Chapter II

(_Second-Lieutenant Humphrey Spence, who was slightly wounded through a lack of a proper sense of the rights of rank._)

Second-Lieutenant Humphrey Spence
Had no idea of precedence;
To him his Colonel was no more
Than any other messroom bore;
And he would try to make a pal
Not merely of a General,
But even a horrified non-com
He'd greet with "Tiddly-om-pom-pom!"
Although in other ways quite nice,
He was perverted by this vice.
For instance, once he had to tea
A private in the A.S.C.,
And asked to meet him Cathcart-Crewe,
A Major in the Horse Guards Blue.
Too frequently did it occur
That, when a senior officer
Was with him, he would up and take
Salutes from privates. Why, he'd shake
Even Sir DOUGLAS by the hand
And say, "Old chap, you're doing grand."

This sort of thing caused some distress
Among the members of his mess.
He often took the Colonel's chair;
He often flourished in the air
His water-glass (when wine was scanty),
And shouted, "Cheero, Adjutanty!"
You see, he simply had no sense
Of military precedence.

His regiment went out to France
To help a general advance.
Now in a minute they must hop
Like billy-o across the top.
Amid the din the Colonel said,
"It will be hellish overhead.
Machine-guns will let loose a jet
Of bullets on the parapet;
We'll meet a burst of rifle fire,
And, as for shells, I don't desire
To see in so confined a space
A thicker lot than we shall face.
Now, gentlemen, attend, I pray--
When we attack, I lead the way!"

Now wouldn't anyone concur,
Saying at once, "With pleasure, Sir!"
Nor with undisciplined delight
Baulk the good Colonel of his right?
Not so young Spence. The moment came,
And, heedless of the cries of "Shame!"
He never offered _once_ to wait
Until the Colonel, more sedate,
Had scrambled o'er the parapet,
But got there first--and promptly met
A bullet.... _Folk who arrogate
The privileges of the great
Must take what ills thereto attach_
(The Colonel never got a scratch).

* * * * *

* * * * *

"KAMERAD!"

"Baby Girl, 18 months, will surrender entirely to good home."--_Daily Paper_.

* * * * *

"The Archdeacon of Stow thought it was a good maxim not to
argue with the huntsmen while shooting the rabbits, and moved
the previous question."--_Morning Post_.

If you want a real argument with a huntsman (of the ante-bellum type) you should try shooting a fox.

* * * * *

Consecutive paragraphs from _The Continental Daily Mail_:--

"Mr. Arthur J. Balfour, like President Wilson, is an ardent
golfer. He has challenged Mr. Wilson to a match, and the
President of the United States immediately took him up. The
match will be played in a few days.

"'Every able-bodied man and woman found golfing at the present
time should be taken by the scruff of the neck and made to
do some work of national importance,' said Mr. Waldie at the
Edinburgh Parish Council."

So that's that.

* * * * *

SCHOOL.

During the past week there has taken place, almost without our knowledge, a great migration of boys. From their homes, out on to the roads and railways, has been pouring a flood of big boys, middle-sized boys, small boys, old boys, new boys, all tending towards the various schools where they are supposed to make all the best parts of human knowledge their own and to live a life of dignified abstraction from the troubles of the world, in the midst of their own _argot_ and their own special traditions.

Of the big boys and the middle-sized boys I have little to say. They are already imbued, if one may say so, with the influence of their school, and can hold their own with the masters and their fellow-boys. Much as they enjoy their holidays, they show no undue reluctance to take up again the burden of their studies at a place which they will afterwards consider as having given them some of the happiest days of their lives. Many of them indeed are already or are in process of becoming the trusted coadjutors of the headmaster and his colleagues in the work of maintaining good order and discipline in the school. They are monitors--tremendous word!--or prefects or praepostors, and their _mitis sapientia_, no less than their muscular strength, causes them to be feared and venerated.

Of such awful beings one must not speak lightly lest some terrific fate reserved for scoffers overtake one. No, my concern at present is rather with the little boys who have gone up for the first time to their preparatory school, those forlorn scraps of humanity who are beginning a life entirely new to them in all its details. Hitherto, except for visits to the seaside with their parents and family, they have not spent a night away from home. Now they are separated from their parents and plunged into a world of perfect strangers. Everything is done to make them at ease and comfortable in their new surroundings; the headmaster is kindness itself, the matron beams on them with smiles and fortifies them with encouragement; but just at first the wrench for the little fellows is great. In a day or two, however, they will begin to acclimatise themselves; the strangeness will begin to wear off; and having borne up bravely against their first sense of loneliness in the midst of a crowd they will gradually become parts of the machine to the making of which many gentle and sympathising hands for years past have contributed.

"Schools are not what they were," says one of my friends. "There is no bullying nowadays and little roughness of any kind. Masters are not looked upon as the natural enemies of boys. Corporal punishment, except for the gravest offences, is abolished. Whereas, formerly, little boys were at once sucked into the vortex of a Public School, there are now Preparatory Schools, where Tommie and Dickie and Harry, aged from nine to ten, learn the business of Public Schooling in a manner suited to their age and capacity. When we were boys," he continues, "these admirable buffer states were so few that they might almost be said not to exist at all; they now flourish everywhere. The path of the little boy is thus made easier for him."

"But," I said, "is a little boy, then, never brought to a sense of his unimportance by being physically, if not morally, kicked? Is he to pass his life in a condition of Sybaritic softness?"

"You need not," he said, "worry about that. Softness makes no appeal to the average English boy."

When therefore, on a day in last week, it happened to me to take a little boy I happen to know to his Preparatory School on his first day of his first term there, I did so with no undue depression. "Be a good boy," I said to him; "never tell a lie, never push yourself forward, and don't swank about yourself." It was good advice so far as it went, but it did not make any great impression on him, for he only answered, "Of course," or "Of course I shan't," to every item that I put before him. I wonder how many fathers have recently inculcated these and similar high-toned principles on their little boys, only to meet with the same uninterested acquiescence. And even our parting was not so dejected as it might have been, for by that time another new boy had come upon the scene, and he and mine had been irresistibly drawn to one another, and were chatting gaily when it was time for me to go.

* * * * *

THIS IS BILLY SMIFF, 'IM WOT REMEMBERS THE TIME WHEN THERE WASN'T NO WAR.]

* * * * *

CHILDREN'S TALES FOR GROWN-UPS.