Chapter 3

The avowed object of the PREMIER is to get away from people and politics and to have at last a little uninterrupted holiday. Probably he counts on the difficulty of getting at him there, having regard to that terrible bit of the journey Bern--Luzern, which covers sixty miles, takes three hours and involves twenty-four stops, even if you take the mid-day express. There is a train in the afternoon (its number is 5666, and I warn you against it) which takes four hours, though it only stops twenty-four times also. The sinister fact is that all the trains on this route stop as often as they can, which I attribute to that general wave of idleness which is to-day spreading over Europe. But number 5666 is worse than others; or else it is getting old and tired. I notice that among the trains doing the return journey there is no number 5666; I suppose it has just as much as it can do to get there and that it never does return.

The PREMIER was not far out to count on this protective element, and it is still the fact that, if you approach Luzern carelessly, it is ninety-nine to one that you will spend the best years of your young life on that particular stretch of railway. But nowadays there is a back way round, by Basel. Be quite firm in asking for your ticket. If the ticket man says, "You mean Bâle?" or, "You mean Basle?" say, "No, I don't. I mean Basel." You have me and my friend, _Amtliches Schweizerisches Kursbuch_, behind you. Stick firmly to your point, and by approaching Luzern from the North you will approach it by a real express which only takes two hours to do its sixty miles and hardly stops at all to take breath. So that finishes with Bern, as to the spelling of which, though you would personally like to see some more "e's," you now repose confidence in me. Would you like me to quote my authority?... All right; I won't say it again if it frightens the children.

In the old days of Peace, Luzern was full of honeymoon couples, and, when Peace and honeymoons and all that sort of nonsense were put a stop to, it became full of German interned prisoners of war. It boasts many first-class hotels. One of them is patronised by the Greek ex-Royal Family. A little unfortunate; but still you cannot expect to come and enjoy yourself in Switzerland without the risk of running into an ex-Royal Family every corner you go round, and, what is more, a Royal Family that wouldn't be ex- if it wasn't for you. It is a very good hotel, and I recommend it for anyone who proposes just to pop over here.

Get hold of L.G. while he is not busy and explain to him how thoroughly misguided all his policies are, especially as to the Near East. My idea is to group, according to subject and side, all those who intend to get hold of the PREMIER, while he is alone, and to have a quiet chat with him. I have my eye on a large hangar on the other side of the Lake, which was built to house a dirigible and ought to hold the bulk of those who want a word about Ireland, a place they could put right in five minutes if it was left to them. Deputations which have some idea of declaring strikes, general strikes and international strikes, if matters are not arranged to their liking, will be received between the hours of ten and twelve, and two and four, at the Kursaal. Saturday afternoons and Sundays will be reserved for quiet walks. I am mapping out some interesting routes, marking with a red dot the spots where the PREMIER is likely to stop and admire the view, and where you can approach him quietly from behind and involve him in an argument about Russia before he has time to get away.

Image a PREMIER arrived at the end of all the beautiful sights to be seen locally, inured to all the magnificent scenery around him, and no longer attracted by the novelty of life abroad, longing, it may be, for just one touch of home. Then is the moment for the little surprise I am keeping for him up my sleeve. "Come along to a place close by," I shall say to him, for I see myself with the whole business well in my hands now; "come along to a village I know, whose very name will make you feel at home."

Just outside Luzern we stop at Meggen, but it's not that. Kussnacht gets us well abroad again, and there is nothing particularly homely about Immensee, Arth-Goldau, Steinen, Schwyz or Brunnen. In fact I can see my PREMIER getting suspicious and wondering what new political move this may be, when suddenly there will burst upon his astonished gaze--

FLUELLEN.

Let us leave him there, alone with his emotions, into which it would be impertinent to probe. I may tell you quietly apart that there is a difference of opinion between me and _Amtliches Schweizerisches Kursbuch_ about this name. He wants to ration the l's, but, having been there and heard the name pronounced, I have refused to be taught how to spell a good Welsh name by a darned foreigner. If we are going to have any nonsense about it I have said that I shall stand out for the proper, full and uncorrupt spelling: FLLEWELLYN.

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* * * * *

"'That,' declared Mr. Lloyd George amid loud cheers, 'is one of the most formidable challenges ever given to democracy. Without hesitation every Government must accept that challenge.' 'Certainly we will,' retorted the Prime Minister."--_Evening Paper._

No wonder Mr. LLOYD GEORGE wants a holiday if he has begun to talk to himself.

* * * * *

"A telegram from Paris says: It is announced here that an agreement has been concluded between France, Great Britain and Italy regarding the delimitation of the open golf championship."--_Provincial Paper._

It will be noticed that America seems once more to have held aloof from the councils of the Allies.

* * * * *

"TO HIM THAT HATH ..."

It was Butterington who first put me up to the idea. I asked him a simple question about the habits of the Sigalion Boa, a certain worm in whose ways I was taking an interest at the time, and he at once replied that he himself was not in the fur line.

"Whenever," he went on, "I require information on any subject I apply to my bank. Why don't you do the same?"

This opened up an entirely new prospect. To me my bank was an institution which kept my accounts, issued money and, on occasion, lent it. It never entered my head that it was also ready to perform the functions of an inquiry office and information bureau.

Previous communications from me had always begun, "Sir, with reference to my overdraft"--you know the sort of thing one generally writes to banks; expostulating, tactful, temporising letters.

This time however I addressed them in different vein. Rejecting all mention of overdrafts as being in doubtful taste, I wrote:--

SIR,--I shall be greatly obliged if you will kindly inform me, at your early convenience:

(1) Whether it is a fact that the African rhinoceros has no hair on the hind legs?

(2) Whether, in the case of my backing Pegasus in the first race, 'any to come' on Short Time in the fourth, and Short Time not starting, I am entitled to my winnings over Pegasus?

(3) Whether, after perusing seventeen favourable reports from mining engineers and eighty-seven enthusiastic directors' speeches, I am justified in assuming that gold actually does exist in the Bonanzadorado mine?

Yours faithfully,

THESIGER CHOLMONDELEY BEAUCHAMP.

After some delay they answered as follows:--

SIR,--We have much pleasure in replying to the queries contained in your favour, of the 27th ult.:--

(1) Yes; (2) Yes; (3) No.

Assuring you always of our best endeavours in your service,

We remain, Yours faithfully, _per pro_ The Cosmopolitan Bkg. Corpn.

C.O. SHINE.

So far so good. The Bank's manner left nothing to be desired, and its replies were certainly to the point. I began to think of Mr. C.O. Shine as my personal friend and speculated as to whether his first name were Claude or Clarence.

During the following week, whenever I became curious on any subject, I made notes of fresh queries to propound. After accumulating a sufficient number I again wrote to the Bank. I forget the exact points upon which I required information; one of them, I fancy, was the conjectured geologic age of the Reichardtite strata. Anyhow I got no answer to any of them.

Instead, three days later, I received the following letter:--

SIR,--We regret to announce that, owing to a clerical error in this office, your account was last month wrongly credited with a cheque for £13,097 5s. 10d. which was made payable to another client of the same name.

Adjustments have now been made which reveal a balance on your account of £110 11s. 3d. _in our favour_. We trust that you will find it convenient to cover this overdraft at an early date.

With reference to your letter of the 19th inst. containing assorted inquiries, we beg to intimate that we can in no circumstances undertake to advise clients on general matters which lie outside the scope of our interests.

Yours faithfully, _per pro_ The Cosmopolitan Bkg. Corpn.

CHARLES O. SHINE.

And this time C.O.S. did not even "remain" in the plural.

I at once showed Butterington this offensive communication.

"Well," said he, "of course they won't answer communications unless you have a balance."

That is the way rich men talk.

"I am never without one," I replied with dignity, "on one side or the other."

"There you differ from your namesake, whose balance is clearly always on the right side. Hence that first kindly letter, addressed to you in error."

* * * * *

THE ROMANCE OF ADVERTISEMENT.

The following items, culled from recent issues of _The Daily Lure_, show where you should go to find really interesting, stimulating and flat- catching notices:--

Partner, with not less than five thousand pounds, wanted for a wild-duck farm in the island of Mull. Must be a man of iron constitution; Gaelic speaker and teetotaler preferred.

* * *

Wanted, a cheap Desert Island, with a good water-supply and home comforts, by a Georgian poet weary of the racket of Hammersmith.

* * *

Complete suits of armour, guaranteed bottle-proof, ten guineas each, suitable for elderly pedestrians in charabanc areas.

* * *

Madame Bogolubov, Crystal-gazer in ordinary to the ex-King CONSTANTINE, is prepared for a small fee to advise intending explorers, prospectors or treasure-seekers as to suitable spots for excavation, oil-boring, etc.

* * *

Disused Martello Tower on the Irish coast, fifty miles from a police barrack, offered cheap as an appropriate basis of observation to psychic enthusiasts anxious to study the ways of leprechauns, banshees, etc.

* * *

Genuine portraits by VAN DYCK, VELASQUEZ and REMBRANDT must be sold immediately to pay a debt of honour. Price thirty shillings each, or would take part payment in pre-war whisky.

* * *

Semi-paralysed Yugo-Slav professor, speaking seventeen languages, will give lessons to neo-plutocrats in the correct pronunciation of the names of all the foreign singers, dancers and artists performing or exhibiting in London.

* * *

Persons interested in edible fungi may be glad to take shares in a fungus plantation about to be started in the neighbourhood of Toller Porcorum, Dorchester.

* * * * *

THE RETURN OF THE COLONEL.

House, the enigmatic Colonel, WILSON'S right-hand man in France When the PRESIDENT was leading Peace's great Parisian dance, Once again returns to Europe as a journalist free-lance.

He's a most sagacious person, indisposed to carp or grouse, So we hope he'll be successful, aided by his tact and _nous_, In upholding Mr. WILSON, _not_ in bringing down the House.

* * * * *

THE UBIQUITOUS SCOT.

From _The Times'_ summary of news:--

"Our Constantinople correspondent, in a message reviewing the situation in Armenia, states that the Armenians have captured the ancient town of Nakhitchevan, where a Tartan Government had been set up."

Small wonder that, people complain that no place is safe from Scotland's activities. Meanwhile there seems a likelihood of a Tarzan Government being set up in the film world.

* * * * *

From Mrs. ASQUITH'S reminiscences:

"One day after this conversation he [the late Lord Salisbury] came to see me in Cavendish Square, bringing with him a signed photograph of himself. This was in the year 1904, at the height of the controversy over Protection."--_Sunday Times._

As Lord SALISBURY is generally supposed to have died in 1903, Sir ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE has been requested to investigate the incident.

* * * * *

THE EVIL THAT MEN DO.

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"HIS LADY FRIENDS."

The humours of the average farce are so elemental that in the matter of its setting there is small need to worry about geographical or ethnical considerations. Of course, if its _locale_ is French you may have to modify its freedom of thought and speech, but with a very little accommodation to national proprieties you can either transplant the setting of your play or you can leave it where it was and make use of the convention that for stage purposes all Frenchmen have a perfect command of our tongue and idiom. But to take a frankly English novel by an English writer, adapt it, as Messrs. NYITRAY and MANDEL have done, for the American stage with an American setting, and then bring it over here and produce it with only one or two actors in the whole cast to illustrate the purity of the American accent, is perhaps to presume rather too much on our generous lack of intelligence.

However we have got Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY back again and that is what really matters. As a philanderer protesting innocence in the face of damnatory facts we know him well enough; but here we have him innocent and ingenuous as an angel, yet hard put to it to convince anyone but himself of his guilelessness. A millionaire (dollars) with a wife of economic disposition, who declines to spend his money for him, he feels drawn to a course of knight-errantry and rides abroad in search of damsels in pecuniary distress, with the avowed object of "spreading a little sunshine."

This quest, as you will easily understand, was not a very difficult one for a man prepared to be imposed upon by just any adventuress, and in the neighbourhood of his various business-branches, San Francisco, Washington, Boston, he soon found a ready channel for the employment of his superfluous wealth. The natural affection, however, which his generosity inspired was not utilised by him, and you must try to believe that, in spite of the most sinister appearances, he remained a faithful husband.

With the methods by which he appeased his wife's suspicions I will not trouble you, partly because I could not follow them myself, owing to the obscurity of the plot at its most critical moment. Enough that all ends well with her firmly-expressed resolution that in the future she will herself do all the necessary squandering.

Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY as _James Smith_ was irresistible in most of the old ways and a few new ones. The play would have gone poorly without him, in spite of the piquancy of Miss JOAN BARRY as a flapper, the fourth and final recipient of his chaste bounty. Miss JESSIE BATEMAN as _Mrs. James Smith_ had no chance till just at the end with the turning of the worm. To the part of _Lucille Early_--the _Earlys_, as a couple, were designed to contrast with the _Smiths_, the wife in this case spending the money which the husband hadn't got--Miss ATHENE SEYLER, who was meant for better things, gave a certain distinction, but perhaps "pressed" a little too much. Mr. JAMES CAREW, who played _Edward Early_, was conspicuous as the sole male representative of the American language in this American play. The fleeting visions that we had of Miss MONA HARRISON as a refractory and venal cook excited general approval. The three _protegées_ of _James Smith_ were only faintly distinguishable in their rather crude banality.

The fun of the farce differed from that of most farces in depending less upon situations than upon dialogue. The First Act, with the situations still to come, was the best. I have not had the good fortune to read Miss EDGINGTON'S novel, but one might be permitted to assume, from the excellence of much of the wit, that, whatever the play may in other respects have lacked of subtlety or refinement, such defect was no fault of hers. What Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY himself thought of it all I cannot say, but the play did not begin to compare, either for irony or singleness of motive, with the last two in which he figured, _The Naughty Wife_ and _Home and Beauty._ He clearly enjoyed his own part, but it was rather noticeable that in his brief speech at the fall of the curtain he confined himself to a personal acknowledgment of the public's sympathy with him in his illness and their loyalty throughout his career, and made no reference to the play or its authors.

O.S.

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A SUPER-SURPRISE.

I have not seen the stalking By a rabbit of a bear, Nor yet an oyster walking Sedately up the stair; But a marvel as amazing Inspires these doggerel rhymes, For I've read a leader praising The PREMIER in _The Times_.

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A HOUSE-WARMING.

"Considerable damage was done by fire at ---- Cottage on Wednesday evening. The stairs, part of the floor, doors, furniture, etc., were destroyed.

---- presided at the piano, and Mrs. ---- presided over the refreshments. 'God save the King' was sung at the close of the enjoyable day."--_Local Paper_.

* * * * *

The Labour "Council of Action" have kindly stated that they are "content to leave the French Government to the French people." They are however reserving the right to leave the British Government to the Bolshevists.

* * * * *

"We must repeat the Scots proverb that--'Delays are dangerous.'"-- _Sunday Paper._

Or, as DRYDEN says in his Address to a Haggis, "De'il tak' the hindmost."

* * * * *

"The proportion of sane to insane persons in civilized countries is about one to 300."--_Canadian Paper_.

Surely Carlyle said something very like this years ago.

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COMMERCIAL CANDOUR.

"RAINCOATS AT LESS THAN COST PRICE LAST 3 DAYS."--_Advert. in Provincial Paper_.

* * * * *

"Lady has Left-off Clothing; privately."--_Provincial Paper._

Of course. That goes without saying.

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* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

Those who appreciate the short story of quality will be pleasantly stirred by the announcement of _Island Tales_ (MILLS AND BOON), a posthumous volume containing what is probably the last writing of the late JACK LONDON. I can say at once that these seven stories show his art in one aspect of its best. Not here the LONDON, whom some of us might prefer, of the strenuous adventure-tale, with whom there was no respite till, at the end of anything up to a hundred sinew-cracking pages, we won through to the appointed end. That South Sea atmosphere, so insidiously appealing to the literary temperament (from STEVENSON to STACPOOLE you can see it at work) has steeped these tales in the lotus-leisure of perpetual afternoon, so that the action of them tends to become overlaid by slow reflective talk, old memories and the sense of ancient things. Most notable is this in the first, where the actual romance, quick, human and haunting, does not so much as show its face till after forty pages of old-time local colour. Perhaps of all the seven I myself would prefer the last--"The Kanaka Surf," a slight intrigue, but a perfect epic of such bathing as, I suppose, can be understood nowhere but on these enchanted coasts. To read it is to realise what a loss we suffer in one who could put such jewelled loveliness on to the printed page--and what another loss in not seeing the original for ourselves. I suppose no tribute to the power of genius could be more eloquent.

* * * * *

After the German Revolution of 1918, KARL KAUTSKY, a prominent Socialist, was appointed by the new Government to examine and edit the documents in the Berlin Foreign Office relating to the outbreak of the War. His work was completed in time for the Peace Conference and would, he believes, if published at that time, have convinced the Allies that the new German Government ought not to be made responsible for the sins of the old one. But it would also have shown that the old Government was the main instigator of the War, and that the German people, having danced to the tune, even if they did not call for it, deserved to pay the piper. For that reason, perhaps, the German Government withheld Herr KAUTSKY'S revelations. Now he has published them on his own account, under the title, _The Guilt of William Hohenzollern_ (SKEFFINGTON). A more damning indictment has never been drawn. From the moment of the ARCHDUKE'S assassination the KAISER and his advisers determined to make it the pretext for destroying Serbia, and crushing Russia and France if they dared to interfere. BISMARCK once said that "never are so many lies told as before a war, during an election and after a shoot." His own manipulation of the Ems telegram was venial compared to the manner in which the German diplomatists, egged on by their ruler--whose _marginalia_ on the despatches furnish the most amusing reading in the volume--used all the arts of chicanery to deceive Europe as to their real intentions and to defeat the efforts of England--on whose neutrality they confidently counted--to secure a peaceful settlement. Though primarily addressed to the German proletariat, Herr KAUTSKY'S book has its value for all of us--"lest we forget."

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