Chapter II: Part 2

Trench-foot, shell-shock and the other well-known by-products of war on the Western Front always got the bulk of medical notice, while our rarer Macedonian efforts remained neglected. My friend McTurtle has nervous prostration, with violent paroxysms at the mention of leave or demobilization, and the medical profession can only classify him as "N. Y. D., or Not Yet Diagnosed (malignant)."

McTurtle is a Staff-officer. A famous Atlantic liner dumped him at Salonica in 1915, and when the first infantrymen panted through the town in search of non-existent billets McTurtle was to be seen in the window of a villa giving bird-seed to his canary. At Salonica it is not considered good form to ask openly what a Staff-officer's job is, but he allowed friends to gather that he had an indirect connection with that fine old regiment, the Macedonian Labour Corps.

After some time (about three decorations and a mention in despatches, as McTurtle measured time) the overland leave route was opened, and the far-reaching shadow of war plunged suddenly across McTurtle's unlikely threshold. He was called upon, like many another harmless Staff-officer, to give up his simple comforts and to face hardship and suffering for a scrap of paper (authorising him to travel to Manchester). At first McTurtle was content to let the younger men of the Base make a stand against the aggression of the front line. Being the only support of an aged Colonel and no mere youth, he left it to the reckless A.P.M.'s, the dashing Camp Commandants and the carefree dare-devil Field-Cashiers to repel the infantry and gunners. But his conscience was uneasy, and indeed his apparent lack of proper feeling was commented upon by others. Once an A.D.C. handed him a white feather in the Rue Venizelos.

At length it became obvious that the Base was losing ground. The infantry and gunners, outnumbering the Staff by at least two to one, were gaining positions on each leave-party. The issue was trembling in the balance, and McTurtle answered the call. With set lips he sought the nearest orderly-room sergeant.

Before a week was out the night saw a train creeping through the gloom towards Athens and McTurtle sitting wakeful amongst four snoring infantrymen. He thought piously of the time when the Staff should reach such a pitch of organization that it would be needless--nay, impossible--for infantry to continue to exist. Towards dawn he fell into a doze, and when he waked it was light. He lowered what had been the window and looked out.

McTurtle hates heights, and in his cloistered Salonica life he had never realised that the trains of Greece ran about like mice upon a cornice. Four hundred precipitous feet yawned beneath his horrified eyes, and at his first involuntary gasp the teeth he owed to art and not to nature left him and swooped like a hawk upon a distant flock of sheep. The shepherd, a simple rustic unfamiliar with modern dentistry, endeavoured to sell them subsequently to a Y.M.C.A. archaeologist as genuine antiques.

At that moment the train stopped. McTurtle thought that his loss had been noticed, but as he made his way to the kit-truck for some more teeth he discovered that a landslide barred the way. The train backed cautiously for ten minutes and stopped again. Another landslide. The leave-party remained stationary for thirty hours, eating the rations thoughtfully provided for such a contingency.

In due course McTurtle found himself on the front seat of a motor lorry breasting the spurs of Mt. Parnassus. The dizziness of his path was invisible to him, for in a Grecian summer you can see nothing out of motor vehicles but dust.

But when the lorry reached the summit of the pass the sea-breeze from the Gulf of Corinth cleared the air and he saw for the first time the peaks on one side and the gulfs on the other, with the road writhing down canyons and gorges like a demoniac corkscrew.

"Fine view, Sir," remarked the driver.

McTurtle gulped assent. "Bit dangerous, 'o course," continued the driver chattily. "There was a steam roller went over the edge just 'ere three days ago. Nice young fellow as drove it. Beg pardon, Sir? Oh, I thought you spoke.

"Yes, 'e went too near the edge and it gave like. No nearer than we 'as to go, o' course: you watch while we pass this French-man.... There was a lad took a lorry over three weeks ago. 'Ad an attack of fever while 'e was driving and went unconscious. 'Ave you 'ad malaria, Sir? I get it something cruel meself. Comes on sudden like.

"Blimey, you 've got a touch coming on now, 'aven't you?"

At Itea, on the Gulf of Corinth, the party was ordered to return owing to a German offensive in France. McTurtle went back under chloroform. A week later it made another attempt, but was stopped by the Austrian offensive in Italy. McTurtle went back under morphia. At the third attempt it got through, but without McTurtle.

His nerve is gone, and he is marooned at Salonica. He cannot face the overland route, and he cannot get home all the way by sea just yet. In spite of all his endeavours he cannot become a naturalised Greek and stay there, because of linguistic difficulties.

But what he wants to know is, why can't the medical authorities recognise "leave-shock" as a disease and send him home by hospital ship?

* * * * *

_Second Girl_. "AH, BUT THEY'RE WORF IT--THEY SQUEAK!"]

* * * * *

"The King has awarded a Knight Commandership of the Bath
to Lieutenant-Colonel ----, C.B., in charging
customers excessive prices for milk by giving short
measure."--_Provincial Paper_.

We should have thought the Pump would been more suitable than the Bath.

* * * * *

* * * * *

LABOUR NOTES.

A threat was recently made by the representatives of the miners that industrial action would be taken unless the Government at once withdrew all troops from Russia and abandoned conscription. There has been, it appears, an unfortunate misunderstanding as to the exact meaning of the term "industrial action." On Sunday a meeting of protest against the miners' proposal was held under the auspices of The United Brotherhood of Worshipful Lead-Swingers and Affiliated Trades. Violent attacks were made by several speakers upon the Miners' leaders, and serious disruption in the Labour World seemed imminent. But when it was authoritatively explained that "industrial action," instead of meaning work, as was supposed, was a euphemistic term for striking, harmony reigned once more. It was, however, unanimously resolved that in future the expression "industrial inaction" be always used in such connection, as "action" was a word repugnant to all right-thinking Lead-Swingers, and, anyhow, calculated in such a context to give rise to confusion of thought.

* * * * *

A Trades Union has recently been formed to further the interests and raise the status of all who are in receipt of Government unemployment pay. It is hoped eventually to obtain a charter, and thus give professional standing to those employed in receiving such pay. In the meantime, however, the Union is working on orthodox labour lines, and arrangements are practically completed for calling a national strike of unemployed to compel the Authorities to increase the amount of the grant by one hundred per cent. In the event of a strike each member of the Union will formally week by week refuse to accept his or her money, and it is believed that the Government will quickly be brought to its knees. No special steps are to be taken against traitors to the cause who accept work. The social ostracism thereby incurred is felt to be a sufficient deterrent.

* * * * *

A regrettable impasse has been reached in the dispute between The Amalgamated Society of Trades Union Leaders and the Trades Unions. Mr. Blogg, speaking for the Leaders' society, stated, on leaving the Conference last night, that the outlook was black. Unless the rank and file of the Unions were prepared to meet the Leaders' demands a strike was certain. He shrank from imagining what was likely to happen if the Trades Unions were left leaderless. The responsibility, however, did not rest with the Leaders. They had made every possible concession. A four-hours' day and a salary of one thousand pounds per annum was the minimum which would be considered.

* * * * *

Comrade Snooks informed our representative that he was conducting negotiations on behalf of the employers, that is to say the ordinary members of the Trades Unions. He stated with a full sense of responsibility that if the Leaders went on strike all the resources of the Unions would be employed against them. On the whole the Leaders had good berths--easy work and high pay. Their demands were becoming absolutely unreasonable and must be opposed. Their methods of enforcing their demands too were to be deprecated. Only the preceding evening one of the Trades Union Loaders had become abusive and broken one of his (Comrade Snooks') windows. That sort of thing was disgusting, and in the interests of decency and order must be put down. In case of need police protection would be applied for.

* * * * *

A THEME FOR SIR HENRY NEWBOLT.

"When HAWKER came swooping from the West."

* * * * *

COAL.

Dark jewel from the zone of Erebus!
What son of Dis first dragged thee from thy lair
To be a twofold benison to us
Poor mortals shivering in the upper air
When Phoebus nose-dives in his solar bus
Beneath the waves and goes to shine elsewhere?
Or if some monstrous progeny of Tellus
Found thou wast Power and made the high gods jealous
I do not know (I've lost my Lemprière),
Nor if the fate that thereupon befell us
Was for each load of coal two loads of care;
Yet oft I wonder if beyond the Styx
The price of thee is three pounds ten and six.

Sun worshipper am I, and serve the gods
Of stream and meadow and the flowery lea,
Of winding woodways where the loosestrife nods
In summer and in spring the anemone,
And thymy sheep-paths where the ploughboy plods
Home to his frugal but sufficient tea.
Not for a crown, grim coal, would I pursue thee
In subterranean passages and hew thee
Mid poisonous fumes and draughts of tepid tea.
Yet were I all undone should I eschew thee;
Someone, in short, must dig thee up for me;
And, if he deems it worth a pound a day,
Well, who am I to say the fellow nay?

The sailor heaves on Biscay's restless bay;
His breeks are tarry but his heart is kind;
The farmer grouses all the livelong day
Howe'er with untaxed oof his jeans are lined;
The shop-assistant works for paltry pay,
Though of all manners his are most refined;
But all of them can quaff the undefiled
Sweet air of heaven and gaze with thankful eyelid
On azure skies and feel the unfettered wind,
Or in the park on Sunday, in a high lid,
Or through the equinoctials blowing blind,
Or at cold milking-time when dawns are red
And birds awake and I remain in bed.

Not so the miner! Though his private life
Is blameless and his soul is pure and brave;
Although he gives his wages to his wife
And spanks his children when they don't behave;
Though rather than incur industrial strife
He takes the cash and lets the Bolshy rave,
He is condemned to toil in mines and galleries,
Nourished inside with insufficient calories,
A sordid mineral's uncomplaining slave,
Till the rheumatics get him and his pallor is
So marked he hardly dares to wash and shave.
And shall I grudge the man sufficient pelf
For toil I'd rather die than do myself?

Ah, there's the rub! I fain would see him blest
With ample quarters and sufficient food,
A spacious close wherein to take his rest,
Hats for his wife and bootlets for his brood.
But, now the Powers have granted his request,
Too well I know what course will be pursued
By certain merchants who "enjoy" my custom:
They'll put the price of coal up, you can trust 'em,
Till I by want am utterly oppressed
And my finances, howso I adjust 'em,
To my complete insolvency attest.
Five pounds a ton they'll charge--I know their game--
Saying, "Of course the miner is to blame."

Nay, let me clasp the honest fellow's hand,
Saying, "O miner, here is one who shares
Your just desire to make this lovely land
A fit abode for heroes and their heirs
By ousting Plunder's profiteering band,
Who take the cash and leave us all the cares.
Oh, if we twain together might conspire,
Would we not grasp them by the scruff and fire
Coal merchants, barons, dukes and millionaires,
And run the business to our hearts' desire,
Paying no dividends on watered shares;
Blessing State ownership and State control,
You for high wages, I for cheaper coal."

ALGOL.

* * * * *

THE GREAT GOLF CRISIS.

A great budget of correspondence from all parts of the country has reached Mr. Punch concerning the suggestions put forward by famous golfers with the view of modifying the predominant influence exercised by putting in golf. A crisis is rapidly being reached and Government intervention may be invoked any day.

Mr. Ludwig Shyster, of the North Boreland Golf Club, suggests that the tin in the hole should be highly magnetized and the ball coated with a metallic substance so that it might be attracted into the hole. Golf, he contends, is a recreation, and the true aim of golf legislation should be to make the game easier, not more difficult; to attract the largest possible number of players and so to keep up the green-fees and pay a decent salary to secretaries and professionals.

Hanusch Kozelik, the famous Czecho-Slovakian amateur, who has recently done some wonderful rounds at Broadstairs, cordially supports GEORGE DUNCAN'S advocacy of a larger hole. He sees no reason why it should not be three feet in diameter, provided the greens were reduced to eight feet square and surrounded with a barbed-wire entanglement.

Lord HALSBURY, who took to golf when he was over eighty and has only recently given it up, writes: "The bigger the better 'ole."

On the other hand, Dr. Scroggie Park, of Kilspindie, strongly advocates the abolition of the hole altogether and the substitution of a bell, as in the old form of croquet. But, as he wisely adds, variety, not cast-iron uniformity should be our aim. The principle of self-determination should in his opinion be conceded to all properly constituted golf clubs.

Lord BIRKENHEAD is all for maintaining the _status quo_ in regard to holes and greens, but takes up a strong attitude on the improvement of the water-supply. In this respect golf-architecture has hitherto been sadly to seek. There should, he says, be at least one bathroom for every twenty members.

We are obliged to hold over for the present the views expressed on this burning question by Dame MELBA, Madame KARSAVINA and Madame DESTINNOVA.

* * * * *

"A departure from the bridal custom frequently noted since the
war, of having man bridesmaids, is being made by Lady Diano
Manners."--_Provincial Paper_.

We had not previously noted this custom, but are glad that Lady DIANO--whose name also is new to us--is dispensing with it.

* * * * *

An ex-Waac domestic named Mary Ann
Took a place with a strict vegetarian;
He cautioned her, too,
That beer was taboo,
But she simply replied, _"Ça ne fait rien. "_

* * * * *

_She_. "MY DEAR BOY, WHAT _CAN_ ONE DO, EXCEPT JUST CARRY ON?"]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

_Mr. Standfast_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is the third book of the super-spy trilogy that Colonel JOHN BUCHAN has given us, as a kind of supplement to his more official record of the War. We have the same hero, _Hannay_, as in _Greenmantle_ and _The Thirty-Nine Steps_, the same group of associates, reinforced for purposes of love-interest by a young and attractive female, and the same arch-Hun, now identified as the _Graf von Schwabing_. Also the affair pursues much the same hide-and-seek course that gave the former adventures their deserved popularity. I entirely decline even to sketch the manifold vicissitudes of _Hannay_ (now a General), tracking and being tracked, captive and captor, ranging the habitable and non-habitable globe, always (with a fine disregard for the requirements of book-making) convinced that the next chapter will be the last. Three criticisms I cannot avoid. To begin with, Colonel BUCHAN is really becoming too lavish with his coincidences. Secondly, I found it odd that the spy-hunters, after employing so many ruses and so much camouflage that one might say they almost refused to recognise their own reflections in a mirror, should proceed to the opposite extreme and arrange all their plans, with engaging frankness, over the telephone. Finally, the tale, though full of admirable disconnected moments, does not carry one along sufficiently quickly. _General Hannay_ was, I thought, too apt to interpolate lengthy reminiscences of active service, just when I wanted to get on with the matter in hand. Pace in such affairs is everything, and my complaint is that, though the hunt had yielded some capital sport, its end found me with my pulse rather disappointingly calm.

* * * * *

As was to be expected, one of the signs of the times in literature, not of one country but of all, is a grim change in its attitude towards war. The era of pomp and circumstance, as of genial make-believe, is gone by; more and more are our writers beginning to give us militarism stripped of romance, a grisly but (I suppose) useful picture. I have nowhere found it more horrible than in a story called _The Secret Battle_ (METHUEN), written by Mr. A.P. HERBERT, whose initials are familiar to _Punch_ readers under work of a lighter texture. This is an intimate study, inspired throughout by a cold fury of purpose that can be felt on every page, of the destruction of a young man's spirit in the insensate machinery of modern war. There is no other plot, no side issues, no relief. From the introduction of _Harry Penrose_, fresh from Oxford, embarking like a gallant gentleman upon the adventure of arms, to the tragedy that blotted him out of a scheme that had misused and ruined him, the record moves with a dreadful singleness of intent. Sometimes, one at least hopes, the shadows may have been artificially darkened. It seems even to-day hardly credible that events should conspire to such futility of error. But as a story with a purpose, not, in spite of the publisher's description, a novel, _The Secret Battle_ certainly deserves the epithet "striking." It is a blow from the shoulder.

* * * * *

The worst of quotations is that either their staleness is tedious or their unfamiliarity irritates. Mr. S.G. TALLENTYRE has at least one, generally of the latter sort, and oftener half-a-dozen, on every page of _Love Laughs Last_ (BLACKWOOD), or, at any rate, that is one's first impression of the book; while the second is that the number of characters is not much less. It follows that in trying to identify all the persons to whom he may or may not have been introduced in the previous pages, and all the phrases in inverted commas he has certainly seen somewhere else sometime, the truly diligent reader will be kept faithfully at his task--a pleasant one possibly, but just a thought too much like hard work to be quite entertaining in a novel. Apart from all this and an occasional obscure sentence there is nothing much to grumble at in a story that tells how _David_, the sailor, unlearned in the ways of ladies, became engaged for insufficient reasons to one _Theo_, only to fall promptly in love with another, certainly much nicer, called _Nancy_; and how still a third, _Sally_, with various other people, intent on rescuing him from his dilemma, made a most unscrupulous and indeed most improbable conspiracy against number one, who was unpopular. One can't help feeling that they were all, including the author, a bit hard on _Theo_, whose philanthropic notions were really too good for the amount of sense allotted her to work them out with. Most of the rest of them would have nothing to do with raising the masses, but, after the comfortable fashion of early nineteenth-century days, were content to let well alone at eight shillings a week. Perhaps it was this restful attitude that decided the publishers to claim for this volume the distinctive quality of "charm."

* * * * *

After a considerable interval, Mr. ARNOLD LUNN has followed _The Harrovians_ with another school story, _Loose Ends_ (HUTCHINSON). This, however, is a tale not so much about boys as about masters, the real hero being not _Maurice Leigh_ (with whose adventures school-novelists of an earlier day would solely have concerned themselves), the pleasantly undistinguished lad who enters Hornborough in the first chapter and leaves it in the last, but _Quirk_, the young and energetic master, whose efforts to vitalize the very dry bones of Hornborough education hardly meet the success that they deserve. Concerning this I am bound to add that I found some difficulty in accepting Mr. LUNN'S picture as quite fair to an average public school in the early twentieth century. That its authorities should have been so violently perturbed by a proposal to teach SHAKSPEARE histrionically, or by the spectacle of boys enjoying modern poetry, surely supposes conditions almost incredibly archaic. This, however, does nothing to detract from the admirably-drawn figure of _Quirk_ himself, bursting with energy, enthusiasm and intolerance, overcoming passive resistance on the part of the boys, only to be shipwrecked upon the cast-iron prejudice of the staff. That his apotheosis should have been translation to Rugby, where he finds "the beaks much easier to get on with," perhaps shows that Mr. LUNN does not intend those of Hornborough as wholly typical of the most abused race in fiction. For the rest, the boy characters of the book are presented with a quiet realism very refreshing after some recent "sensational revelations." Mr. LUNN'S boys, alike in their speech and outlook, are admirably observed; indeed the persons of the tale struck me throughout as being better than its rather out-of-date happenings.

* * * * *

My landlady assures me that _His Daughter_ (COLLINS) is a "lovely story," and I think it only right that Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS should have the benefit of her criticism, since my own is distinctly less favourable. Mr. MORRIS showed signs at one time of being able to write a first-class novel of adventure, but he abandoned this field for a more lucrative appeal to the Great American Bosom, whose taste, if I may say so without endangering the League of Nations, is more in harmony with my landlady's than with mine. His latest hero is one of those magnificent fellows whom no woman can resist--or so they tell him. Anyway he is irresistible enough to have two daughters, one born in lawful wedlock, the other--of whose existence he is unaware for a long time--in Paris. Which of the daughters is the one referred to in the title is not clear, nor does it really seem to matter, since one of them dies, and he undertakes, while in the throes of remorse, not to make himself known to the other. Meanwhile the War has happened along and given everyone who needed it an opportunity of redeeming his Past, and, as the hero is getting old and has had a nasty crash in an aeroplane, it seems possible that an era of comparative continence has really set in. At this juncture we part with him--I without a pang; my landlady, I well know, with a sigh for his lost irresistibility.

* * * * *

_Barry Dunbar_, the heroic padre of Mr. RALPH CONNOR'S story, _The Sky Pilot of No Man's Land_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), hailed from Canada and went to France with the Canadians. Endowed with superb physical beauty and considerable musical gifts he started, you might think, with fortune in his favour. But at the outset he was a tactless young man and had a good deal to learn before he was in any way competent to teach. Mr. RALPH CONNOR has described with skill and great sincerity the horrors of the War in the earlier days; but for me he has spoilt both his story and the effect of it by his extreme sentimentality. He is persistently concerned to raise a lump in my throat. I readily believe that he was actuated by the highest motive in trying to show us how responsive the Canadians were when their spiritual needs were attended to by a man of courage and understanding. But I dislike an excess of emotional spasms, and in these Mr. CONNOR has indulged so freely that his book can only be for other tastes than mine.

* * * * *

_Rescuer_. "WIRELESS TELEPHONE--HEARD A VOICE SAYING, 'I'D GIVE TWENTY POUNDS TO GET OUT OF THIS ROTTEN HOLE.'"

_Castaway_. "WEEL, YER TELEPHONE'S DEFECTIVE. I SAID 'TWENTY SHILLINGS.'"]