Chapter 3

A happy thought to prepare the new voters for taking the plunge.

* * * * *

"The members of the Cabinet occupied specially reserved seats in the choir and lectern, where also the Lord Mayor was seated."--_Scotsman_.

A little hard on the eagle.

* * * * *

From a cinema advertisement:--

"Actual Scenes of our Local Charming Cheddar Valley and the Beautiful West of England Coast Scenery, also predicting those Glorious Sunset Scenes that made Sir Alfred Turner 'famous.'"--_West Country Paper_.

The General _will_ be pleased.

* * * * *

"To-day the weather has cleared, but the record according to a correspondent who, signing himself the 'oldest inhabitant,' has recently written to the press, stating that in 1178 there was snow on Simla on 14th April, has now been easily beaten."--_Rangoon Times_.

The oldest inhabitant, however, is still undefeated.

* * * * *

MY CUTHBERT.

For months I had been chasing Cuthbert. I had a store of withering phrases burning to be poured over his unmentionable head. Last Tuesday my opportunity arrived.

A stranger was sitting comfortably in a deck-chair watching the vacant courts at the tennis club. His keen bronzed face and his obviously athletic body, clothed in white flannel, brought back to me the far days when the sharp clean crack in the adjoining field told of a loose one which had been got away square.

I looked at him again and thought how glad he must be to get into mufti for a few days. I tell you this to show how unprejudiced I was. The only other signs of life were the two super-aborigines who inhabit the croquet patch and detest all other mankind. I approached one of them warily and asked a question. He regarded me with a bilious and suspicious eye.

"Nothing whatever to do with the Army," he snapped, and a Prussian-blue opponent was smacked off into an arid and hoopless waste.

"Ah!" I exclaimed, "then he's only a rabbit after all."

The old thing gave me an unfriendly glance and then missed his hoop badly. I strolled across and sat down beside the newcomer. He smiled at me in a frank and disarming manner.

"What do you think of our courts?" I said by way of a start.

"Top-hole," he replied; "I'm looking forward to some jolly games on 'em."

His obvious disregard of perspective annoyed me. In our village, tennis is now played for hygienic reasons only.

"I'm afraid we can't offer you much of a game," I said. "You see there's a war on, and--but perhaps I can fix up a single for you after tea with old Patterby. I believe he was very hot stuff in the seventies."

"That's very good of you. I expect he'll knock my head off; I'm no use at the game yet."

He spoke as though an endless and blissful period of practice was in front of him.

"I suppose you'll be going back soon?"

"Back where?"

"I mean your leave will be up."

"Oh, I'm out of a job just now."

So it was genuine blatant indifference. I looked round for something with which to slay him.

"I wonder," he said thoughtfully, "if I shall ever find my tennis legs again."

"Have you lost them?" I asked sarcastically.

"I'm afraid so--er--that is, of course, only one of them really."

"Only one of them?" I repeated vaguely.

"Yes, Fritzie got it at Jutland; but these new mark gadgets are top-hole. I can nearly dance the fox-trot with mine already."

He stretched out the gadget in question and patted it affectionately.

The ensuing moment I count as the worst one I have ever known. I had forgotten the Navy. My only excuse is that nowadays, owing to its urgent and unadvertised affairs, we seldom have an opportunity in our village of meeting the Senior Service. But I feel convinced that the irascible Methuselah on the croquet ground was purposely and maliciously guilty of _suppressio veri_.

* * * * *

* * * * *

"Wanted, good Man, to cut, make, and trim specials."--_Yorkshire Paper._

In Yorkshire the new policeman's lot doesn't seem to be a very happy one.

* * * * *

HEART-TO-HEART TALKS.

(_The German CROWN PRINCE and Ex-King CONSTANTINE._)

_Crown Prince_. My poor old TINO, you are certainly not looking yourself. Have a drink?

_Tino._ No, thank you. I really don't feel up to it.

_C. P._ But that's the moment of all others when you ought to take one. It's good stuff too--bubbly wine out of the cellar of one of my French châteaux. Come, I'll pour you out a glass.

_Tino._ Well, if I must I must (_drinks_). Yes, there's no fault to be found with it.

_C. P._ You're looking better already. Now you can tell me all about it.

_Tino_ (_bitterly_). Oh, there's not much to tell, except that I was lured on by the promise of help, and when the crisis came there was no help, and so I had to go.

_C. P._ (_humming an air_).

And so, and so He had, he had to go.

_Tino_. I beg your pardon.

_C. P._ Sorry, old man, but the words fitted into the tune so nicely I really couldn't resist trying it. Fire ahead.

_Tino_. I said, I think, that I was promised help.

_C. P._ Yes, you said that all right.

_Tino_. And I added that there was no help when the trouble came.

_C. P._ You said "crisis," not "trouble," but we won't insist on a trifle like that. Who was the rascal who broke his promise and refused to help you?

_Tino_. You know well enough that it was your most gracious father.

_C.P._ What! The ALL-HIGHEST! The INMOSTLY BELOVED! The BEYOND-ALL-POWERFUL! Was it really he? And you believed him, did you? What a cunning old fox it is, to be sure.

_Tino_. You permit yourself to speak very lightly of the AUGUST ONE, who also happens to be your father.

_C. P._ To tell you the truth, I don't take him as seriously as he takes himself. Nobody could.

_Tino_. After what has happened I certainly shall not again. It's entirely owing to him that I've lost my kingdom and that the hateful VENIZELOS is back in Athens and that ALEXANDER is seated on my throne. If your beloved father had only left me alone I should have worried through all right.

_C. P._ I always tell him he tries to do too much, but he's so infatuated with being an Emperor that there's no holding him. You know he's absolutely convinced that he and the Almighty are on special terms of partnership.

_Tino_. I've done a bit myself in that line and I know it doesn't pay.

_C. P._ I daresay I shall do it when my time comes.

_Tino_. If it ever comes.

_C. P._ If it depended on me alone things would go all right. I'm told the people like me, and even the Socialists swear by me.

_Tino_. How can you believe such nonsense? I tried to act on that principle and here I am. And poor Russian NICKIE has had an even worse fall--all through believing he had the people on his side.

_C. P._ Well, but I _know_ they're all fond of me; but my All-Highest One may get knocked out before I get my chance, and may carry me down with him.

_Tino_. Well, we must try to bear up, even if he should go the way NICKIE has gone. In the meantime the War doesn't look particularly promising, does it?

_C. P._ It certainly doesn't; and the Americans will be at our throats directly. Do you know, I never thought very much of HINDENBURG.

_Tino_. I suppose you know someone who is younger and could do it much better.

* * * * *

* * * * *

"The difference between the classical Arabic and the colloquial is far greater than that between the Greek of Cicero and the Greek of, let us say, M. Gounaris."--_The Near East_.

Of course there is also the difference of accent. CICERO spoke Greek with a slight Roman accent and M. GOUNARIS speaks it with a strong German one.

* * * * *

"Two van-loads of shrapnel bullets were stopped by detectives in Prospect Street, Rotherhithe."--_Morning Paper_.

Tough fellows, these detectives. Stopping a single bullet would put most men out of action.

* * * * *

"Wanted, Cottage or two Double-bedded Rooms, in country river, 20-30 miles from Birmingham, first fortnight of August."--_Daily Post (Birmingham)_.

So convenient for friends to drop in.

* * * * *

"If the latest air raid does not make the British bull-dog show his talons in a way that we have up till now wished he might never do, well nothing will."--_Berwick Journal_.

With his new pedal equipment the British bull-dog should give the German eagle pause.

* * * * *

We are asked to state that a recently published work on _Beds and Hunts_ (METHUEN) is not a companion-volume to _Minor Horrors of War_.

* * * * *

TO THE MEN WHO HAVE DIED FOR ENGLAND.

All ye who fought since England was a name, Because Her soil was holy in your eyes; Who heard Her summons and confessed Her claim, Who flung against a world's time-hallow'd lies The truth of English freedom--fain to give Those last lone moments, careless of your pain, Knowing that only so must England live And win, by sacrifice, the right to reign-- Be glad, that still the spur of your bequest Urges your heirs their threefold way along-- The way of Toil that craveth not for rest, Clear Honour, and stark Will to punish wrong! The seed ye sow'd God quicken'd with His Breath; The crop hath ripen'd--lo, there is no death!

* * * * *

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

_Marmaduke_ (HEINEMANN) has this peculiarity, that the title rôle is by no means its most important or interesting character. Indeed it might with more propriety have been called _Marrion_, since hers is not only the central figure in the plot, but emphatically the one over which Mrs. F. A. Steel has expended most care and affection. Moreover the untimely death of _Marmaduke_ leaves _Marrion_ to carry on the story for several chapters practically single-handed. I am bound to say, however, that at no stage did she get much help from her colleagues, all of whom--the gouty old father and his intriguing wife, the faithful servant, even debonair _Marmaduke_ himself--bear a certain air of familiarity. But if frequent usage has something lessened their vitality, _Marrion_ is a living and credible human being, whether as daughter of a supposed valet, adoring from afar the gay young ensign, or as the unacknowledged wife of _Marmaduke_ and mother of his child, or later as an army nurse amid the horrors of Crimean mismanagement. Later still, when the long arm of coincidence (making a greater stretch than I should have expected under Mrs. Steel's direction) brought _Marrion_ to the bedside of her parent in a hospital tent, and converted her into a Polish princess, I lost a little of my whole-hearted belief in her actuality. There are really two parts to the tale--the Scotch courtship, with its intrigues, frustrated elopements, _et hoc genus omne_; and the scenes, very graphically written, of active service at Varna and Inkerman. I will not pretend that the two parts are specially coherent; but at least Mrs. Steel has given us some exceedingly interesting pictures of a period that our novelists have, on the whole, unaccountably neglected.

* * * * *

_The Experiments of Ganymede Bunn_ (HUTCHINSON) is like to command a wide audience. Its appeal will equally be to the lovers of Irish scenes, to those who affect stories about horses and hunting, and to the countless myriads who are fond of imagining what they would do with an unexpected legacy. It was this last that happened to _Ganymede_, who was left seventeen thousand pounds by an aunt called _Juno_ (the names of this family are not the least demand that Miss Dorothea Conyers makes upon your credulity). My mention of horses and Ireland shows you what he does with his money, and where. It does not, however, indicate the result, which is a happy variant upon what is usual in such cases. You know already, I imagine, the special qualities to be looked for in a tale by Miss Conyers--chief among them a rather baffling inability to lie a straight course. If I may borrow a metaphor from her own favourite theme, she is for ever dashing off on some alluring cross-scent. More important, fortunately, than this is the enjoyment which she clearly has in writing her stories and passes briskly on to the reader. There's a fine tang of the open-air about them, and a smell of saddle-leather, that many persons will consider well worth all the intricacies of your problem-novelists. I had the idea that her honest vulgar little legatee and his speculations as a horse-breeder might make a good subject for a character-comedian; but I suppose the late LORD GEORGE SANGER is the only man who could have produced the right equine cast.

* * * * *

The component elements of _The White Rook_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL) may be summarised in the picturesque argot of Army Ordnance somewhat as follows: Chinamen, inscrutable, complete with mysterious drugs, one; wives, misunderstood, Mark I, one; husbands, unsympathetic (for purposes of assassination only), one; _ingénues_, Mark II, one; heroes, one; squires, brutal, one; murders of sorts, three; ditto, attempted, several. The inscrutable one is responsible for all the murders. Only the merest accident, it seems, prevents him from disposing of the few fortunate characters who survive to the concluding chapters of the story. He narrowly misses the misunderstood wife (now a widow, thanks to his kind offices), and his failure to bag the hero and _ingénue_ (together with a handful of subsidiary characters) is only a matter of minutes. There is almost a false note about the last chapter, in which the Oriental commits suicide before he has completed his grisly task; but it was obviously impossible for anyone in the book to live happily ever after so long as he remained alive. Just how Mr. HARRIS BURLAND and the villainous figment of his lively imagination perform these deeds of dastard-do is not for me to reveal. The publishers modestly claim that in the school of WILKIE COLLINS this author has few rivals. As regards complexity of plot the claim is scarcely substantiated by the volume before me; but if bloodshed be the food of fiction Mr. BURLAND may slay on, secure in his pre-eminence.

* * * * *

The _Rev. Frank Farmer_, hero of Mr. RICHARD MARSH'S _The Deacon's Daughter_ (LONG), was the youthful, good-looking and eloquent Congregationalist minister of the very local town of Brasted, and the ladies of his flock adored him. So earnestly indeed did they adore him that, after he had preached a stirring series of sermons on the evils of gambling, they decided to subscribe and send him for a holiday to Monte Carlo. On his return he was to preach another course of sermons, which "would rouse the national conscience and, with God's blessing, the conscience of all Europe." Possibly you can guess what happened to him; I did, and I am not a good guesser. The _Rev. Frank_ had never been out of England, and he found Monte Carlo inhabited by ladies who made him blush. He could not understand their bold ways, so different from the manner of the Brasted maidens. One of them laid especial siege to him and assured him that he had "_la veine_." At first I am inclined to believe that he thought she was talking of something varicose, but when he understood what she meant he was at her mercy. In short he tried his luck, to the dismay of his conscience but with prodigious benefit to his pocket. His return to Brasted is described with excellent irony.

* * * * *

Mr. WILL IRWIN'S war-book naturally divides itself into two parts, since he was lucky enough to get near the Front both about Verdun during the great attack, and with the Alpini fighting on "the roof of Armageddon." To these brave and picturesque friends of ours he dedicates his study, _The Latin at War_ (CONSTABLE). You must not expect much of that inside information which the author, as an American journalist, must have been sorely tempted to produce. Indeed he has little to offer us that has not been common property of the Correspondents for long enough, and several of his descriptions (his picture of a glacier, for one), given with a rather irritatingly childlike air of new discovery, cannot escape the charge of commonplace. But his reflections, for once in a way the better half of experience, more than make good this defect. His essay on Paris, for instance--"the city of unshed tears"--is something more than interesting, and his analysis of the cause of the successes of the French army, in the face of initial defects of material, even better. The author of _Westward Ho!_, considering the Spanish and English navies of ELIZABETH'S time, found precisely the same contrasted elements of autocracy and brotherliness producing just those results that we find respectively in the German and French forces of to-day--on the one hand a mechanical perfection of command, on the other an informed equality which, somehow, does not make against efficiency whilst fostering individuality. Mr. IRWIN hardly refers to our own Army; but one is thankful to remember that discipline by consent, one of the virtues of true democracy, is not the exclusive tradition of our French allies.

* * * * *

_A London Posy_ (MILLS AND BOON) is a story with at least an original setting. So far as I know, Miss SOPHIE COLE is the first novelist to group her characters about an actual London house preserved as a memorial to former inhabitants. The house in question is that in Gough Square, where Dr. JOHNSON lived, and two of the chief characters are _George Constant_, the curator, and his sister, to whom the shrine is the most precious object in life ("housemaid to a ghost," one of the other personages rather prettily calls her). It therefore may well be that to ardent devotees of the great lexicographer this story of what might have happened in his house to-day will make a stronger appeal than was the case with me, who (to speak frankly) found it a trifle dull. It might be said, though perhaps unkindly, that Miss COLE looks at life through such feminine eyes that all her characters, male and female, are types of perfect womanhood. In _Denis Laurie_, the gentle essayist and recluse, one might expect to find some feminine attributes; but even the bolder and badder lots, whose task it is to supply the melodramatic relief, struck me as oddly unvirile. But this is only a personal view. Others, as I say, may find this very gentle story of mild loves and two deserted wives a refreshing contrast to the truths, so much stranger and more lurid than any fiction, by which we are surrounded.

* * * * *

Private Jones. "AND SHE _SAYS_, 'OH! WOT BLINKIN' GREAT EYES YOU 'AVE, GRANDMOTHER!' AND THE WOLF, 'E SAYS, 'ALL THE BETTER TER SEE YER WIV, MY DEAR.'"]

End of Project Gutenberg's Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917, by Various