Chapter II: Part 2

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."

* * * * *

* * * * *

COMMERCIAL CANDOUR.

"120 Pairs Unbleached Calico Sheets, 2 x 2¾ 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. £10
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 _déjeûner_ 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 _déjeûner_.

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 _entrée_, 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-secrétaire_ 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.

* * * * *

_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!

* * * * *

_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."

* * * * *

* * * * *

"Wanted, half-governess for boy aged nine, girl aged six;
wages £30 per year."--_Morning Post_.

A half-governess is, we suppose, the feminine equivalent of two quartermasters.

* * * * *

"Lady Nurse, nursery college trained, wanted, under 34;
very experienced babies."--_Provincial Paper_.

Perhaps they will know too much for her.

* * * * *

"Will gentleman, navy mackintosh, who spoke to lady, blue
hat, vicinity Park Station, Tuesday, 6 o'clock, speak again
same time?"--_Liverpool Echo_.

The gentleman will doubtless beg a ride on Mr. H.G. WELLS'S "Time Machine" in order to get back in time for the appointment.

* * * * *

[Sir WILLIAM BEVERIDGE. K.O.B., has been appointed Permanent
Secretary to the Ministry of Food.]

To skimp its daily bread for beer
Was not this nation's mood;
But now with lightened hearts we hear
That BEVERIDGE turns to Food.