Chapter 3

_Tuesday, June 29th._--The establishment of a "National home" for the Jewish race in Palestine aroused the apprehensions of Lord SYDENHAM and other Peers, who feared that the Moslem inhabitants would be exploited by the Zionists, and would endeavour to re-establish Turkish rule. Lord CURZON did his best to remove these impressions. Authority in Palestine would be exercised by Great Britain as the Mandatory Power, and the Zionists would not be masters in their "national home," but only a sort of "paying guests." The confidence felt in Sir HERBERT SAMUEL'S absolute impartiality as between Jews and Arabs was such that a high authority had prophesied that within six months the High Commissioner would be equally unpopular with both races.

In the Commons Mr. BALDWIN explained that the Inland Revenue Authorities were taking all possible steps to collect income-tax in Ireland despite the obstacles placed in their way by the local authorities. Whereupon Sir MAURICE DOCKRELL, in his richest brogue, summarised the Irish situation as follows: "Is not the difficulty that they do not know which horse to back?"

A Bill "to continue temporarily the office of Food Controller" was read a first time. The House would, I think, be sorry to part with Mr. MCCURDY, whose replies to Questions are often much to the point. He was asked this afternoon, for example, to give the salaries of three of his officials, and this was his crisp reply: "The Director of Vegetable Supplies serves the Ministry without remuneration; the post of Deputy-Director of Vegetable Supplies does not exist, and that of Director of Fish Supplies has lapsed."

Mr. BONAR LAW shattered two elaborately-constructed mare's-nests when he announced that the appointment of a British Ambassador to Berlin was made in pursuance of an agreement arrived at in Boulogne on the initiative of the French Government, and that Lord D'ABERNON'S name was suggested by the FOREIGN SECRETARY. I am not betraying any confidence when I add that it will be no part of Lord D'ABERNON'S new duties to establish a Liquor Control Board on the Spree.

The Overseas Trade (Credits and Insurance) Bill was skilfully piloted through its Second Reading by Mr. BRIDGEMAN. The House was much pleased to hear that only nine officials would be required to administer the twenty-six millions involved, and that their salaries would not exceed seven thousand pounds a year--although two of them were messengers.

But this temporary zeal for economy quickly evaporated when the Pre-War Pensions Bill made its appearance. Member after Member got up to urge the extension of the Bill to this or that deserving class, until Sir L. WORTHINGTON-EVANS pointed out that, if their demands were acceded to, the Bill, instead of costing some two millions a year, would involve three or four times that amount.

_Wednesday, June 30th._--The Lords discussed, in whispers suitable to the occasion, the Official Secrets Bill. As originally drawn it provided that any person retaining without lawful authority any official document should be guilty of a misdemeanour. But, thanks to the vigilance of Lords BURNHAM and RIDDELL, this clause, under which every editor in Fleet Street might have found himself in Holloway, was appreciably softened. Even so, the pursuit of "stunts" and "scoops" will be a decidedly hazardous occupation.

The Press Lords were again on the alert when the Rents Bill came on, and objected to a clause giving the LORD CHANCELLOR power to order proceedings under the measure to be held in private. This time the LORD CHANCELLOR was less pliant, and plainly suggested that the newspapers were actuated in this matter by regard for their circulations. Does he really suppose that the disputes of landlords and tenants will supply such popular "copy" as to crowd out the confessions of Cabinet Ministers?

Constant cross-examination on the Amritsar affair, involving the necessity of framing polite replies to thinly-veiled suggestions that MONTAGU rhymes with O'DWYER, is making the SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA a little restive. The tone in which he expressed his hope that the promised debate would not be much longer delayed distinctly suggested that his critics would then be "for it."

Two days ago the MINISTER OF TRANSPORT expounded in a White Paper his elaborate plan for redistributing and co-ordinating the activities of the railway companies--the North Eastern excepted--and directing them all from an office in Whitehall. By the Ministry of Mines Bill it is proposed to treat the mines in much the same way. Sir ERIC GEDDES' scheme has yet to run the gauntlet of Parliamentary criticism. Sir ROBERT HORNE'S had its baptism of fire this afternoon, and a pretty hot fire it was. Miners like Mr. BRACE cursed it because it did not go all the way to Nationalisation; coal-owners like Sir CLIFFORD CORY, because it went too far in that direction. The voice of the mere consumer, who only wants coal cheap and plentiful, was hardly heard. The second reading was carried, but by a majority substantially less than the normal.

_Thursday, July 1st._--Unfortunately the House of Lords does not contain a representative of Sinn Fein and therefore had no opportunity of learning the opinion of the dominant party in Ireland regarding Lord MONTEAGLE'S Dominion of Ireland Bill. Other Irish opinion, as expressed by Lords DUNRAVEN and KILLANIN, was that it would probably cause the seething pot to boil over. Lord ASHBOURNE made sundry observations in Erse, one of which was understood to be that "Ireland could afford to wait." The Peers generally agreed with him, and, after hearing from the LORD CHANCELLOR that of all the Irish proposals he had studied this contained the most elements of danger, threw out the Bill without a division.

"A sinecure, whose holder is in receipt of a salary of five thousand pounds per annum," was Mr. BONAR LAW'S description of his office as Lord Privy Seal. The House rewarded the modesty of its hard-working Leader with laughter and cheers. None of his predecessors has excelled him in courtesy and assiduity; as regards audibility there is room for improvement. Mr. LAW rarely plays to the Gallery; but he might more often speak in its direction.

* * * * *

* * * * *

"The funniest game in the world is chicket."--_Provincial Paper._

We should like to hear more of this humorous pastime.

* * * * *

A daily paper describes the contest at Henley for the "Silver Giblets." It is rumoured that the Goose that laid the Golden Eggs has become a bimetallist.

* * * * *

THREE EXCEPTIONAL MEN.

"If these men are types, how London has changed!" I said to myself. But can they be? I fear not; I fear that "exceptional" is the only word to use. Yet it was very remarkable to meet them all on the same day, Friday, June 25th.

The first was on an omnibus. A big man with a grey beard who was alone on the seat. Several other seats had only one passenger; the rest--mine among them--were full. At Westminster came up a youth and a girl who very obviously were lovers. Owing to the disposition of the seats they had to separate, the girl subsiding into the place beside the big man immediately in front of me. At first he said nothing, and then, just as we were passing the scaffolding of the Cenotaph, he did something which proved him to be very much out of the common, a creature apart. Reaching across and touching the youth on the shoulder, he said, "Let me change places with you. I expect you young people would like to sit together."

That was exceptional, you will agree. He was right too; the young people did like to sit together. I could see that. And the more the omnibus rocked and lurched the more they liked it.

The second exceptional man was a taxi-driver. I wanted to get to a certain office before it shut, and there were very few minutes to do it in. The driver did his best, but we arrived just too late; the door was locked.

"That's a bit of hard luck," he said. "But they're all so punctual closing now. It's the daylight-saving does it. Makes people think of the open-air more than they used."

As I finished paying him--no small affair, with all the new supplements--he resumed.

"I'm sorry you had the journey for nothing," he said. "It's rough. But never mind--have something on Comrade for the Grand Prix" (he pronounced "Prix" to rhyme with "fix") "in France on Sunday. I'm told it's the goods. Then you won't mind about your bad luck this afternoon. Don't forget-- Comrade to win and one, two, three."

After this I must revise my opinion of taxi-drivers, which used not to be very high: especially as Comrade differed from most racehorses of my acquaintance by coming in first.

The third man perhaps was more unexpected than exceptional. His unexpectedness took the form not of benevolence but of culture. He is a vendor of newspapers. A pleasant old fellow with a smiling weather-beaten face, grey moustache and a cloth cap, whom I have known for most of the six years during which he has stood every afternoon except Sundays on the kerb between a lamp-post and a letter-box at one of London's busiest corners. I have bought his papers and referred to the weather all that time, but I never talked with him before. Why, I cannot say; I suppose because the hour had not struck. On Friday, however, we had a little conversation, all growing from the circumstance that while he was counting out change I noticed a fat volume protruding from his coat pocket and asked him what it was.

It was his reply that qualified him to be numbered among Friday's elect. "That book?" he said--"that's _Barchester Towers_."

I asked him if he read much.

He said he loved reading, and particularly stories. MARIE CORELLI, OUIDA, he read them all; but TROLLOPE was his favourite. He liked novels in series; he liked to come on the same people again.

"But there's another reason," he added, "why I like TROLLOPE. You see we were both at the Post Office."

Some day soon I am going to try him with one of Mr. WALKLEY'S criticisms.

E.V.L.

* * * * *

* * * * *

From an article on the Lawn Tennis Championship, purporting to be written by Mlle. SUZANNE LENGLEN:--

"Quelle journées ils était!" "Mon dieu, comme était beau!" "C'est le partie le plus disputé." _Sunday Paper._

We can only hope that the Entente is now strong enough to survive even these shocks.

* * * * *

* * * * *

PRISCILLA PAINTS.

"There was a lot of men in the boat," said Priscilla from behind the table, where she sat daubing with little energetic grunts.

"Oh, there were, were there?" I answered from behind _The Times_.

Confident of arousing my enthusiasm in the end, she continued to issue tantalising bulletins about the progress of the great work.

"It was an all-colour boat," she told me, "purple and yellow and green."

"A very nice kind of boat too," I agreed.

"And the biggest man of all hadn't got _any_ body at all."

I suggested weakly that perhaps the biggest man of all had left his body behind on the table at home. The suggestion was scorned.

"No, he hadn't never had any body at all, _this_ man," she replied. And then, as my interest seemed to be flagging again, "They all had _very_ rosy faces; and do you know why they had?"

"I don't, I'm sure."

"Because they'd eaten up all their greens."

Vanquished at last, I went over to visit the eupeptic voyagers. Seven in all, they stood in their bright boat on a blue sea beneath a round and burning sun. Their legs were long and thin, their bodies globular (all save one), and their faces large. They were dressed apparently in light pink doublets and hose, and on his head each wore a huge purple turban the shape of a cottage loaf, surmounted by a ragged plume. They varied greatly in stature, but their countenances were all fixed in the same unmeaning stare. Take it all in all, it was an eerie and terrible scene.

"I don't quite see how the boat moves along, Priscilla," I said; "it hasn't any oars or sail."

It was a tactless remark and the artist made no reply. I did my best to cover my blunder.

"I expect the wind blew very hard on their feathers," I said, "and that drove them along."

"What colour is the wind?" inquired Priscilla.

She had me there. I confessed that I did not know.

"It was a brown wind," she decided, impatient at my lack of resource, and slapped a wet typhoon of madder on the page. There was no more doubt about the wind.

"And is the picture finished now?" I asked her.

"No, it isn't finished. I haven't drawn the pookin yet."

The pookin is a confusion in the mind of Priscilla between a pelican and a toucan, because she saw them both for the first time on the same day. In this case it consisted of an indigo splodge and a long red bar cutting right through the brown wind and penetrating deeply into the yellow sun.

"It had a _very_ long beak," observed Priscilla.

"It had," I agreed.

I am no stickler for commonplace colours or conventional shapes in a work of art, but I do like things to be recognisable; to know, for instance, when a thing is meant to be a man and when it is meant to be a boat, and when it is meant to be a pookin and when it is meant to be a sun. The art of Priscilla seems to me to satisfy this test much better than that of many of our modern _maestri_. Strictly representational it may not be, but there are none of your whorls and cylinders and angles and what nots.

But I also insist that a work of art should appeal to the imagination as well as to the eye, and there seemed to me details about this picture that needed clearing up.

"Where were these men going to, Priscilla?" I asked.

"They was going to Wurvin," she answered in the tone of a mother who instructs her child. "And what do you think they was going to do there?"

"I don't know."

"They was going to see Auntie Isabel."

"And what did they do then?"

"They had dinner," she cried enthusiastically. "And do you know what they did after dinner?"

"I don't."

"They went on the Front to see the fire-escape."

It seemed to me now that the conception was mellow, rounded and complete. It had all the haunting mystery and romance of the sea about it. It was reminiscent of the _Ancient Mariner_. It savoured of the books of Mr. CONRAD. It reminded me not a little of those strange visitations which come to quiet watering-places in the novels of Mr. H.G. WELLS. When I thought of those seven men--one, alas, disembodied--so strangely attired yet so careful of elementary hygiene, driven by that fierce typhoon, with that bird of portent in the skies, arriving suddenly with the salt of their Odyssey upon their brows at the beach of the genteel and respectable Sussex town, and visiting a perhaps slightly perturbed Auntie Isabel, and afterwards the fire-escape, I felt that here was the glimpse of the wild exotic adventure for which the hearts of all of us yearn. It left the cinema standing. It beat the magazine story to a frazzle.

"And who is the picture for, Priscilla?" I asked, when I had thoroughly steeped myself in the atmosphere.

"It's for you," she said, presenting it with a motley-coloured hand; "it's for you to take to London town and not to drop it."

I was careful to do as I was told, because I have a friend who paints Expressionist pictures, and I wished to deliver it at his studio. It seems to me that Priscilla, half-unconsciously perhaps, is founding a new school of art which demands serious study. One might call it, I think, the Pookin School.

EVOE.

* * * * *

WHEN CHARL. COMES OVER.

It is said that Mr. CHARLES CHAPLIN, a prominent citizen of Los Angeles, Cal., has employed the greater part of the last few days in mopping his brow, sighing with relief and exclaiming "Gee!"

Mr. CHAPLIN declares that missing the boat for England recently was the narrowest escape from death he has ever enjoyed. But for having been thus providentially prevented from visiting his native land in the company of Miss MARY PICKFORD and Mr. DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS (better known as "MARY" and "DOUG." respectively) he would have come back to the dear homeland all unprepared for what would surely have happened to him no less than it happened to his illustrious colleagues in the film world.

Since his promised visit to our shores cannot long be delayed, he has already begun elaborate preparations for travelling in safety. He is growing a large beard and is learning to walk with his toes turned in. A number of his teeth will be blackened out during the whole of his European tour, and his hair will be kept well-ironed and cropped short.

He has engaged a complete staff of plain-clothes pugilists to travel with him everywhere and to stand on guard outside his bathroom door. They will also surround him during meal-times to prevent admirers from grabbing his food to hand down to their children as heirlooms.

He is being measured for a complete outfit of holeproof clothing, and his motor will be a Ford of seventeen thicknesses, with armoured steel windows, and fitted with first-aid accessories, including liniment, restoratives and raw steak. His entourage will include a day doctor, a night doctor, a leading New York surgeon and a squad of stretcher-bearers.

It has been suggested to him that a further precaution would be not to advise the Press of the date of his arrival; but that he considers would be carrying his safety-first measures to a foolish extreme.

* * * * *

* * * * *

A TRAGEDY OF REACTION.

It was a super-poet of the neo-Georgian kind Whose fantasies transcended the simple bourgeois mind, And by their frank transgression of all the ancient rules Were not exactly suited for use in infant schools.

But, holding that no rebel should shrink from fratricide, His gifted brother-Georgians he suddenly defied, And in a manifesto extremely clear and terse Announced his firm intention of giving up free verse.

The range of his reaction may readily be guessed When I mention that for Browning his devotion he confessed, Enthroned above the SITWELLS the artless Muse of "BAB," And said that MARINETTI was not as good as CRABBE.

At first the manifesto was treated as a joke, A boyish ebullition that soon would end in smoke; But when he took to writing in strict and fluent rhyme His family decided to extirpate the crime.

Two scientific doctors declared he was insane, But likely under treatment his reason to regain; So he's now in an asylum, where he listens at his meals To a gramophone recital of the choicest bits from _Wheels_.

* * * * *

THE RETURN TO WOAD.

"The bride's mother was handsomely attired in heliotrope stain."-- _Canadian Paper._

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

Whatever else may be said about Mr. ARTHUR COMPTON-RICKETT as a novelist, it can at least be urged for him that he displays no undue apprehension of the too-facile laugh. For example, the humorous possibilities (or perils) in the plot of _The Shadow of Stephen Wade_ (JENKINS) might well have daunted a writer of more experience. _Stephen Wade_ was an ancestor, dead some considerable time before the story opens, and--to quote the old jest--there was no complaint about a circumstance with which everybody was well satisfied. The real worry over _Stephen_ was twofold: first, that in life he had been rightly suspected of being rather more than a bit of a rip, and secondly that his grandson, _Philip_, the hero of the story, had what seemed to him good cause for believing that _Stephen's_ more regrettable tendencies were being repeated in himself. Here, of course, is a theme capable of infinite varieties of development; the tragedies of heredity have kept novelists and dramatists busy since fiction began. The trouble is that, all unconsciously, Mr. COMPTON-RICKETT has given to his hero's struggles a fatally humorous turn. _Philip's_ initial mistake appeared to be the supposition that safety could be secured by flight. But it has been remarked before now that Cupid is winged and doth range. _Philip_ dashed into the depths of Devonshire, only to discover that even there farmers have pretty daughters; seeking refuge in the slums he found that the exchange was one from the frying-pan to the fire. In short, there was no peace for him, till the destined heroine.... Well, you can now see whether you are likely to be amused, edified, or bored by a well-meaning story, told (I should add) with a rather devastating solemnity of style.

* * * * *

M. HENRI DOMELIER, the author of _Behind the Scenes at German Headquarters_ (HURST AND BLACKETT), must also be accounted among the prophets, for he foretold the invasion of Belgium. Before the War he edited a newspaper in Charleville, and when the Ardennes had been "inundated by the enemy hordes" and the local authorities had withdrawn to Rethel, he stayed in Charleville and acted as Secretary to the Municipal Commission. This organisation was recognised by the Germans, but to be secretary of it was still a dangerous post, and M. MAURICE BARRÈS in eloquent preface tells us of some of the sufferings that M. DOMELIER had to endure while trying to carry out his difficult duties. The French who remained in Charleville had more than ample opportunities of seeing both the EX-KAISER and his eldest son, and M. DOMELIER writes of them with a pen dipped in gall. No book that I have read puts before one more poignantly the miseries which the inhabitants of invaded France had to bear during "the great agony." For the most part they bore them with a courage beyond all praise; but some few, giving way under stress of physical suffering or moral temptation, forgot their nationality; and these M. DOMELIER makes no pretence to spare. I think that even those of us who have definitely made up our minds regarding the Hun and want to read no more about him will welcome this book. For if it is primarily an indictment of Germans and German methods, it is hardly less a tribute to those who held firm through all their misery and never gave up hope during the darkest days.

* * * * *