Chapter 3

The greatest event in our history, as the writer finely observes, cannot be worthily commemorated by any timid compromise. Winchester has set a splendid example, but it is perhaps too much to expect that it will be followed by London, owing to the inevitable clash of conflicting interests in our unwieldy metropolis. The erection of a new Pantheon on the site of St. Paul's and the removal of WREN'S massive but _démodé_ structure to Hampstead Heath, where it would certainly look as well as ever, is, we fear, however much _The Times_ may desire it, beyond the range of practical politics. But example is infectious, and if only the Winchester authorities would expand their scheme and carry it out with Dantonesque audacity to its full logical conclusion, other towns and cities might ultimately fall into line.

Winchester Cathedral, as we need hardly remind our readers, has only been rescued from subsidence and collapse at an immense cost by a lavish use of the resources of modern engineering. The building itself is not without merits, but its site is inconspicuous and the swampy nature of the soil is a constant menace to its durability. The scheme which we venture with all humility to suggest is that it should be removed and re-erected, in the same spirit though in the architectural language of our own day, on the summit of St. Catherine's Hill, where it would look better than ever, and be connected by a scenic neo-Gothic railway with Meads. This would not only add to the amenities of the landscape, but enable the present cathedral site to be utilized for a purpose more in consonance with the needs of the age. We do not presume to dictate, but may point out that if the deanery and the canons' houses were pulled down and re-erected on the golf-links, where they would look better than ever, space would be available for a majestic aerodrome, or, better still, an experimental water-stadium for submarines, in memory of KING ALFRED, the founder of our Fleet.

Into the question of details, design and cost it is not for us to enter. We confine ourselves to appealing with all the force at our command to Winchester, fortunate, as _The Times_ reminds us, in the choice of an architect of genius and ingenuity, to persevere, to rise to the occasion, to cast compromise to the winds and above all to remember that the greatest compliment which can be paid to the architects of the past is to remove their buildings to sites where they look better than ever and do not suffer from the immediate neighbourhood of the masterpieces of their successors. Architecture has been defined as "frozen music." But on great occasions such as this it needs to be taken out of its cold-storage and judiciously thawed.

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"Lost, sulky inflate."--_Glasgow Citizen_.

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CIVIL EDUCATION FOR SOLDIERS.

When the armistice was signed and the close season for Germans set in, it occurred to the authorities that it would be a waste of labour to continue to train some few million good men for a shooting season that might never re-open, and the weekly programme became rather a sketchy affair till some brain more brilliant than the rest conceived the idea of giving a good sound education in the arts of peace to this promising and waiting multitude. The idea was joyfully accepted, and gradually filtered through its authorised channels, suffering some office change or other at each stage till it finally reached one of our ancient seats of learning. It arrived rather like the peremptory order of a newly-gazetted and bewildered subaltern, who, having got his platoon hopelessly tied up, falls back on the time-honoured and usually infallible "Carry on, Sergeant."

There were some six-hundred white-hatted cadets stationed at this spot, all thirsting (presumably) for information on gas, and Mills bombs, and studs on the cocking-piece, and forming fours, and vertical intervals and District Courts-martial; and when the order came to "carry on" with education it caused something like a panic. A council of war nearly caused Head-quarters to cancel a battalion parade, but they pulled themselves together and held the drill, and the appointed Jack as "Battalion Education Officer," and empowered him to draft a scheme of work.

When produced it consisted of fourteen paragraphs, each of which finished up with the sentence, "This is obviously a problem for the Company Commander." Jack had nothing to learn as to the duties of a battalion specialist and realised that his responsibility lay simply in providing Company Commanders, and then finding problems for them to solve. As the Company Commanders were already in being his work was simplified.

However, the Company Commanders, being men of merit, cheerfully accepted the situation and approached their victims. "We are going to teach you," they said. "What would you like to be taught?"

"Well," said the victims, "what have you got?"

"Oh, anything you like," said the Company Commanders. "Just you choose your subject and we'll do the rest."

Now that was very generous, but rather rash. For the victims took them at their word, and so by the time the perspiring Platoon Commanders had produced their returns (in triplicate) it was found that there were forty-three subjects to be provided for, including seven languages, six branches of science, four kinds of engineering, six commercial subjects and various sundries, such as metaphysics, wool-classing and coker-nut planting.

The way the Company Commanders dealt with this problem was quite simple and ingenious. They sent for all junior officers and asked what they were prepared to teach. The result seemed really rather good. Tom said he would take French, having spent three months in Northern France before they sent him to Salonika. Dick's father has an allotment and Dick himself occasionally hunts, so he chose Agriculture, Oswald chose Mathematics, on the strength of having been a Quartermaster-Sergeant in the Public Schools Brigade in September, 1914. Wilfred once went to a gas course for ten days, so of course his subject was Science. Arthur really does know something about Architecture and can also enlarge a map quite nicely, so he put down Drawing. John chose Theology. He said he once read the lessons in church; really he thought he was safe to draw a blank.

Once more the Company Commanders were equal to the emergency. They looked at it in this way. French is a foreign language; Spanish is also a foreign language. Tom offers to teach a foreign language; therefore Tom shall teach Spanish. Corn-growing in Western Canada, sheep-raising in Australia and coker-nut planting are all obviously agriculture. Dick says he can teach Agriculture; so he shall. The science of manures caused some discussion as to whether it should be agriculture or science, but it was finally settled in favour of science, which also included physics, electricity and crystallography. John got four theological students, but, when he investigated, he found that one was a Jew and one a Presbyterian minister, while the other two, like himself, thought that no one else would have thought of it. And these touch only the fringe of the subject.

The indent sent in for materials was a rather formidable one, but the article most in demand was a sheep, which was wanted at the same time by Dick for his Agriculture and Arthur for his Drawing, and also by Mac, who is O.C. the Butchery class. Mac wrote a polite little note saying he must have at least one a week, and he'd like "a pig to be going on with, if you please," promising to hand, the latter over complete and in good order, when he'd done with it, to Jones for his bacon-curing class, "upon receipt of signature for same."

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COMMERCIAL CANDOUR.

"120 Pairs Unbleached Calico Sheets, 2 x 2¾ yards. Sale price, 12/11 per pair; present value, 1/- per pair."--_Yorkshire Paper_.

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"Including new enlistments there are about 1,000 men concentrated in and around Berlin."--_Manchester Guardian_.

Let FOCH be warned.

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"BAD BOYS AND THE BIRCH.

"We are glad to observe that the Recorder has decided to adopt stern measures with juvenile offenders who are brought before him in future."--_Irish Times_.

"Stern measures" is good.

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"NON-STOP WAIST DRIVES, Every Wednesday Evening at 8.30. £10 Top, and Six other Special Prizes."--_Local Paper_.

Believed to be under the patronage of the FOOD-CONTROLLER.

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THE FOOD PROBLEM IN PARIS.

The cost of living in the vicinity of the Peace Conference has been enormously exaggerated. Likewise the difficulty of reorganizing Europe on a truly ethnic basis. By combining the two questions I have found them immensely simplified, and I have been in Paris only three days.

My meaning will be clearly illustrated by the record of a single day's experience--with the representative of the Dodopeloponnesians for _déjeûner_ and the delegate of the Pan-Deuteronomaniads for dinner.

I made the acquaintance of the first in the lift. On the way down it came out that I was _journaliste_ assisting at the Conference of the Peace, whereupon the other introduced himself as secretary of the Dodopeloponnesian delegation and eager for the pleasure of entertaining me at _déjeûner_.

Nothing international arose in connection with the _hors d'oeuvres_. It was between the soup and the fish that my host inquired whether I had yet found time to look into the just claim of the Dodopeloponnesian people to the neighbouring island of Funicula.

"You mean," I said, "on the ground that the island of Funicula was brought under the Dodopeloponnesian sceptre on September 11th, 1405, by Blagoslav the Splay-fingered, from whom it was wrested on February 3rd, 1406, by the Seljuks?"

"Precisely," he said. "But also because the people of Funicula are originally of Dodopeloponnesian stock."

"Yet they speak the language of Pan-Deuteronomania," I said.

"A debased dialect," he said, "foisted upon them by a remission of ten per cent. in taxes for every hundred words of the lingo learned by heart, with double votes for irregular verbs."

The _entrée_, something with eggs and jelly, was excellent.

"Far be it from me to deny," I said, "the fact that Funicula is by right a part of the inheritance of the Octo-syllabarians"--and I bowed gracefully to my host, who raised his glass in return--"and I agree in advance with every argument you put forward in favour of a restored Sesquicentennial commonwealth by bringing together the scattered members of the Duodecimal race from all over the world. In fact," I added as the waiter poured out the champagne, "it seems to me that in addition to the Island of Funicula there properly belongs, in the realm of your Greater Anti-Vivisectoria, the adjacent promontory, geyser and natural bridge of Pneumobronchia, from which the last Seljuk ruler, Didyffius the Forty-fifth, leaped in front of a machete wielded by his eldest son, who therefore became Didymus the Forty-sixth."

He was delighted to find so much sympathy and understanding in an alien journalist from far across the seas. His bill, so far as a hurried and discreet glance could reveal, was 89 francs 50 centimes, not including the _taxe_.

On the other hand, the _sous-secrétaire_ of the Pan-Deuteronomaniad delegation, who took me out to dinner that same night, paid 127 francs (including theatre tickets) before he proved to my satisfaction that the basic civilization of Funicula Island is after all Pan-whatever-you-call-it.

At any rate my point is made. My expenditure on food these three days in Paris has been negligible, and there is rumour that the Supra-Zambesian delegation is thinking of opening a hotel with running water, h. and c., in every room.

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_DULCE DOMUM_.

The air is full of rain and sleet, A dingy fog obscures the street; I watch the pane and wonder will The sun be shining on Boar's Hill, Rekindling on his western course The dying splendour of the gorse And kissing hands in joyous mood To primroses in Bagley Wood. I wish that when old Phoebus drops Behind yon hedgehog-haunted copse And high and bright the Northern Crown Is standing over White Horse Down I could be sitting by the fire In that my Land of Heart's Desire-- A fire of fir-cones and a log And at my feet a fubsy dog In Robinwood! In Robinwood! I think the angels, if they could, Would trade their harps for railway tickets Or hang their crowns upon the thickets And walk the highways of the world Through eves of gold and dawns empearled, Could they be sure the road led on Twixt Oxford spires and Abingdon To where above twin valleys stands Boar's Hill, the best of promised lands; That at the journey's end there stood A heaven on earth like Robinwood.

Heigho! The sleet still whips the pane And I must turn to work again Where the brown stout of Erin hums Through Dublin's aromatic slums And Sinn Fein youths with shifty faces Hold "Parliaments" in public places And, heaping curse on mountainous curse In unintelligible Erse, Harass with threats of war and arson Base Briton and still baser CARSON. But some day when the powers that be Demobilise the likes of me (Some seven years hence, as I infer, My actual exit will occur) Swift o'er the Irish Sea I'll fly, Yea, though each wave be mountains high, Nor pause till I descend to grab Oxford's surviving taxicab. Then "Home!" (Ah, HOME! my heart be still!) I'll say, and, when we reach Boar's Hill, I'll fill my lungs with heaven's own air And pay the cabman twice his fare, Then, looking far and looking nigh, Bare-headed and with hand on high, "Hear ye," I'll cry, "the vow I make, Familiar sprites of byre and brake, _J'y suis, j'y reste_. Let Bolshevicks Sweep from the Volga to the Styx; Let internecine carnage vex The gathering hosts of Poles and Czechs, And Jugo-Slavs and Tyrolese Impair the swart Italian's ease-- Me for Boar's Hill! These war-worn ears Are deaf to cries for volunteers; No Samuel Browne or British warm Shall drape this svelte Apolline form Till over Cumnor's outraged top The actual shells begin to drop; Till below Youlberry's stately pines Echo the whiskered Bolshy's lines And General TROTSKY'S baggage blocks The snug bar-parlour of 'The Fox.'"

ALGOL.

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ROMANCE WHILE YOU WAIT.

My friend and I occupied facing seats in a railway-carriage on a tedious journey. Having nothing to read and not much to say, I gazed through the windows at the sodden English winter landscape, while my friend's eyes were fixed on the opposite wall of the compartment, above my head.

"What a country!" I exclaimed at last. "Good heavens, what a country, to spend one's life in!"

"Yes," he said, withdrawing his eyes from the space above my head. "And why do we stay in it when there are such glorious paradises to go to? Hawaii now. If you really want divine laziness--sun and warmth and the absence of all fretful ambition--you should go to the South Seas. You can't get it anywhere else. I remember when I was in Hawaii--"

"Hawaii!" I interrupted. "You never told me you had been to Hawaii."

"I don't tell everything," he replied. "But the happiest hours of my existence were spent in a little village two or three miles from Honolulu, on the coast, where we used to go now and then for a day's fun. It was called--let me get it right--it was called Tormo Tonitui--and there were pleasure-gardens there and the most fascinating girls." His eyes took on a far-away wistfulness.

"Yes, yes?" I said.

"Fascinating brown girls," he said, "who played that banjo-mandolin thing they all play, and sang mournful luxurious songs, and danced under the lanterns at night. And the bathing! There's no bathing here at all. There you can stay in the sea air day if you like. It's like bathing in champagne. Sun and surf and sands--there's nothing like it." He sighed rapturously.

"Well, I can't help saying again," I interrupted, "that it's a most extraordinary thing that, after knowing you all these years, you have never told me a word about Honolulu or the South Seas or this wonderful pleasure-garden place called--what was the name of it?"

He hesitated for a moment. "Morto Notitui," he then replied.

"I don't think that's how you had it before," I said; "surely it was Tormo Tonitui?"

"Perhaps it was," he said. "I forget. Those Hawaiian names are very much alike and all rather confusing. But you really ought to go out there. Why don't you cut everything for a year and get some sunshine into your system? You're fossilising here. We all are. Let's be gamblers and chance it."

"I wish I could," I said. "Tell me some more about your life there."

"It was wonderful," he went on--wonderful. I'm not surprised that STEVENSON found it a paradise."

"By the way," I asked, "did you hear anything of STEVENSON?"

"Oh, yes, lots. I met several men who had known him--Tusitala he was called there, you know--and several natives. There was one extraordinary old fellow who had helped him make the road up the mountain. He and I had some great evenings together, yarning and drinking copra."

"Did he tell you anything particularly personal about STEVENSON?" I asked.

"Nothing that I remember," he said; "but he was a fine old fellow and as thirsty as they make 'em."

"What is copra like?" I asked.

"Great," he said. "Like--what shall I say?--well, like Audit ale and Veuve Clicquot mixed. But it got to your head. You had to be careful. I remember one night after a day's bathing at--at Tromo Titonui--"

"Where was that?" I asked.

"Oh, that little village I was telling you about," he said. "I remember one night--"

"Look here," I said, "you began by calling it Tormo Tonitui, then you called it Morto Notitui and now it's Tromo Titonui. I'm going to say again, quite seriously, that I don't believe you ever were in Hawaii at all."

"Of course I wasn't," he replied. "But what is one to do in a railway carriage, with nothing to read, and a drenched world and those two words staring one in the face?" and he pointed to a placard above my head advertising a firm which provided the best and cheapest Motor Tuition.

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DEMOBILISED.

Daddy's got his civvies on: In his room upstairs You should have heard him stamping round, Throwing down the chairs; When I went to peep at him Daddy banged his door.... Well, I think I'll hide from Daddy Till the next Great War!

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

MR. ARNOLD BENNETT'S new novel, _The Roll Call_ (HUTCHINSON), is a continuation of the _Clayhanger_ series to the extent that its hero, _George Cannon_, is the stepson of _Edwin_, who himself makes a perfunctory appearance at the close of the tale. The scene is, however, now London, where we watch _George_ winning fame and fortune, quite in the masterful Five-Towns manner, as an architect. The change is, I think, beneficial. That quality of unstalable astonishment, native to Mr. BENNETT's folk, accords better with the complexities of the wonderful city than to places where it had at times only indifferent matter upon which to work. But it is noticeable that Mr. BENNETT can communicate this surprise not only to his characters but to his readers. There is an enthusiasm, real or apparent, in his art which, like the beam celestial, "evermore makes all things new," so that when he tells us, as here, that there are studios in Chelsea or that the lamps in the Queen's Hall have red shades, these facts acquire the thrill of sudden and almost startling discovery. I suppose this to be one reason for the pleasure that I always have in his books; another is certainly the intense, even passionate sympathy that he lavishes upon the central character. In the present example the affairs of _George Cannon_ are shown developing largely under the stimulus of four women, of whom the least seen is certainly the most interesting, while _Lois_, the masterful young female whom _George_ marries, promises as a personality more than she fulfils. We conduct _George's_ fortunes as far as the crisis produced in them by the War, and leave him contemplating a changed life as a subaltern in the R.F.A. It is therefore permissible to hope that in a year or two we may expect the story of his reconstruction. I shall read it with delight.

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_Iron Times with the Guards_ (MURRAY), by an O.E., is emphatically one of the books which one won't turn out from one's war-book shelf. It fills in blanks which appear in more ambitious and more orderly narratives. This particular old Etonian, entering the new Army by way of the Territorials in the first days of the War, was transferred, in the March of 1915, to the Coldstreams and was in the fighting line in April of the same year. A way they had in the Army of those great days. Details of the routine of training, reported barrack-square jests and dug-out conversations, vignettes of trench and field, disquisitions on many strictly relevant and less relevant topics, reflections of that fine pride in the regiment which marks the best of soldiers, an occasional more ambitious survey of a battle or a campaign--all this from a ready but not pretentious pen, guided by a sound intelligence and some power of observation, makes an admirable commentary. Our author's narrative carries us to those days of the great hopes of the Spring of 1917, hopes so tragically deferred. Perhaps the best thing in an interesting sheaf is the description of the attack of the Guards Division--as it had become--on the Transloy-Lesboeufs-Ginchy road, with its glory and its carnage.

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