Chapter I: Front Matter

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOL. 152.

February 7th, 1917.

CHARIVARIA.

To celebrate his birthday, the KAISER arranged a theatrical performance, entitled _The German Blacksmith_, of which he was part author. It is not yet known in what way his people had offended him.

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It is feared that we have sadly misjudged Greece. They have saluted the Entente flags, and it is rumoured that KING CONSTANTINE is even prepared to put out his tongue at the KAISER.

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Chancellor BETHMANN-HOLLWEG has been accused by the Junker Press of selling his countrymen to the Allies. But, to judge from the latest German Note to America, the fact appears to be that he has simply given them away.

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As the result of the cold snap, wild boars have made their appearance in Northern France. Numbers have already been killed, and it is reported that the KAISER has agreed with an American syndicate to be filmed in the _rôle_ of their destroyer, the proceeds to be devoted to the furtherance of the league to enforce peace.

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Many German soldiers have, according to the Hamburg _Fremdenblatt_, received slips of pasteboard inscribed, "Soldiers of the Fatherland, fight on!" It is rumoured that several of the soldiers have written across the cards, "Fight on what?"

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After the 22nd of February, all enemy aliens engaged in business in this country will be obliged to trade in their own names. With a few honourable exceptions, like the great Frankfurt house of Wurst, our alien business men have sedulously concealed their identity.

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The patriotic Coroner for East Essex, who has erected a pig-sty in the middle of his choice rose-garden, informs us that Frau Karl Druschki has already thrown out some nice strong suckers.

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"Cheddar cheese," says a news item, "is 1_s._ 6_d._ a pound in Norwich." But what the public are clamouring to know is the price of Wensleydale cheese in Ilfracombe.

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The American gentleman who caused so much commotion in a London hotel, the other day, by his impatience at dinner must, after all, be excused. It appears the poor fellow was anxious to get through with his meal before a new Government department commandeered the place.

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The SPEAKER'S Electoral Reform Committee recommends that Candidates' expenses shall not exceed 4_d._ per elector in three-member boroughs, and several political agents have written to point out that it cannot possibly be done in view of the recent increase in the price of beer.

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The Shirley Park (Croydon) Golf Club has decided to reduce the course from 18 holes to 9; but a suggestion that the half-course thus saved should be added to the Club luncheon has met with an emphatic refusal from the FOOD CONTROLLER.

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A farmer in the Weald of Kent is offering 13_s._ 6_d._ a week, board and lodging not provided, to a horseman willing to work fifteen hours a day. It is understood that this insidious attempt to popularise agriculture at the expense of the army has been the subject of a heated interchange of letters between the War Office and the Board of Agriculture.

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"The warmest places in England yesterday," says _The Pall Mall Gazette_, "were Scotland and the South-West of England." We have got into trouble before now with our Caledonian purists for speaking of Great Britain as England, but we never said a thing like that.

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A London doctor, says _The Daily Mail_, estimates that colds cost this country £15,000,000 annually. If that is the case we may say at once that we think the charge is excessive.

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A gossip-writer makes much of the fact that he saw a telegraph messenger running in Shoe Lane the other morning. We are glad to be in a position to clear up this mystery. It appears that the messenger in question was in the act of going off duty.

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There seems to be no intention of issuing sugar tickets--until a suitable palace can be obtained for the accommodation of the functionary responsible for this feature.

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The charge for cleaning white gloves has been increased, and it is likely that there will be a return to the piebald evening wear so much in vogue in Soho restaurants.

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The 1917 pennies appear to be thinner than those of pre-War issues, and several maiden ladies have written to the authorities asking if income tax has been deducted at the source.

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_Geordie (a trade-unionist)._ "AY. AA HEARD YOU; BUT AA'VE KILLED MA FOWER."]

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"'The Land of Promise' ... was only withdrawn from the Duke of York's
in the height of its success owing to the declaration of War in
1894."--_The Stage_.

Is it _really_ only twenty-three years?

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"Residents early astir on Sunday morning had an unpleasant surprise. A
sharp frost over-night had converted the road surfaces into glassy ice,
which made walking impossible without some assistance. A walking-stick,
without some sort of boot covering, was of little avail."--_Oxford
Times_.

That was our own experience with a walking-stick which was absolutely bootless.

* * * * *

THE MUD-LARKS.

Our mess was situated on the crest of a ridge, and enjoyed an uninterrupted view of rolling leagues of mud; it had the appearance of a packing-case floating on an ocean of ooze.

We and our servants, and our rats and our cockroaches, and our other bosom-companions slept in tents pitched round and about the mess.

The whole camp was connected with the outer world by a pathway of ammunition boxes, laid stepping-stone-wise; we went to and fro, lepping from box to box as leps the chamois from Alp to Alp. Should you miss your lep there would be a swirl of mud, a gulping noise, and that was the end of you; your sorrowing comrades shed a little chloride of lime over the spot where you were last seen, posted you as "Believed missing" and indented for another Second-Lieutenant (or Field-Marshal, as the case might be).

Our mess was constructed of loosely piled shell boxes, and roofed by a tin lid. We stole the ingredients box by box, and erected the house with our own fair hands, so we loved it with parental love; but it had its little drawbacks. Whenever the field guns in our neighbourhood did any business, the tin lid rattled madly and the shell boxes jostled each other all over the place. It was quite possible to leave our mess at peep o'day severely Gothic in design, and to return at dewy eve to find it rakishly Rococo.

William, our Transport Officer and Mess President, was everlastingly piping all hands on deck at unseemly hours to save the home and push it back into shape; we were householders in the fullest sense of the term.

Before the War, William assures us, he was a bright young thing, full of merry quips and jolly practical jokes, the life and soul of any party, but what with the contortions of the mess and the vagaries of the transport mules he had become a saddened man.

Between them--the mules and the mess--he never got a whole night in bod; either the mules were having bad dreams, sleep-walking into strange lines and getting themselves abhorred, or the field guns were on the job and the mess had the jumps. If Hans, the Hun, had not been the perfect little gentleman he is, and had dropped a shell anywhere near us (instead of assiduously spraying a distant ridge where nobody ever was, is, or will be) our mess would have been with Tyre and Sidon; but Hans never forgot himself for a moment; it was our own side we distrusted. The Heavies, for instance. The Heavies warped themselves laboriously into position behind our hill, disguised themselves as gooseberry bushes, and gave an impression of the crack of doom at 2 A.M. one snowy morning.

Our mess immediately broke out into St. Vitus's dance, and William piped all hands on deck.

The Skipper, picturesquely clad in boots (gum, high) and a goat's skin, flung himself on the east wing, and became an animated buttress. Albert Edward climbed aloft and sat on the tin lid, which was opening and shutting at every pore. Mactavish put his shoulder to the south wall to keep it from working round to the north. I clung to the pantry, which was coming adrift from its parent stem, while William ran about everywhere, giving advice and falling over things. The mess passed rapidly through every style of architecture, from a Chinese pagoda to a Swiss châlet, and was on the point of confusing itself with a Spanish castle when the Heavies switched off their hate and went to bed. And not a second too soon. Another moment and I should have dropped the pantry, Albert Edward would have been sea-sick, and the Skipper would have let the east wing go west.

We pushed the mess back into shape, and went inside it for a peg of something and a consultation. Next evening William called on the Heavies' commander and decoyed him up to dine. We regaled him with wassail and gramophone and explained the situation to him. The Lord of the Heavies, a charming fellow, nearly burst into tears when he heard of the ill he had unwittingly done us, and was led home by William at 1.30 A.M., swearing to withdraw his infernal machines, or beat them into ploughshares, the very next day. The very next night our mess, without any sort of preliminary warning, lost its balance, sat down with a crash, and lay littered about a quarter of an acre of ground. We all turned out and miserably surveyed the ruins. What had done it? We couldn't guess. The field guns had gone to bye-bye, the Heavies had gone elsewhere. Hans, the Hun, couldn't have made a mistake and shelled us? Never! It was a mystery; so we all lifted up our voices and wailed for William. He was Mess President; it was his fault, of course.

At that moment William hove out of the night, driving his tent before him by bashing it with a mallet.

According to William there was one, "Sunny Jim," a morbid transport mule, inside the tent, providing the motive power. "Sunny Jim" had always been something of a somnambulist, and this time he had sleep-walked clean through our mess and on into William's tent, where the mallet woke him up. He was then making the best of his way home to lines again, expedited by William and the mallet.

So now we are messless; now we crouch shivering in tents and talk lovingly of the good old times beneath our good old tin roof-tree, of the wonderful view of the mud we used to get from our window, and of the homely tune our shell-boxes used to perform as they jostled together of a stormy night.

And sometimes, as we crouch shivering in our tents, we hear a strange sound stealing up-hill from the lines. It is the mules laughing.

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SONGS OF FOOD PRODUCTION.