Chapter 3

"Two million troubles are now standing to Koslovsky's account in Petrograd banks."--_Rangitikei Advocate (N.Z.)._

We knew conditions were very trying in Russia, but had no idea any one man had such a burden as this.

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RHYMES FOR THE TIMES.

There was a false Pasha named BOLO, Who sank in iniquity so low. That the dirtiest work Of the Hun and the Turk Never made him ejaculate _Nolo!_

There was a stout fellow called YAPP, A great Red Triangular chap; Now he's working still harder To stock the State larder, And never has time for a nap.

The manners and customs of Clare Have long been admittedly "quare," But the tolerance shown To sedition full-blown Is enough to make CADBURY swear.

Politicians unstable and vague May well take example from HAIG, Who talks to the Huns In the voice of his guns Till they dread him far worse than the plague.

Renowned for her fine macaroni, And also for Signor MARCONI, Now Italy sends, To enrapture her friends, (And to finish these rhymes), the Caproni.

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MISSING.

"He was last seen going over the parapet into the German trenches."

What did you find after war's fierce alarms, When the kind earth gave you a resting place, And comforting night gathered you in her arms, With light dew falling on your upturned face?

Did your heart beat, remembering what had been? Did you still hear around you, as you lay, The wings of airmen sweeping by unseen, The thunder of the guns at close of day?

All nature stoops to guard your lonely bed; Sunshine and rain fall with their calming breath; You need no pall, so young and newly dead, Where the Lost Legion triumphs over death.

When with the morrow's dawn the bugle blew, For the first time it summoned you in vain; The Last Post does not sound for such as you; But God's Reveillé wakens you again.

* * * * *

SUGAR.

"Francesca," I said, "you must be very deeply occupied; for ten minutes I have not heard your silvery voice."

"I am attempting," she said, "to fill up our sugar form."

"Is it a tremendous struggle?"

"Yes," she said, "it is a regular brain-smasher."

"Give me the paper, and let me have a go at it."

With a haggard face, but without a word, she handed me the buff form, and sat silently while I read the various explanations and directions.

"Francesca," I said, "you are doing wrong. It says that the form must be filled up and signed by a responsible member of the household. Now you can say that you're brilliant or amiable or handsome or powerful or domineering, but can you honestly say you're responsible? No, you can't. So I shall keep this form and fill it up myself in due time, and leave you to look after the hens or talk to the gardener."

"Anybody," she said, "who can wring a smile from a gardener, as I have this morning, is entitled to be considered responsible. Infirm of purpose! hand me the paper."

"Very well," I said, "you can have the paper; only remember that, if we get fined a thousand pounds for transgressing the Defence of the Realm Act, you mustn't ask me for the money. You must pay it yourself."

"I'll chance that," she said, as I handed back the paper.

"Now then, we shan't be long. Which of these two addresses shall we have?"

"How do you mean?"

"Why, they tell you to fill in the address in capital letters, and then they give you two to pick from. One is 1000, Upper Grosvenor Street, W. 1--"

"It is a longer street than I had supposed."

"And the other," she continued, "is 17, Church Lane, Middlewich, Cheshire."

"Let it be Middlewich," I said. "Since boyhood's hour I have dreamt of living in Middlewich. As for the other, I simply couldn't live in a street of a thousand houses. Could you?"

"No," she said, "I couldn't. We'll be Middlewichians.... There, it's done. Capital letters and all."

"Don't slack off," I said. "Fill it all up now that you've got started."

"I suppose I'd better begin with myself."

"Yes," I said, "you may have that privilege. Put it down quick: Carlyon, Francesca; age blank, because they don't want ages over eighteen; F for female, and Married Woman for occupation. Then treat me in the same way, putting M for F, and 2nd Lieutenant of Volunteers instead of Married Woman."

"Why shouldn't I put Married Man as your occupation?"

"Simply because it isn't done. It's a splendid occupation, but it isn't recognised as such in formal documents."

"Another injustice to women. I shall enter you as Married Man."

"Enter me as anything you like," I said, "only let's get on with the job."

"Very well; you're down as Married Man."

"Now get on with the children. Muriel first. What about her?"

"But she's away having her education finished."

"Yes," I said, "but she'll be back for the holidays, and she'll want her sugar then, like the rest of us. And Frederick is away at _his_ school, probably getting much better sugar than we are. He'll be wanting his ration in the holidays. You'd better put a note about that."

"A note?" she said. "There's no room for notes on this form. All they want is a bald statement. And that's just what they can't get. They'll have to take it with the hair on. I'm cramming in about the holidays, and I hope Lord RHONDDA will be pleased with all the information he's getting about our family."

"Keep going," I said; "you've still got the servants to do."

"Yes, but the kitchenmaid's gone, and I haven't engaged another one yet."

"Don't let that worry you," I said. "Write down--Kitchenmaid about to be engaged. Name will be supplied later.'"

"You're quite brilliant to-day. There, that's finished, thank Heaven."

"Not yet. You've got to address it to the Local Food Office."

"But I haven't the remotest where the Local Food Office is. It can't have been there more than a short time, anyhow."

"Hurrah!" I said, looking over her shoulder at the document. "It says if you are in doubt as to the name of the district of your Local Food Office you are to inquire of any policeman or special constable."

"That's all very well," she said, "but how are we to find a policeman in this remote and peaceful place? I've never seen one. Have you?"

"Yes," I said, "I think I saw one last year on a bicycle."

"Well, he's probably arrived somewhere else by this time. He's no good to us."

"No, but we might find a special constable."

"I'll tell you what," she said, "old Glumgold is a special constable. I heard him complaining bitterly of having been hauled out of bed during the last air-raid on London. 'No nigher to we nor forty mile,' he said it was. He's sure to be among the cabbages. Be a dear and dash out and ask him."

So I found Glumgold in among the cabbages and asked him where the Local Food Office was, and he said he'd be gingered if he knew, he or his old woman either; and that was the question they was a-going to arst of us, because to-day was the last day for sending in. So I advised him to chance it with Nebsbury, which happens to be eight miles off and possesses a High Street; and then I went back to Francesca and told her that Glumgold advised Nebsbury--which was cowardly, but one can't spend a lifetime over a fiddle-headed document like that. Anyhow, we folded it up and posted it, and we've heard nothing since.

R.C.L.

* * * * *

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_BY MR. PUNCH'S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS._)

Not for a great while have I met a story at once so moving and so simply made as _Summer_ (MACMILLAN). Of course at this time the art of EDITH WHARTON is no new discovery; but to my thinking she has never done better work than this tale of a New England village, and the wakening to love of the girl who was drowsing away her youth there. It is all, as I say, so simple, and written with such apparent economy of effort, that only afterwards does the amazing cleverness of Mrs. WHARTON'S method impress itself upon the reader. _Charity Royall_ was a waif, of worse than ambiguous parentage, brought up in a community where her passionate and violently sensitive nature was stifled. Two men loved her--dour middle-aged Lawyer _Royall_, whose house she kept, and _Lucius Harney_, the young visitor from the city, the fairy-prince of poor _Charity's_ one great romance, through whom came tragedy. You see already the whole stark simplicity of the theme. What I cannot convey to you is that secret of Mrs. WHARTON'S that enables her by some exquisitely right word or phrase so to illuminate a scene that you see it as though by an inspiration of your own, and feel that thus and thus did the thing in fact happen. There are episodes in _Summer_--for example the Fourth of July firework evening, or the wildly macabre scene of the night funeral on the mountain--that seem to me to come as near perfection in their telling as anything I am ever likely to read, and when you have enjoyed them for yourself I fancy you will be inclined to join me in very sincere gratitude for work of such rare quality.

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Those who admired (which is the same as saying those who read) that excellent book, _The Retreat from Mons_, will be glad to hear that its author, Major A. CORBETT-SMITH, has now continued his record in a further volume, called _The Marne and After_ (CASSELL). In it you will find all those qualities, a sane and soldier-like common-sense, an entire absence of gush, and a saving humour in the midst of horrors, which made the earlier installment memorable. Above all else I have been impressed by the first of these characteristics. Major CORBETT-SMITH writes from the viewpoint of one to whom even this ghastliest of wars is part of the day's work. That he sees its human and hideous sides by no means impairs this quiet professional outlook. I recall one phrase in his chapter on the secret agents of the enemy: "At the Aisne German spies were a regular plague"--just as one might speak of wasps or weather--which somehow conveyed to me very vividly the secret of our original little army's disproportionate influence in the early weeks of the War. The operations which we call the actual Battle of the Marne (surely fated to be the most fought-again engagement in history) are here very clearly described, with illustrative plans; while one other chapter, called suggestively "_Kultur_," may be commended to those super-philosophers amongst us who are already beginning an attempt to belittle the foul record of calculated crime that must for at least a generation place Germany outside the pale of civilization. For this grim chapter alone I should like to see Major CORBETT-SMITH'S otherwise cheery volume scattered broadcast over the country.

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_June_ (METHUEN) is saturated with the simple sentimentality in which American authors excel. I do not know whether British novelists could write this sort of book successfully if they would, but I do know that they don't. Miss EDITH BARNARD DELANO, however, succeeds in getting considerable charm into her story, and if it leaves rather a sweeter taste in the mouth than some of us relish there are others who like their fiction to be strongly sugared. _June_, an orphan child, was looked after by nigger servants, and by one, _Mammy_, in particular. She possessed a house and a valley; and a young man prospecting in the latter met with an accident and was discovered by the child. Hence complications, and the removal of _June_ from her home to be educated with some cousins. Then poverty, hard times and plenty of pluck. But the clouds began to lift when _June_ discovered that an emerald cross of hers was worth four thousand dollars; and finally the sun burst forth when, through the agency of the accidental young man, her property was found to be very valuable, and she more valuable still--to the young man. It sounds ingenuous, doesn't it? But not nearly so easy to write as it seems, for to produce anything as artless as _June_ is an art in itself.

* * * * *

In _The Book of the Happy Warrior_ (LONGMANS) a chivalrous modern knight holds up to our youngsters the patterns of an older chivalry to teach them courage, clean fighting and devoted service. Sir HENEY NEWBOLT claims that the tradition of the public schools is the direct survival of the mediæval training for knighthood, and incidentally defends flannelled and muddied youth from hasty aspersions. ROLAND and his OLIVER, RICHARD LION-HEART, EDWARD the Black Prince and CHANDOS, DU GUESCLIN and BAYARD, if they revisited this tortured earth, would be dismayed by the procedure and the chilling impersonality of modern war. Perhaps in the glorious single combats of the Flying Corps they might recognise some faint semblance of their ancient method. Sir HENRY, rightly from his point of view, chooses to ignore the wholesale horrors of to-day's warfare and to emphasize the ideal of fighting service as a fine discipline and proof of manly worth. He shows an obvious, honest, aristocratic bias, but he does not forget another side of the matter, as a fragment of an imaginary conversation between a young lord and a squire present at the great tourney at St. Inglebert's between the Gentlemen of England and of France pleasantly shows. The Englishmen were worsted and took their defeat in a fine sporting spirit. "How is it we're beaten? We always win the battles, don't we?" asks the boy. "The archers win them for us," says the Squire. Quite a characteristic little touch of subaltern modesty! One thought occurs to me especially. It is unthinkable that a book like this should appear in the Germany of to-day. It will be worth your while giving it to your boy to find out why.

* * * * *

Since the practice of writing first novels is becoming increasingly popular with young authors it was inevitable that a "First Novel Library" should find its way on to the market. Whether the classification is to be construed as an appeal for forbearance for the shortcomings of the neophyte, or as a warning which a considerate publisher feels is due to the public, is not for me to say. But the policy of charging six shillings for these maiden efforts--all that is required of us for the mature masterpieces of our MAURICE HEWLETTS and ARNOLD BENNETTS--is open to question. _The Puppet_, by JANE HARDING (UNWIN), is not without merit, but the faults of the beginner are present in manifold. The heroine tells her story in the first person--a difficult method of handling fiction at the best--and in the result we find a young lady of no particular education or apparent attainments holding forth in the stilted diction of a rather prosy early-Victorian Archbishop. The effect of unreality produced goes far to spoil a plot which is wound and unwound with considerable skill. Miss HARDING will write a good novel yet, but she must learn to make her characters act the parts she assigns to them.

* * * * *

We all must be writing books about the War. It is natural enough to suppose one's own share of war-work is worthy of record, and indeed, when we come to think of it, the historian of the future will get his complete picture of the time only when he realises how every scrap of the national energy was absorbed in the one master purpose. That being so it is arguable that Mr. WARD MUIR was thinking far ahead in compiling his hospital reminiscences, _Observations of an Orderly_ (SIMPKIN). One hastens to make it clear that the last thing intended or desired is to disparage the usefulness or the stark self-sacrifice of the men who are serving in menial capacities in our war hospitals, but to tell the truth this account of sculleries and laundry-baskets, polishing paste and nigger minstrels, bathrooms and pillow-slips, has not much intrinsic interest about it, nor are the author's general reflections very different from what one could supply oneself without much effort. His notes on war slang are about the best thing in the volume, and I liked the story of the blinded soldiers--feeling anything in the world but mournful or pathetic--who played pranks on the Tube escalator; but on the whole this is a book which will be of considerable interest only to the writer's fellow-labourers. They, beyond any doubt, will be glad to read this history of their familiar rounds and common tasks.

* * * * *

_Wanted, a Tortoise-Shell_ (LANE) would have made an excellent short story, but to pursue its farcical developments through three hundred pages requires a considerable amount of perseverance. The scene of Mr. PETER BLUNDER'S book is laid in tropical Jallagar, where the British Resident was keener on cats than on his duties. A male tortoise-shell was what he fanatically and almost ferociously desired, and to obtain it he was ready to barter his daughter to one _Kamp_, who is tersely described as "a fat Swede." I conceived a strong distaste for this large and perspiring man, and can congratulate Mr. BLUNDELL on having created a character odious enough to linger in the memory. For the rest there are some gleams of real fun where a beach-comber tries to palm off a dyed cat as the long-deferred tortoise-shell, and the exit of this animal from a world too covetous to hold it is thoroughly sound farce. But on the whole I failed to get many of those quiet gurgles of delight which are the best tribute one can pay to a funny man's work.

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