Chapter 1

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PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI

VOL. 153

JULY 25, 1917

CHARIVARIA.

Not one of the morning papers advocated the appointment of Sir Eric Geddes to be First Lord of the Admiralty. A big scoop this for the Government.

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A shortage of paper yarns is reported from Germany. The coarser varieties have apparently all been monopolised by the Imperial Government.

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A foolish rumour is going the rounds to the effect that a music-hall comedian has confessed that he has never made a joke about the Mess in Mesopotamia. It is feared that the recent hot weather has affected the poor fellow.

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In the absence of the sea-serpent this year a tope weighing thirty-nine pounds has been captured at Hastings. The fisherman who caught it declares that if he had known it was a tope at the time he would not have been in such a hurry to sign the pledge.

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The Food-Controller is calling for strict economy in the use of ice. It is not generally known that after it has been warmed a little in front of the fire the stuff will keep almost indefinitely.

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The order prohibiting the use of enemy languages over the telephone is said to be causing some inconvenience. Several persons intercepted by the operator in the course of a guttural conversation have been subsequently shown to have been talking Swiss.

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A Pittsburg inventor is reported by Mr. MARCONI to have discovered a method of bottling light. If he can bottle anything lighter than the new Government ale his claim to be a wizard is established.

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A safe weighing three hundredweight has been stolen from a branch post office in the Gray's Inn Road. It is believed that in the excitement caused by an air-raid alarm it was snatched up by a customer who mistook it for his hat.

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A man applied at Willesden Police Court recently for advice as to what he should do with a loaf of War bread which was uneatable, as he dared not destroy it and could not eat it. His only objection to keeping it as a pet was a fear that it would never become really fond of children, although it might in time prove a good house-guard with which to ward off burglars.

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At the Birmingham Assizes a man has been sent to prison for publishing a pamphlet entitled "Questions for Parsons." He now contemplates a new pamphlet entitled "Back Answers to the Bench."

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Owing to the fact that the political situation is not quite clear in Germany the Reichstag has been adjourned. It is expected also that an attempt will be made to adjourn the War.

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A writer in _English Mechanics_ declares that a cornet played near caterpillars will cause them to drop to the ground and die. We understand that the R.S.P.C.A. plead with allotment-holders to destroy these pests by a less gruesome method.

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A motor lorry laden with petrol dashed into the front of a house at Hazelgrove when the family was not at home. It is only fair to say that the driver did not know they were out.

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The Barcelona-to-Bilbao motor race has been postponed owing to strikes in Spain. A few sharp lessons like this will, we feel certain, have the effect of discouraging the habit of striking.

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Some men, said a man before the Swindon Guardians, take up angling in order to go into the country to enjoy a smoke. It is not known why the others do it.

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The Board of Agriculture point out that there is an abundant supply of kippers on the market at reasonable prices. This will come as a great boon to music-hall audiences, who find that the kippers used by comedians are getting rather frayed at the edges through constant wear.

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"Bad language is used at Billingsgate not so much by the porters as by the buyers," said a witness at a City inquest last week. A purchaser at this market declares that the language is often provoked by the fish. Only last week he had a heated argument with a very talkative haddock.

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England has lost first place in Germany, for America is said to be the most hated country now. The morning hate of the German family with ragtime obbligato must be a terrible thing.

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"The National Service Department," said Mr. Beck in the House of Commons, "is desirous of remaining where it is." If we are to believe all we read it will take a great deal to move this department.

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"Cod liver oil," says a weekly paper, "is the secret of health." Smith minor sincerely regrets that our contemporary has not kept the secret.

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The _Vossische Zeitung_, referring to the appointment of Dr. Michaelis, says "there is no chance of his clubbing together with the big industrialists and misguided agitators." So long however as they are clubbed separately we shall not grumble.

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Waste-paper in Westminster, it is stated, has gone up from £2 10s. to £7 a ton. Why, it is asked, cannot the Government come to the rescue and publish the full reports of the Dardanelles and Mesopotamia Commissions?

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Boxes of matches with jokes on them, we are told, are now on sale. Several correspondents who were charged twopence for a box complain that they are unable to see the joke.

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An Irish newspaper, _The Kilkenny People_, has been suppressed for seditious utterances. People are wondering what it can possibly have said.

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There will be no flag-day on August 26th.

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A girl clerk in a Surrey bank has explained a shortage of a half-penny in her postage-stamps by admitting that she swallowed one. It is thought that the extremely low price tempted her.

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ON VIMY RIDGE.

_TO B.S.B., JULY 11TH_.

On Vimy Ridge I sit at rest With Loos and Lens outspread below; An A.D.C.--the very best-- Expounds the panoramic show; Lightly I lunch, and never yet Has quite so strong an orchestration Supplied the music while I ate My cold collation.

Past Avion through the red-roofed town There at our feet our white line runs; Fresnoy's defences, smoking brown, Shudder beneath our shattering guns; Pop-pop!--and Archie's puffs have blurred Some craft engaged to search the Bosch out-- I hold my breath until the bird Signals a wash-out.

Scarce I believe the vision real, That here for life and death they fight; A "Theatre of War," I feel, Has set its stage for my delight, Who occupy, exempt from toll, This auditorium, green and tufty, Guest of the Management and sole Object in mufti.

And now along the fretted ground Where Canada's "BYNG Boys" stormed their way, I go conducted on the round That GEORGE OF WINDSOR did to-day; Immune he trod that zone of lead, And how should I, who just write verses, Hope to attract to my poor head Their "Perishing Percies"?

Bapaume had nearly been my tomb; And greatly flattered I should be If I could honestly assume The beastly shell was meant for me; But though my modesty would shun To think this thought (or even say it), I feel I owe the KAISER one And hope to pay it.

O.S.

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HOW TO CURE THE BOSCH.

"Yes, I seen a good bit o' the Bosch, one way and another, before he got me in the leg," said Corporal Digweed. "Eighteen months I had with 'im spiteful, and four months with 'im tame. Meaning by that four months guarding German prisoners."

"And what do you think of him at the end of it?" I asked.

Digweed leant back with a heavily judicial air.

"Some o' these Peace blighters seem to think he's a little angel, basin' their opinion, I suppose, on something I must 'a' missed during my time out. On the other hand there's a tidy few thinks that one German left will spoil the earth. Now me, I holds they're both wrong. The second's nearer than what the first is, I don't deny. But a incident what occurred in that Prisoners' Camp set me thinking that you might make something o' Fritz yet, if you only had the time and the patience.

"We had a batch of prisoners come in what I saw at once was a different brand to the usual. There wasn't that--well, that distressin' lack o' humility that you mostly finds showin' itself after we've had them a week or two. There seemed about 'em almost a sort o' willingness to learn that put 'em in a class by themselves. I sez to the interpreter, 'There's something odd about that lot. You find out what it is;' which he does. And what do you think it was? _They was convicts_. All men in for a long term, what had served five years and more o' their sentences and was let out to fight.

"It seemed to me at first the rummiest thing that ever I see. But I've thought it over and thought it over, and now it's as clear as day. When the Bosch is kept in a watertight compartment for a bit, he gets back to being more or less of a human being. His whole trouble's really through being surrounded by other Bosches. They get tellin' each other what a great nation they are, and how they was born to inherit the earth, and that it's only forestalling nature a bit to go and take it now, and so on--each going one better than the last. They keep on contaminatin' one another till what do you get? Why, me and you spending our old age a-teaching of 'em humility.

"Now, with these 'ere convicts it was another story. 'Stead o' keep talkin' about German culture and what rotters all the rest o' the world was, their heads had plenty o' time to cool while they picked their oakum or what not--resultin' in quite a fairly decent lot o' men, as I say. Yes, it's very interesting and instructive. I believe it's the solution of the question, 'How to cure the Bosch,' I do. If you could keep 'em all apart from each other for five years you'd find they'd be quite different. I daresay they wouldn't mind it so much either."

"If I was a Bosch I should be thankful," I said. "But wouldn't there be difficulties about this segregation?"

Digweed waved them aside.

"There's always difficulties," he said. "But you mark my words, that's the thing to do. It would help it along, too, to give 'em the right sort of books and papers to read. Why, if you worked the thing properly, they might mostly be cured in two years or two and a half."

I shook my head. "There are some you'll never cure," I said.

"There'd be stubborn cases, I won't deny. And a few incurables, as you say. But the first thing to do is to advertise the idea. You make a speech about it, Sir. When you're proposing a vote of thanks to a Duchess for openin' a bazaar, you bring it up. I've heard people before now take that kind of opportunity to bring something forward what they'd got on their chest."

"I'm not likely to get a chance like that," I said; "but I'll see if I can write an article about it."

Whether Digweed will consider the article worthy of the subject I cannot say. Perhaps the Editor of _Punch_ is less fastidious.

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FOR OUR SAILORS.

The current week is "Navy Week," and Mr. Punch begs to urge his kind friends to take their part in the great organised effort to raise a large sum for the benefit of our sailors and their families--R.N., R.N.R., R.N.V.R., trawlers and mine-sweepers. The nation owes them all a debt that can never be paid. The fund is to be administered on the lines of King Edward's Hospital Fund. An All-American matinée will be given in this good cause at the Victoria Palace on Thursday, July 26th, and _Trelawny of the Wells_ (with Miss IRENE VANBRUGH) at the New Theatre on Friday. Gifts for the fund may be addressed to Commodore Sir RICHARD WILLIAMS-BULKELEY, Bt., at the offices of "Navy Week," 5, Green Street, Leicester Square, W.C. 2.

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THE WATCH DOGS.

LXIII.

My dear Charles,--I never meant to give myself away; I meant to go on talking about the old War till the end, just as if I was taking a leading part in it, so that you should have still believed I was doing the bull-dog business with the best of them. But no, let me be honest and tell you that I have practically ceased to be a dog. The only painful connection I can boast of recently with the War is that, having cause to travel from place to place in this country, I was unhappy enough to strike six meatless days in succession, which gave me to think that even embusquing in France has its drawbacks. On the seventh day I was accused, by good people who know not Thomas, of being (1) a Russian, (2) an American, (3) a Belgian, and (4) an Irishman, which made me feel that these gaudy colours I have burst into are not so famous as I supposed; and on the eighth day I find myself insulted in twenty-seven places by an angry mosquito, whom in the small hours of the morning I had occasion to rap over the knuckles and turn out of my billet. And I've got a nasty cold, and nobody loves me or cleans my buttons, and if I want to go anywhere there are no more motor cars and they make me pay a penny for the tram, and my wife doesn't think I'm a hero any longer, and little James is being taught to blush and look away and start another subject when anybody says "Dad-dad," and (if you can believe this) I've just been made to pay a franc-and-a-half for a tin of bully beef.

But you don't sympathise, not a bit of it; why should you? I shouldn't if I were in your place. I should just cut off the supply of cigarettes and shaving-soap, stop wishing me good luck, and, with haughty contempt, say, "Call yourself a soldier!" Nevertheless, my friend, whatever I may _be_, I _look_ extraordinarily magnificent, so much so that a short-sighted Major has taken his pipe out of his mouth as I have drawn near and has as good as saluted me. When he saw I was only a Captain (and a temporary Captain at that) he tried to cover his mistake; but he didn't deceive me; he didn't need to take his pipe out of his mouth in order to scratch his head, did he?

There is this to be said about being at war, you never know what is going to happen to you next. For the most part this is just as well. There is, however, a decent percentage of pleasant surprises, which is, I suppose, the only thing that makes the business tolerable. No orderly ever came up to the trenches, when I was in them, but he gave rise to the hope that he had orders for me to come out at once and command in chief. Some such orderly did arrive at last, but the instructions he gave me said nothing about taking over the B.E.F. Nevertheless orders were orders and I obeyed them and came out. Having a private conversation with Fortune on the way down the communication trench, I thanked her very sincerely for her kindness and said I was so grateful that I would never ask her for anything else.

But you know human nature as well as I do; I soon found myself saying what a hard life it was in an office, and how one missed the open-air life one had with one's regiment and the healthy appetite it gave one. Besides which, as I pointed out to Fortune, my solid worth wasn't being recognised as it should be. "I don't ask for favours," I told her. "All I ask is bare justice." Now, if I'd been Fortune, Charles, and a man had spoken to me like that, after all I'd done for him, I'd have had him marching up that communication trench again, with a full pack, at five o'clock in the very next forenoon.

But Fortune, ever kind and forgiving, did no such thing. She did remonstrate with me gently of nights, when the noise of the bombardments was particularly fierce and prolonged. "What about those poor fellows right up in front," she said, "who are sitting out in the wind and the rain and going through _that_?" "Yes," said I, "what about them? Can't you do something for them? Do you know that this is their fourth night of it in succession, and the only bit of change you've been able to give them was sleet instead of rain on the Sunday?" That used to put Fortune in the cart, and she'd try and work the conversation round to my own case again. But what with the wind and the noise and the downpour and the mud, I was too hot on the other subject, and I said that Fortune ought to be ashamed of herself, carrying on like that; and it was a disgraceful war and the police ought to stop it, and I'd a very good mind to write to the papers about it.

Then the next day would be fine and dry and warm, and it would be early closing for the Bosch artillery, and the infantry would go marching past my office window, whistling and singing and behaving as if the whole thing was a jolly old picnic; and who'd be an inkslinger in such weather? And Fortune, modestly intruding, would say to me casually, "I think I've arranged that rather well, don't you?"

"Ah, you've arranged something at last, have you?" I'd say, assuming that she must be thinking about me, and I'd open my official envelopes with an unusual interest, feeling practically sure that one of them must contain immediate orders for me--the one and only me--to proceed forthwith to England and reorganise the War Office, taking over a couple of six-cylinder cars and a furnished flat in St. James's for the purpose.

Poor old Fortune! what could she say next? She'd look at me, more in sorrow than in anger, and murmur, "Aren't you forgetting that this is a war and you are supposed to be fighting it?" Did I blush for shame? Not I. As bold as brass I'd look old Fortune straight in the face and, with righteous indignation, would say, "I know as well as you do, Ma'am, that it is a war; but there's no reason why it shouldn't be a _just_ war." Thinking it out I have never been quite able to see what I meant by that, as applied to my own case. However, I seem to have said the right thing, and it appears to have impressed Fortune very considerably, because--well, Charles, here I am.

Yet if there is justice in this world (and I subsist on the confident hope and belief that there is not) I know what the end of it must be. That confounded orderly, turned traitor, will one day search me out, however far I may have wandered from the battlefield meanwhile, and, saluting ironically, will hand me an envelope marked "Urgent, secret, confidential, personal, private." The contents will be a piece of news and some orders, and all that Fortune will have had to do with it will be to attach a forwarding slip, "Passed to you, please, for your information and necessary action." The news will be that for everyone else the War is over, and the infantry and the rest of them will take over forthwith my present circumstances, being free to revel in the trams and the mosquitoes and the nasty colds to their hearts' delight. The orders will be that for me the War is about to begin again in grim earnest, and that to-morrow at dawn I take over and defend till further notice, and against all the most noisy and loathsome inventions that man can devise, that sector of the trenches which extends from the Swiss frontier to the sea.

When that day comes I shall be too busy (taking cover) to have leisure to write to you. Meanwhile I shall still be in touch with life from time to time and will pass on to you such scraps as come my way. Yours ever, Henry.

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"The India Office goes to Mr. Montagu."--_The Star._

Mahomet had to go to the Mountain, but Mr. Montagu is more fortunate.

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OUR MIGHTY PENMEN.

BY A LITERARY EXPERT.

The House of Boffin announces a revised edition of Mr. Elbert Pitts's _Final Words on Religion_, under the title of _Antepenultimate Words on Religion_. As Mr. Pitts observes in his arresting Preface, "Finality, in a time of upheaval, is a relative term, and I hope, at intervals of six months or so, to publish my penultimate, quasi-ultimate and paulo-post-ultimate views on the vital beliefs which underlie the fantastic superstructure of dogmatic theology." The new work will be illustrated with three portraits of the author by Mr. Marcellus Thom, taken at various stages of the composition of the work.

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Mr. Pitts has also completed a new novel entitled _The Bounder of Genius_, and has kindly furnished us with a brief outline of its contents. The hero, who starts life as an artificial raspberry-pip maker and amasses a colossal fortune in the Argentine grain trade, marries a poor seamstress in his struggling days, but deserts her for a brilliant variety actress, who is in turn deposed by (1) the daughter of a dean, (2) the daughter of an earl, and (3) the daughter of a duke. Ultimately Jasper Dando, for that is his name, leads a crusade to Patagonia, where he establishes a new republic founded on Eugenics, China tea, and the Prohibition of the Classics. Mr. Pitts thinks it the finest thing he has done, and he is fortified in this conviction by the opinion of Mr. Stoot, the principal reader of the House of Boffin.

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We are glad to hear that Mr. Hanley Potter will shortly issue, through the firm of Bloomer and Guppy, a selection from the reviews, notices and essays contributed by him to _The Slagville Gazette_. "They are interesting," says the author, "as the expression of a fresh and unbiassed mind, unfettered by any respect for established reputations or orthodox standards." The titles of some of the articles--"The Dulness of Dante," "The Sloppiness of Scott," "George Eliot as Pedant," "Jane Austen the Prude"--indicate sufficiently the richness of the treat provided in these stimulating pages.

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The Centenary of JANE AUSTEN is to be celebrated in a thoroughly practical manner by the House of Hussell. It will be remembered that, some thirty years ago, an effort was made to revive the waning popularity of SIR WALTER SCOTT by the issue of a series of condensed versions of his novels, in which redundant passages, notes and introductions were removed and the salient features were compressed in a compact and animated narrative. In order to render justice to JANE AUSTEN the process needed is diametrically opposite. JANE AUSTEN'S novels are short and singularly lacking in picturesqueness, emotion, colour. Mr. Hamo Bletherley, who has been entrusted with the task of infusing these elements into JANE AUSTEN'S staid and reticent romances, points out that her vocabulary was extraordinarily limited. Her abstinence from decorative epithets led to results that are bald and unconvincing. One may look in vain in her pages for such words as "arresting," "vital," "momentous" or "sinister." She never uses "glimpse," "sense" or "voice" as verbs. We look forward with eager anticipation to the results of Mr. Bletherley's courageous experiment.

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