Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 by Various
V >>
Various >> Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919
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.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE SOFT ANSWER.
_Navvy_ (_to person who has accidentally bumped him_). "GO TO
BLANKETY--BLANK--BLANK--BLAZES."
_Person_. "GENTLE STRANGER, YOUR LIGHTEST WISH, EXPRESSED IN SUCH
COURTEOUS LANGUAGE, IS TO ME A COMMAND."
(_Ambulance call_.)]
* * * * *
"Lost, sulky inflate."--_Glasgow Citizen_.
* * * * *
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."
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Politically inclined Nurse_ (_exhibiting new daughter
to M.P._). "LET US 'OPE, SIR, THAT SHE MAY LIVE TO BE CALLED THE
MOTHER OF THE 'OUSE OF COMMONS."]
* * * * *
COMMERCIAL CANDOUR.
"120 Pairs Unbleached Calico Sheets, 2 x 23/4 yards. Sale price,
12/11 per pair; present value, 1/- per pair."--_Yorkshire
Paper_.
* * * * *
"Including new enlistments there are about 1,000 men
concentrated in and around Berlin."--_Manchester Guardian_.
Let FOCH be warned.
* * * * *
"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.
* * * * *
"NON-STOP WAIST DRIVES, Every Wednesday Evening at 8.30. L10
Top, and Six other Special Prizes."--_Local Paper_.
Believed to be under the patronage of the FOOD-CONTROLLER.
* * * * *
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
_dejeuner_ 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 _dejeuner_.
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 _entree_, 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-secretaire_ 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.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Gunner_. "DO YOU PLAY THE PIANO?"
_Jack_. "NO, SIR."
_Gunner_. "NOR THE 'CELLO?"
_Jack_. "NO, SIR."
_Gunner_. "WELL, THE NEXT TIME YOU HEAR RUMOURS OF A BARBER JUST
FOLLOW THE MATTER UP."]
* * * * *
_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.
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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!
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Exhausted Shopman_. "WELL, SIR, YOU'VE HAD ON EVERY
HAT IN THE PLACE. I'M SURE I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SUGGEST."
_Fastidious Warrior_ (_hopelessly_). "NO, I SEE NOTHING FOR IT BUT
TO REMAIN IN THE ARMY."]
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
_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.
* * * * *
It is to be feared that _Battle Days_ (BLACKWOOD), a new work by Mr.
ARTHUR FETTERLESS, author of _Gog_, will lose a good many readers as
the result of the armistice. There are battle stories and battle books
that are not stories that will live far into the piping times of peace
because they are human documents or have the stamp of genius. These
attractions are not present in _Battle Days_, which in truth is rather
a prosy affair, though ambitious withal. It is not fiction in the
ordinary sense. Mr. FETTERLESS essays to conduct the reader through
every phase of a big "Push." Pushes were complicated affairs, and the
author does not spare us many of the complications. And unless the
reader happens to be an ardent militarist he is apt to push off into
slumberland. Cadets should be made to read this book as a matter of
instruction; for, though it lacks the subtle humour that endeared
_Duffer's Drift_ to us, it provides a striking analysis of modern
trench warfare.
* * * * *
_The Curtain of Steel_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is the fourth book which
the author of _In the Northern Mists_ has given us during the War, and
in essentials it is the most valuable of the quartette. For here we
have real history, served, it is true, with some trimmings, but none
the less a true record of the doings of our Grand Fleet since the day
when the "curtain" was lowered. "Nothing," our author says, "nauseates
a naval man so much as the attempt to represent him as a hero or to
theatricalise him and his profession." It behoves me then to choose
my words with the utmost circumspection, and I beg him to forgive my
audacity when I say that, if I were Book-Controller, a copy of _The
Curtain of Steel_ would be in (and out of) the library of every
school in the Empire. I find courage to make this statement because I
see that he does not deny that a part of our "disease of ignorance"
concerning the Senior Service is due to the modesty of Naval men.
If he will please go on correcting that ignorance, and in the same
inspiring style, I wish an even greater access of power to his elbow.
* * * * *
"I am allowed the reputation of a tolerable guide in writing and
style, and I can certainly help you to produce clear English." These
words, written in 1881, are to be found in a letter of GEORGE MEREDITH
to his eldest son. They show how wildly mistaken even the best of us
may be with regard to our own qualities and gifts; for if there is one
thing that MEREDITH could not produce, that thing is clear English.
Mr. S.M. ELLIS agrees with me in this particular point, and has
written _George Meredith: His Life and Friends in Relation to his
Work_ (GRANT RICHARDS) to prove that this is so. The book is a curious
compound. At one moment Mr. ELLIS sets out in detail the Meredithian
genealogy, and shows that MEREDITH was the son and grandson of tailors
and did not relish the relationship; at another moment he describes
MEREDITH'S delightful and exuberantly youthful characteristics as a
friend; and again he shows how badly MEREDITH behaved in regard to his
first wife (though she was much more in fault), and also in regard to
his first son, Arthur. Still the book is extremely interesting and,
though it does not profess to deal in elaborate criticism, it contains
some very shrewd comments on MEREDITH'S work and the reasons that made
his novels so many sealed books to the British public. Here and there
Mr. ELLIS allows himself almost to write a passage or two in the style
of the master. This is one of them: "As he [Maurice Fitzgerald] was
the gourmetic instrument that brought Mrs. Ockenden's art to perfect
expression, he appropriately attained immortalisation jointly with her
at the hands of the friend who had shared with him the joys of that
good woman's superlative cookery in Seaford days."