Chapter 2

Let others speed to far Sequanian shores To end the War that was to end all wars, Where peace-pursuing Discord loud debates And all hotels are packed with Delegates; Where pundits in the Parliament of Man Discuss or Georgian or Wilsonian Plan; Where fickle Fate dispenses weal or woe Respectively assigned to friend and foe; Where Cornucopia meekly comes to heel Under instructions from Sir JOHN FIELD BEALE.

Let others in Icarian feats engage With the ingenious aid of HANDLEY PAGE; Haste to discover all that may be known About the situation in Cologne; Or, like Sir WILLIAM BEVERIDGE, to appease The clamourings of esurient Viennese-- In none of these things Fortune waits for me, Nor Knighthood cheap, nor unctuous O.B.E. Ah, not for me to note with facile pen Successive stages of the L. of N. With calorimetric and statistic arts Administer the prog of Foreign Parts, Or, eager not to do the thing by halves, To reconcile the Czechs and Jugo-Slavs-- I will, resigning honours, kudos, pelf, Administer hot cocoa to myself; Then to repose; for it is truly said The best location of mankind is BED.

* * * * *

EMANCIPATION.

"Wanted by respectable woman, a couple of Gentleman's Trousers (left off)."--_Irish Paper_.

* * * * *

"A Caproni machine flew a distance of 325 miles in four fours."--_Scottish Paper._

A correspondent writes to ask if this is double the time usually described as "two two's."

* * * * *

"At 11 o'clock the muster roll at many shops and offices was still incomplete. Indeed assistants were reported 'missing' at many establishments an hour later. There were girls--Government and others--who stayed at home."--_Evening Paper_.

Little pigs who wouldn't go to market.

* * * * *

"At Bolton on Saturday the United Textile Factory Workers' Association decided to put forward a demand for a 4-hours week, with the same rate of pay as for 55-1/2 hours."--_Provincial Paper_.

We trust this is a misprint and not an "intelligent anticipation" of what we are coming to.

* * * * *

"The teachers of ---- are not satisfied with the scale of salary fixed by the Education Committee, and yesterday morning a deputation waited upon the Special Salaries Committee to state their case. The Education Committee decided to increase the salary of the borough Director of Education from £450 to £500."

_Provincial Paper_.

And if that don't satisfy 'em--Bolshevism, my dear Sir, Bolshevism!

* * * * *

* * * * * OLD HEN-PECK.

Captain Edwin Peck, E.N., Had the habits of a hen. Edwin's nose was like a bone, And his teeth were not his own; Neither, I regret to tell, Did they fit him very well. It was not his fault, no doubt, That they tried to tumble out, And in fact he seldom dropped them, For he almost always copped them Just as they became unstuck By ejaculating, "Cluck."

Yoked to this elusive plate, Did our Edwin curse his fate? No, he was content to live, For he was inquisitive. If he saw a speck of grit He must needs examine it, Not as any other might, Standing at his proper height, But with body slightly slanted And his head obliquely canted, While with small unblinking eye He surveyed it wickedly.

One fine Sunday Captain Peek Stalked along the lower deck, Pausing now and then to stare, Poking here and scratching there,

Like a pullet in her prime Clucking softly all the time. Presently the Captain spied One small scuttle open wide. "Cluck!" he said, and likewise. "Tut!

"Every scuttle should be shut;" And with a malignant snort Poked his head out through the port.

That was easy, but, alack! When he tried to get it back There was heard an angry cluck-- Captain Edwin Peck was stuck!

Strange at first as it appears, He had overlooked his ears; But it's not so queer, perhaps, When you ask, "Have hens got flaps?"

Silence! You'd have heard a pin Fall upon the deck within, Till the Bloke was heard to shout, "Stick it, Sir! We'll get you out!"

Everybody had a go-- Chief, Commander, P.M.O., Padre, Carpenter and Stoker, Using engine-grease and poker, Hawser, marlin-spike and soap, Till at length they gave up hope, For, in spite of all they did, Edwin fitted like a lid.

Suddenly upon the scene Came a German submarine. Then a flash, a roar, a groan; "We are sinking like a stone!" Cried the Bloke with angry frown; "Can we leave poor Peck to drown? Really, this is _too_ absurd;" Then a miracle occurred.

As the cold green waters roll Round poor Edwin in his hole, Are the watchers wrong in thinking That the Captain's neck is shrinking? As she took her final list on, Sighing, "üdor mén äriston!" Long-enduring Captain Peck Gracefully withdrew his neck, Poked it out again and spoke To the sorrow-stricken Bloke: "Nothing more that we can do? No? Then sound the 'Sove kee poo!'"

Need I tell how Captain Peck Was the last to leave the wreck, How the good ship perished, or How he brought them safe to shore, Landing, after all his men, Clucking softly like a hen?

* * * * *

Up-to date quotation for foot-sore Londoners: "Et Tube, brute!"

* * * * *

THE MUD LARKS.

One reads a lot nowadays about the "slavery" of various habits (drug, drink, bigamy, etc.) and loud is the outcry. But there is yet another bondage, just as binding and far more widespread, which nobody ever seems to mention, namely, the drill habit. Drill the young soldier up in the way he should go and for ever after his body will spring to the word of command, whether his soul approves or no.

Once upon a time two men turned up in a railway construction camp deep in the Rhodesian bush. They were a silent, furtive, friendless pair, dwelling apart, and nobody could discover whence they came, whither they were bound, or, in fact, anything about them. It was generally conceded that they had some horrid secret to bury (camp optimists voted for "murder") and left it at that. Time went by and so did the rail-head, leaving the two mysteries behind as permanent-way gangers. Solitude seemed to suit them. Years passed along and still the two remained in that abomination of desolation guarding their stretch of track and their horrid secret. Then one day ROBERTS rolled by on his way to Victoria Falls, and, his train halting to tank-up, the old Field-Marshal stepped ashore and called to the two gangers, who happened to be close at hand tinkering at their trolley. The guard, who was taking a bottle of Bass with the steward on the platform of the diner, suddenly jabbed his friend in the brisket.

"Look, for the love of Mike!" he giggled.

The two gangers were standing talking to "BOBS," shoulder to shoulder, heels together, feet spread at an angle of forty-five degrees, knees braced, thumbs behind the seams of their trousers, backs hollowed, heads erect--in short in the correct position of attention as decreed in the Book of Infantry Training. The old man finished speaking and the two saluted smartly and broke away. The steward looked at his friend and nodded, "Old soldiers."

"Old deserters, you mean," retorted the guard. "_Now_ we know."

The drill habit had been too strong for those two fugitives even after ten years.

The other night our Babe, as Orderly Officer, sat up alone in the Mess, consuming other people's cigarettes and whisky until midnight, then, being knocked up by the Orderly Sergeant, gave the worthy fellow a tot to restore circulation, pulled on his gum-boots and sallied forth on the rounds. By 12.45 he had assured himself that the line guards were functioning in the prescribed "brisk and soldierly manner," and that the horses were all properly tucked up in bed, and so turned for home.

He paused at the cross-roads to hear the end of the Sergeant's reminiscences of happy days when he, the Sergeant, (then full-private, full in more senses than one) had held the responsible position of beer-taster to a regiment at Jaipurbad ("an ideal drinkin' climate, Sir"), then, dismissing the old connoisseur, continued on his way bedward.

It must have been one o'clock by then, a black wind-noisy night. As the Babe turned into the home straight, he saw a light flash for an instant in a big cart-shed opposite the Mess--just a flicker as of a match scratched and instantly extinguished.

This struck him as curious; it was no weather or hour for decent folk to be abroad. The Babe then remembered that the mess-cart was in the shed, and it occurred to him that somebody might be monkeying with the harness. He thereupon marched straight for the shed (treading quite noiselessly in his gum-boots) and, pulling out his electric torch, flashed it, not on some cringing Picard peasant, as he had expected, but on three unshorn, unwashed, villainous, whopping big Bosch infantrymen! It would be difficult to say who was the most staggered for the moment, the Huns blinking in the sudden glare of the torch or the Babe well aware that he was up against a trio of escaped and probably quite desperate prisoners of war. "Victory," says M. HILAIRE BELLOC (or was it NAPOLEON? I am always getting them mixed) "is to him who can bring the greatest force to bear on a given position." That is as may be, but, after personal participation in one or two of the major disputes in the late lamented war, I put it this way. Two opposing factions bump, utter chaos reigns supreme and the side which recovers first wins. In this case the Babe was the first to recover. A year before the War he found himself in a seminary in the suburbs of Berlin, learning to cough his vowels, roll his r's and utter German phonetically. Potsdam was near at hand, and many a pleasant hour did the Babe spend on a bench outside the old Stadt Palast, watching young recruits of the Prussian Guard having their souls painfully extracted from them by _Feldwebels_ of great muzzle velocity and booting force. The sight of those three Hun uniforms standing before him must have pricked a memory, which in turn set some sub-conscious mechanism to work, for suddenly the Babe heard a voice bawling orders in German. It was fully five seconds, he swears, before he recognised it as his own. "Attention!" snarled the voice in proper Potsdammer style. "Quick march! Right wheel!" The three great hooligans trembled all over, clicked their heels and stepped off the mark as punctiliously as though on the Tempelhofer Feld at the Spring Parade.

In two minutes the Babe, snarling like a Zoo tiger at dinner-time, had manoeuvred them across a hundred yards of bog and filed them, goose-stepping, into a Nissen Hut full of sleeping Atkinses. The Atkinses rolled, gaping, off their beds at the Babe's first shout, and the game was up.

Ten minutes later the Bosch gentlemen were _en route_ for the main guard under strong, if _déshabillé_, escort.

It turned out that one of them spoke English quite badly and on reaching the Guard Room he opened out.

They had escaped from a prison camp at Abbeville, he said, and were heading for Holland, travelling by night.

Passing the farm at about midnight they espied our hooded mess-cart and, feeling tired and footsore, had conceived the bright idea of stealing a horse to fit the cart and driving to Holland in style and comfort. Just as they were getting things shipshape along came the Babe and clapped the lid on--"_verfluchte kleine Teufel_!"

When the Main Guard lads inquired how it was that after all their trouble they had allowed one lone unarmed infant to corral the three of them, instead of quietly biffing him on the head, as they quite easily might have done, the Huns were very confused. At one moment they were in the shed, they said, fascinated like moths in the glare of the torch, and the next thing they knew they were in the midst of a horde of underclothed Tommies--trapped. As to what had happened in the interval, or how they had been spirited from one place to the other, they were not in the least clear--couldn't explain it at all.

The Drill Habit again.

PATLANDER.

* * * * *

ARMISTICE-TIME ECONOMY.

"The Consecrating Officers were elected Honorary Members of the Lodge and were presented with a souvenir in the form of a solid silver cigar ash-tray, made from the lead used in the production of shrapnel bullets."

_Freemason's Chronicle_.

* * * * *

"Several persons dropped to the pavement, several dripping with blood. One man had his head partially opened, and he lay writing on the ground."--_Provincial Paper_.

If the poor fellow was, as we presume, a reporter, we cannot too much applaud his devotion to duty.

* * * * *

* * * * *

THE BET.

The Colonel was, as usual, laying down the law.

"Economy!" he said with a snort; "economy's dead. No one cares about saving money any more. No one cares about the value of money. We are asked excessive prices and we pay them. We eat, drink and are merry--or approximately so--and be hanged to you! With the exception of the halfpenny stamp we put on circulars I can think of nothing that has not gone up or, in other words, lost buying power. I defy anyone to name a thing that hasn't."

He glowered fiercely and challengingly around.

"I repeat," he said, "that the purchasing power of money is not what it was in any respect. The other day, for instance, I bought a new hat. I used to pay a guinea; it is now thirty-two and six. And a worse hat probably. What do you think I was charged for soling and heeling shoes? One pound ten! And worse leather. That's partly what I mean by the loss of purchasing power; where the price may in some extraordinary way remain the same, the quality of the article paid for is inferior. There's a steady deterioration. Can anyone name a case where I am wrong?"

His red eyes again defied us.

"Yes, I can," said a meek voice.

The Colonel subjected the speaker to a long and ferocious scrutiny.

"You can'?" he said at last.

"Yes," replied the meek voice. "Will you bet on it?"

"Bet on it? Most certainly I will," said the Colonel, who has done fairly well in wagers in his time. "How much?"

"What you like," replied the meek voice.

"Very well," said the Colonel, "make it a tenner."

"With pleasure," was the rejoinder. "The bet is that I can't name a single thing which has not either increased in price or decreased in quality since the War?"

"Yes," said the Colonel.

We all sat up and waited, as though for the maroons in the old, old days.

"Well," said the meek voice, "the cost of pulling a communication cord is I still five pounds, and you can have just as good a pull as ever."

* * * * *

ON THE SAFE SIDE.

"Why, what's this, Ben, they're telling me?-- Eighty and going to get a wife! Gaffer, I thought you'd surely be A snug old bachelor for life."

"Well, Sur, ye see I allus meant To take ole Martha some fine day; But 'wed in haste and then repent' I heer'd as many folks did say.

"But now, thinks I, there's sure no fear Through too much haste o' goin' wrong;

"An', anyways, at eighty year I can't repent fur wery long."

* * * * *

THE GREATEST PATRIOT OF ALL: A public servant who did not strike during the War--Big Ben.

* * * * *

* * * * *

THE APPOINTMENT.

They tell me there is work for most, However tired they be, That there are Offices engrossed In finding me a well-paid post Of suitable degree; That there are businesses that itch To make the young lieutenant rich, Yet I have not discovered which Is itching after me.

And this is strange; for I could shine In any place you please, Although, if there is any line Which is most obviously mine, It is the man of ease-- The man whose intellect is such He never has to labour much, But does the literary touch In comfort at "The Leas."

Or I could be a splendid Squire And watch the harvest grow, Could urge the reaper to perspire And put the cattle in the byre (If that is where they go), And every morning do the rounds Of my immense ancestral grounds With six or seven faithful hounds, And say, "It looks like snow."

And there are moments when I feel The diplomatic call; No trickery would long conceal The state of things at Bubazeel When I was at the Ball, To spy across the "brilliant floors" On daughters of Ambassadors, And "obviate" impending wars By dancing with them all.

A bishopric I can't afford, Though I could give it tone, And often when the people snored I've felt they would not be so bored By sermons of my own; But if the Secretaries cry For secretaries--here am I; Or nobly would I occupy The taxi-driver's throne.

For I should beam across the street When people waved at me, And say, "My petrol's incomplete, I haven't had my bit of meat Nor yet my bit of tea, But just because I like your face I'll take you out to any place However distant from my base-- And ask no extra fee."

And yet I doubt could England bear To see my rest destroyed? A soul so delicate and fair Should simply saunter through the air And cultivate the void; One would not readily degrade One's loveliness in _any_ trade, Only, of course, one must be paid For being unemployed.

A. P. H.

* * * * *

SMITH MINOR PROFFERS A REQUEST.

_(An authentic document_.)

Will you please send me a fountain pen because nearly every boy but me has a fountain pen and I should so like to have one because I often want to write something outside and I carn't and then when I come in I don't no what it is and I miss something out of my letter then when I have writen my letter I remember what it was and genulry I remember it in lesons and when I begin to write my next letter I have for goten it and it goes on like that till at last I remember it and then some times I don't rember it all and that is why I want a fontin pen.

* * * * *

* * * * *

_Tuesday, February 4th_.--There is much virtue in horsehair. Few who attended the informal opening of the Third Parliament of KING GEORGE THE FIFTH would have guessed that under the full-bottomed wig and gorgeous black-and-gold robes of the dignified figure on the Woolsack lay the volatile personality of "F. E." He played his new part nobly. A trifling error in the setting of his three-cornered hat, whose rakish cock was for the moment reminiscent of the "Galloper," was quickly corrected on the advice of one of the Lords Commissioners at his side; and by the time the faithful Commons were admitted to hear the Commission read there was nothing to differentiate Lord BIRKENHEAD (as he had now become) from any previous occupant of his exalted position. Nor was there any lack of dignity in his delivery of the instructions to the Commons to "proceed to the choice of some proper person to be your Speaker"--though I fancy that when he bade them "repair to the place where you are to sit" he must have been tempted to add the words, "provided that you can find room there."

For the Lower House, when we returned there, was a seething mass of humanity. How many of the 707 duly elected Members were present I know not; but there were enough to swamp the floor and surge over into the Galleries. Seeing that the "Tubes" were closed and taxis few and far between, some of them were obliged to resort to unusual methods of locomotion. Sir HENRY NORMAN surprised the police in Palace Yard by arriving on a motor-scooter, and there is an unconfirmed rumour that the Editor of _John Bull_ made his _rentrée_ to the House in a flying-boat drawn by four _canards sauvages._ Anyhow, there they were, so thick and slab that Mr. DE VALERA, who was reported to have escaped from durance vile with the intention of presenting himself at the House and creating a disturbance, would have found it impossible to gain entry unless preceded by a charge of gelignite. As it was, none of the Sinn Feiners was present, nor indeed any representative of Irish Nationalism at all, and the proceedings were as orderly as a Quaker funeral.

Not that they were by any means dull. For both Colonel MILDMAY, who proposed, and Sir HENRY DALZIEL, who seconded, the re-election of Mr. LOWTHER as Speaker, spiced their compliments with humour. The former was confident that even if Woman appeared on the floor of the House the SPEAKER-ELECT'S "consummate tact" would be equal to coping with her artfullest endeavours to get round the rules of procedure; while the latter attributed his priceless gift of humour to "Scottish ancestry on the mother's side."

Horsehair again! I hardly recognised in the quietly-dressed Member who rose from the Bench behind Ministers to acknowledge these encomiums the man whose awe-inspiring appearance (when clothed in wig and gown) has quelled so many storms in the last four Parliaments. Let us hope that the fifth, of which, being the outcome of his famous Conference, he may in a sense be described as the "onlie begetter," will not disgrace its parentage.

Already there are elements of difficulty. Through the non-return of Mr. ASQUITH the Opposition has lost its head literally and is in some danger of losing it figuratively, for the remnant of the un-"couponed" Liberals and the Labour Party are at present acutely divided on the question upon whom the lost Leader's mantle should fall. Today Sir DONALD MACLEAN, as senior Privy Councillor, took the _pas_ and was able from personal experience to give his conception of the ideal Speaker, who "must not only have good vision but be sometimes quite blind; not only have acute hearing but occasionally be almost stone-deaf." Fortunately the SPEAKER-ELECT can assume these physical defects at will; for, despite its quiet opening, I doubt if the new Parliament when it gets to work will prove precisely a Lowther Arcadia.

_Wednesday, February 5th_.--To the Lords again, where the SPEAKER-ELECT, attired in Court dress and accompanied by the SERGEANT-AT-ARMS dandling the Mace as if it ware a refractory infant, presented himself at the Bar to hear from the LORD CHANCELLOR the pleasing intelligence that HIS MAJESTY was convinced of his "ample sufficiency" to execute his arduous duties, and readily approved his election. Thereupon Sir COLIN KEPPEL swung the Mace on to his shoulder and escorted the SPEAKER, now confirmed in his rank, back to the Commons.