was not there.

But most he loved to lie upon Lorette And, couched on cornflowers, gaze across the lines At Vimy's heights--we had not Vimy yet-- Pale Souchez's bones and Lens among the mines, The tall pit-towers and dusky heaps of slag, Until, like eagles on the mountain-crag By strangers stirred, with hoarse indignant shrieks Gunners emerged from some deep-delvéd lair To chase the intruder from their sacred peaks And cast him down to Ablain St. Nazaire.

And rumour said he roamed the rearward ways In quiet seasons when no battle brewed; The transport, homing through the evening haze, Had seen and carried him, and given him food; And he would leave them at Bethune canteen Or some hot drinking-house at Noeux-les-Mines, Where he would sit with wine and eggs and bread Till the swart minions of the A.P.M. Stole in and called for him, but found him fled Out at the back. He was too much for them.

Too much. And surely thou shalt e'er be so; No hungry discipline shall starve thy soul; Shalt freely foot it where the poppies blow, Shalt fight unfettered when the cannon roll, And haply, Wanderer, when the hosts go home, Thou only still in Aveluy shalt roam, Haunting the crumbled windmill at Gavrelle And fling thy bombs across the silent lea, Drink with shy peasants at St. Catherine's Well And in the dusk go home with them to tea.

A. P. H.

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ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

_Monday, August 13th_.--In a certain political club there used, before the War, to be a popular pick-me-up compounded of a little whisky, a little Angostura and a good deal of soda-water, and known after its inventor as "a Henderson." In one respect the speech explaining his resignation which the right hon. Member for Barnard Castle delivered this afternoon resembled this eponymous beverage, for it was decidedly effervescent. But the other ingredients were wrongly apportioned--too much of the bitters and not enough of the mellowing spirit.

His initial mistake was not realising in time that, as Mr. ASQUITH put it, a man cannot permanently divide himself into watertight compartments. As member of the War Cabinet and Secretary of the Labour Party, he seems to have resembled one of those twin salad bottles from which oil and vinegar can be dispensed alternately but not together. The attempt to combine the two functions could only end, as it began, in a double fiasco.

It is fortunate for the Ministry of Munitions that it possesses a spokesman so bland and imperturbable as Sir WORTHINGTON EVANS. In successive answers he informed the House that near Birmingham the Ministry was evicting 130 allotment holders on the eve of their harvest, in order to build a new factory; and that simultaneously it was abandoning in the West of England the site of another gigantic factory, on which a cool million had already been spent. Coming from almost any other Minister this amazing example of how not to do it would have raised a storm of supplemental inquiries, if not a motion for the adjournment. But the House accepted Sir WORTHINGTON'S calm and matter-of-fact narration as quietly as if it were the last word in efficiency and coordination.

I was a little premature last week in assuming that Mr. MACCALLUM SCOTT had been silenced by his appointment as Mr. CHURCHILL'S private secretary. A long question to the Board of Trade, on the subject of horse-hides, followed by a series of supplementaries delivered with his customary emphasis, showed that he is not yet resigned to his muzzle. He is not, however, entirely oblivious of the customary etiquette in this matter, for he recited his catechism from the third bench behind Ministers, and only when it was over descended to the second bench, where private secretaries most do congregate.

_Tuesday, August 14th_.-Mr. KING has a legitimate grievance against the Government spokesmen. Two Nationalist Members having been allowed to go to the United States to collect funds for their party, he asked yesterday whether he too would be permitted to proceed abroad on a similar mission. Mr. BONAR LAW, with his habitual courtesy, replied that he, personally, would not offer any objection. But this afternoon, on putting an almost identical question to Lord ROBERT CECIL, Mr. KING was informed, with a touch of _brusquerie_, that "there are some people to whom we should not think of granting a passport." He cannot reconcile these replies, which seem to him to afford convincing proof that the Government does not know its own mind.

The Ministry of Munitions, In order to cater for the spiritual needs of the new population at Gretna, has simultaneously provided sites for the Church of Scotland, the Church of England, the Roman Catholics and the Congregationalists. The local blacksmith is said to be aggrieved by all this ecclesiastical rivalry.

The HOME SECRETARY has determined to put a stop to the practice of whistling for taxicabs in London. It is suggested that he would confer a still greater boon on his fellow-townsmen if he would provide a few more taxis for them not to whistle for.

Mr. PETO complained once more of the refusal of the War Office to employ "manipulative surgeons" in the Army, and called in aid the testimony of Mr. HODGE, the Minister of Labour, as a proof of Mr. BARKER'S miraculous powers. Sir WATSON CHEYNE, the newest Member of the House, pointed out that unfortunately all bone-setters were not BARKERS; and, fortified by this expert opinion, Mr. MACPHERSON declined to say more than that private soldiers might go to these unconventional practitioners at their own risk.

_Wednesday, August 15th_.--Taking the view that a Corn Production Bill was intended to produce corn, Lord CHAPLIN made an effort to secure that the bounties should be paid in accordance with the crops harvested and not upon the acreage sown. But the Government, unwilling to risk a quarrel with the other House at this late period of the Season, declined to accept the amendment. The bounties therefore will fall, like the rain, upon good and bad land alike, though in the interests of the general taxpayer I trust not quite so heavily.

To take down the Ladies' Grille, Sir ALFRED MONO informed the House, would only cost a matter of five pounds. All the same I think there was some disappointment in certain quarters, including the gilded cage itself, that this momentous question should be disposed of without debate. Several sparkling orations, teeming with wit and persiflage, were nipped in the bud. A score of ungallant fellows, including several whom I should have diagnosed as ladies' men, opposed the removal, but they were outnumbered eight to one.

Mr. WALTER LONG introduced a Bill to enable the Government to prospect for oil in the United Kingdom. If this should necessitate the appointment of a Controller of Bores he will find abundance of work.

Contrary to expectation Mr. CHURCHILL succeeded in piloting the Munitions of War Bill through its remaining stages in double-quick time. Its progress was facilitated by his willingness to abolish the leaving-certificate, which a workman hitherto had to procure before changing one job for another. Having had unequalled experience in this respect he is convinced that the leaving-certificate is a useless formality.

_Thursday, August 16_.--Owing to the House meeting at noon the usual time-limit for Questions did not apply. Messrs. PRINGLE and HOGGE were especially active. With a meaning glance in their direction the HOME SECRETARY, replying to a complaint of Mr. GULLAND that the representation of the Northern Kingdom would not be increased by the Representation of the People Bill, observed that he saw no sufficient reason for extending the number of Scottish Members.

Food-stocks going up, thanks to the energy of the farmers and the economy of consumers; German submarines going down, thanks to the Navy; Russia recovering herself; Britain and France advancing hand-in-hand on the Western Front, and our enemies fumbling for peace--that was the gist of the message with which the PRIME MINISTER sped the parting Commons. But, fearing perhaps that he might have made them unduly optimistic, he concluded with a warning that not until next year could we expect to reap the fruits of our labours.

An attempt by Messrs. MACDONALD and SNOWDEN to keep the Stockholm fires burning quickly fizzled out. Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITHS mocked at the claim of those elegant doctrinaires to speak for British Labour, and Mr. BONAR LAW told them frankly that the Government had no intention of letting them go to Stockholm to chat with our enemies.

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"Neu propius tectis taxum sine."

_Vergil: Georg. IV. 47._

Do not signal for a taxi near houses.

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WAR ECONOMY

"The Federated Chamber of Court Dressmakers of Paris has informed the Government that for the winter season 1917-18 the length employed for woollen costumes will not exceed 4-1/2 in."--_Yorkshire Evening News_.

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From the report of a motoring accident:--

"The car pulled up in about a year and a half."--_Kentish Mercury_.

Quicker than the War, anyhow.

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From an article headed "Exclusive War Information":--

"Vertical parallel Lines that do not look so--an optical Illusion almost as curious as that which makes Soldiers invisible when dressed in Combinations of bright Colours."

_Popular Science Siftings._

We do not think our contemporary ought to give away military secrets like this.

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POLITICAL PICK-ME-UPS.

Recent revelations as to the way in which our leading Statesmen keep themselves fit have been almost entirely concerned with their physical recreations. Further investigations make it clear that they owe their fitness quite as much to diet, to alternating one form of brain-work with another or to the consolations of music.

Thus Mr. BALFOUR, who has little time for golf nowadays, finds his most refreshing recreation in reading the speeches of Lord NORTHCLIFFE, co-ordinating them with those of BURKE and PERICLES, and setting them to music in the style of HANDEL, his favourite composer.

Lord RHONDDA finds his chief solace in gratifying his literary tastes. In philosophy he is at present a convinced Rationalist. He is devoted to the study of BACON, but not averse from the lighter sort of fiction, having a special preference for cheerful stories published in a cereal form.

The PRIME MINISTER, it may not be generally known, recruits his energies by frequent perusal of the plays of SHAKSPEARE. At present he is conducting a correspondence with Sir SIDNEY LEE and Professor GOLLANCZ on the esoteric significance of _Labour's Love's Lost_.

Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL is a voracious novel-reader of catholic tastes. Just now he is revelling in _Called Back_ and _The House on the Marsh_, which are being read aloud to him by his private secretary.

Mr. ARTHUR PONSONBY, M.P., the Democratic Controller, is a confirmed fruitarian, and attributes his robust health to a diet of Morella cherries and Carlsbad plums, washed down with Stockholm tar-water.

Mr. JOHN BURNS, who happily describes himself as "a dormant volcano" has of late found an agreeable stimulant in the performance of solos on the muted first violin.

Lastly, Mr. LEO MAXSE keeps himself keyed up to concert pitch by coining new nicknames for Lord HALDANE. The list already extends to four figures.

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