PUNCH,
OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOLUME 147.

November 25, 1914.

CHARIVARIA.

Enver Pasha, in a proclamation to the Turkish troops, says: "The army will destroy all our enemies with the aid of Allah and the assistance of the Prophet." It is rumoured that the Kaiser is a little bit piqued about it.

We learn from a German paper that, since the brave Ottomans have discovered that their Culture and that of the Germans are one, many Englishmen who live in Crescents are crying out in fury for an alteration of their addresses.

According to a Berlin journal, about 2,000 players of orchestral instruments have been thrown out of employment by the war. It is suggested that, with a view to providing them with more employment, reverses as well as victories should be musically celebrated in the capital.

We are glad to see that the names of battles in Belgium show a tendency to become more cheery. The other day, for instance, we had the battle of the Yperlee—and we may yet have a battle of Yip-i-yaddy-i-yay.

It is rumoured that a compromise has been arrived at in regard to the proposal, emanating from America, that the war shall be stopped for twenty-four hours on Christmas Day. The combatants, it is said, have agreed to fire plum-puddings instead of cannon-balls.

Among the promotions which we do not remember seeing gazetted is that of Karl Gustav Ernst, a German barber-spy. At the Old Bailey, the other day, Mr. Justice Coleridge promoted him to be a Steinhauer or stone-hacker.

"'MIRACLE' PRODUCER KILLED."—Daily Chronicle.

This is unfortunate for the Germans, for if ever they needed a miracle it is now.

"Information that has come into our possession," says The Grocer, "proves to our satisfaction that Germany has been receiving plentiful supplies of tea from our shores through neutral countries since the outbreak of hostilities." The italics are ours: the satisfaction appears to be our contemporary's.

A cynic sends us a tip for the recruiting department of our army. "Why go for the single man?" he asks. "We may expect just as much courage from the married man. He has already proved his pluck."

"HOW DE WET ESCAPED.
A MISSING LINK IN THE CORDON."—Observer.

The Germans, who have already been calling the Allied forces "The Menagerie," should appreciate this item.

Angry newspaper men are now calling a certain institution the Suppress Bureau.

A solicitor having announced that he is prepared to make the wills of the men of a certain regiment free of charge, another enterprising legal gentleman, not to be outdone, would like it to be known that he is willing to act as residuary legatee without a fee.

In his interesting sketch, in The Times, of the Prince of Wales' career at the University, the President of Magdalen mentions that His Royal Highness "shot at various country houses round Oxford." We hope that this will not be quoted against the Prince by a spiteful German Press, should any bullet marks be found one day on the walls of some castle on the Rhine.

It came as quite an unpleasant surprise to many persons to learn from Mr. Asquith that the War is costing us a million pounds a day, that being more than some of us spend in a year.

THE RULING PASSION.

Customer. "Bring me some soup, please."

Waitress (absent-mindedly). "Yes, Sir; purl or plain, Sir?"

The End of the Press Bureau.

"Members of several guilds carried their banners in the procession which went round the church to the accompaniment of impressive music and the swinging of censors."—South Western Star.

If this had got about, there would have been a bigger crowd at the ceremony. As it was, Fleet Street was taken by surprise, and only had time to prepare a few fireworks for the evening.

"Among other public buildings in a certain town which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning ... on a day and date which I need not trouble to repeat...."

No, this is not from our Special Representative behind the Front; it is the opening passage of Oliver Twist, and shows what a splendid War Correspondent Dickens would have made.

Teuton Anatomy.

"The clay feet of Germany will be revealed when we take off the gloves."—Mr. Arnold White in "The Sunday Chronicle."

So that's where they wear them.

"Questioned with reference to a letter written by him to Steinhauer, in which he said, 'The name of the gentleman in Woolwich Arsenal is ——,' the prisoner said that was a false name."—Times.

It's a very silly name anyway.

"The announcement issued by the Press Bureau that carrier pigeons are to be used officially for certain purposes is an extremely interesting reversion to what we had regarded as almost premature ways of carrying news."—Westminster Gazette.

Not so premature as the Wolff method.

More Information for the Enemy.

"Britain's Sugar Supply.
Sufficient for Eight Mouths."—Aberdeen Evening Gazette.

We insist on providing one of them.

"Now came the drums and fifes, and now the blare of the brass instruments, and continuously the singing of the soldiers of 'Die Wacht am goose step, while the good lieges of Brus-Rhein.'"—Adelaide Advertiser.

A good song, but (so it has always struck us) a clumsy title.

Extract from Army Routine Orders, Expeditionary Force, Nov. 9th:—

"It is notified for information that shooting in the Forest of Clairmarais and certain portions of the adjacent country is preserved."

Clever Germans are now disguising themselves as pheasants.

THE PRICE OF PATRIOTISM.

Helen and I are economising; so the other evening we dined at the Rococo.

"That's no economy," you cry; so let me explain.

In common with most other folk who are not engaged in the manufacture of khaki, or rifles, or Army woollens, or heavy siege-guns (to which I had not the foresight to turn my attention before the war came along), we have found it necessary to adopt a policy of retrenchment and reform; and one of our first moves in this direction was to convert Evangeline from a daily into a half-daily. Evangeline is not a newspaper but a domestic servant, and before the new order was issued she had been in the habit of arriving at our miniature flat at 7.30 in the morning (when it wasn't 8.15), and retiring at 9 in the evening.

Now, however, Evangeline goes after lunch, and Helen, who has bought a shilling cookery book, prepares the dinner herself.

On the day in question Helen suddenly decided to spend the afternoon repairing a week's omissions on the part of Evangeline. It proved a veritable labour of Hercules, the flat being, as Helen with near enough accuracy gave me to understand, an "Aegæan stable." Tea-time came, but brought no tea. Shortly before seven Helen struck, and declared (this time without any classical metaphor) that she wasn't going to cook any dinner that evening. Not to be outdone, I affirmed in reply that even if she did cook it I wasn't going to clear it away. So we cleaned and adorned ourselves and groped our way to the Rococo.

We were both too tired to go to the trouble of choosing our dinner, and it was therefore that we elected to make our way through the table-d'hôte, to which we felt that our appetite, unimpaired by tea, could do full justice. Luxuriously we toyed with hors-d'œuvre, while the orchestra patriotically intimated that ours is a Land of Hope and Glory; blissfully we consumed our soup, undeterred by repeated reminders of the distance to Tipperary. It was with the fish that the trouble started.

At the second mouthful it began to dawn upon me that what the band was playing was the Brabançonne. I looked around, and gathered that I was not alone in the realisation of that fact; for one by one my fellow-diners struggled hesitatingly to their feet, and stood in awkward reverence while the National Anthem of our brave Belgian Allies was in course of execution. I looked at Helen, and Helen looked at me, and we both tried not to look too regretfully at our plates as we also adopted the prevailing pose. Not one note of that light-hearted anthem did the orchestra miss, and when it was over the warmth in our hearts almost compensated for the coldness of our fish. We decided to jump at once to the entrée.

Whatever else may be said of the Marseillaise, there can be no mistaking its identity. The first bar sufficed to bring the whole room to attention, and a promising dish of sweetbreads shared the fate of its predecessor. Before the final crash had ceased to reverberate we sat down with a thump, resigning ourselves to the prospect of doing double justice to the joint. But the orchestra was not so lightly to be cheated of its prey. True, we held out as long as possible while the Russian Hymn began to unfold its majestic length, and Helen actually managed to convey a considerable piece of saddle of mutton to her mouth while she was in the very act of rising. That joint, however, was soon but a memory of anticipation, and our hunger was still keen upon us when the funereal strains of the Japanese Anthem coincided with the arrival of a wild duck. I had always harboured secret doubts of the advisability of Japan's joining in the War, and now they were intensified many times. Cold wild duck is an impossibility even to a hungry man.

Ice-pudding, though scarcely satisfying, seemed to warrant the expectation that it would at least survive whatever further ordeal the band had in store for us. But that hope too was doomed to extinction. When God Save the King smote the air the growing lethargy of the company of diners vanished, and all joined with a will in the recital of all its verses. In the glow of loyal enthusiasm that filled the room the ice gradually melted, and as we surveyed the fluid mess upon our plates we knew that our dinner was gone beyond recall.

Weary and unappeased we crept home through the City of Dreadful Night. I found a remnant of cold beef and some pickles in the kitchen, and on this we went to bed. I slept but little, and on five occasions watched Helen, who has dreams, get out of bed and stand to attention.

Of course it might have been worse; for the musicians of the Rococo evidently had not learnt the national airs of Serbia and Montenegro; and Portugal had not then been drawn into the War. But until the trouble is over I shall avoid restaurants which harbour an orchestra. As you say, it is no economy.

TO MR. BERNARD JAW.

Illustrious Jester, who in happier days

Amused us with your Prefaces and Plays,

Acquiring a precarious renown

By turning laws and morals upside down,

Sticking perpetual pins in Mrs. Grundy,

Railing at marriage or the British Sunday,

And lavishing your acid ridicule

On the foundations of imperial rule;—

'Twas well enough in normal times to sit

And watch the workings of your wayward wit,

But in these bitter days of storm and stress,

When souls are shown in all their nakedness,

Your devastating egotism stands out

Denuded of the last remaining clout.

You own our cause is just, yet can't refrain

From libelling those who made its justice plain;

You chide the Prussian Junkers, yet proclaim

Our statesmen beat them at their own vile game.

Thus, bent on getting back at any cost

Into the limelight you have lately lost,

And, high above war's trumpets loudly blown

On land and sea, eager to sound your own,

We find you faithful to your ancient plan

Of disagreeing with the average man,

And all because you think yourself undone

Unless in a minority of one.

Vain to the core, thus in the nation's need

You carp and cavil while your brothers bleed,

And while on England vitriol you bestow

You offer balsam to her deadliest foe.

Extract from a commercial traveller's letter to his chief:—

"Dear Sir,—On Wednesday next I want you to allow me the day off. My wife having lost her mother is being buried on that date and I should like to attend the funeral."

Extract from a child's essay on Cromwell:—

"In his last years, Cromwell grew very much afraid of plots, and it is said that he even wore underclothes to protect himself."

We wonder if the Kaiser knows of this.

CARRYING ON.

The Worst Character in the village (who has repeatedly been pressed by the inhabitants to enlist). "I dunna believe there ain't no war. I believe it's just a plot to get me out of the village."

THE AWAKENING.

"Here no howitzers speak in stern styles,

Light and gay is the leathern bomb,

We pay our sixpences down at the turnstiles,

And that is our centre, name of Tom;

Wild thunder rolls

When he scores his goals,

And up in the air go Alf and Ern's tiles;

But what is this rumour of war? Whence cometh it from?"

So said Bottlesham, best of cities

Watching the ball from seats above.

"Belgium ruined? A thousand pities!

Bother the Kaiser's mailéd glove!"

But it left no stings

When they heard these things,

Though they wept as the brown bird weeps for Itys

On the day that the Wanderers whacked them two to love.

Suddenly then the news came flying,

"English mariners meet the Dutch,

Tars interned, with the neutrals vieing,

Beaten at Gröningen." Wild hands clutch

At the evening sheets

And the swift pulse beats;

Is the fame of Hawke and Frobisher dying?

The heart of the town is stirred by the Nelson touch.

Six—five. It's true. And the tears bedizen

The smoke-stained cheeks, and there comes a scream,

"If our English lads in a far-off prison

Are matched one day with a German team

And the Germans win,

They will say in Berlin

That a brighter than all our stars has risen;

Will even the Bottlesham Rovers stand supreme?

"Infantry, cavalry, guard and lancer—

Who on that day will bear the brunt,

With twinkling feet like a tip-toe dancer

Dribbling about while the half-backs grunt?

There is only one

Who can vanquish the Hun!"

And Bottlesham town with a cry made answer,

"There is only one; we must send our Tom to the front."

Evoe.

A RIVAL OF "TIPPERARY."

While much has been written of the songs that inspire our own brave troops on the march, little is heard of those affected by our Allies.

Happily Mr. Punch's Special Eye-witness with General Headquarters in the Eastern Area has been enabled to send us the words of a song which, set to an old Slav air, is rendered with immense élan by the gallant Russians as they go into battle. It is as follows:—

It's a hard nut is Cracow,

It's a hard nut to crack,

But it's not so hard to crack, oh!

When once you've got the knack.

Good-bye, Przemysl;

Farewell, Lemberg (Lwow);

It's a hard, hard nut to crack is Cracow,

But we'll soon crack it now.

By the more cultured Russian regiments, i.e., those recruited in the neighbourhood of the German frontier, the last line is rendered:—

But we'll crack it right off,

to rhyme with Lvoff—the correct pronunciation of Lwow, according to a contemporary.

AT THE PLAY.

King Henry IV., Part I.

I commend Sir Herbert Tree's obvious desire to do his duty as an actor-manager and a patriot. His true intent is all for our good; and he supports his choice of a play in which Falstaff is the central obsession by a printed quotation from the words of "That Wise Ruler Queen Elizabeth of England," where she says: "'Tis simple mirth keepeth high courage alive." But yet he does not convince me that he has chosen wisely here. For in the first place we are not closely interested in civil war, as we came near to being in the dim Ulster period; and patriotism, which it is his object to encourage, is like to remain unaffected by a play in which our sympathies are fairly distributed between rebel and royalist. In the second place I cannot believe that the glorification of drunkenness and braggadocio in the person of Falstaff can directly assist the cause (which at this moment needs all the help it can get) of sobriety and self-respect.

The King (Mr. Basil Gill) reclaims young Harry (Mr. Owen Nares) from old Harry (the Devil).

Having made this protest I have little but praise for the performance itself, though I think Sir Herbert Tree's own lethargy was not wholly to be excused by the hampering rotundity of his girth; and that all this deliberate sword-play, where you wait till your enemy has got his right guard before you arrange a concussion between your weapon and his, fails to impose itself as an image of War. But it was no fault of the actors if we suffered a further loss of actuality by the incredible amount of fine poetry and rhetoric thrown off by military men at junctures calling for immediate action.

I also venture to make my complaint to the author that the Falstaff scenes are given too great a dominance, diverting us from the main issue so long that at one time we almost lost count of it; and that the picture of that fat impostor lying supine in a simulation of death within a few feet of the fallen body of the heroic Hotspur was repellent to one's sense of the proprieties.

Mr. Matheson Lang was a brave figure as Hotspur; but, after lately seeing that other keen actor, Mr. Owen Nares, in the part of a modern intellectual discussing the ethics of War, I could not quite get myself to believe in him as Prince Hal. He spoke some of his lines with a fine ardour, but he was too high-browed and slight of body, and it was unthinkable that he could ever have persuaded Hotspur to die at his hands.

Sir Herbert Tree affected an almost proprietary interest in the bibulous humours of Falstaff, presenting them with an easy and leisurely restraint; and Mr. Basil Gill both in form and manner made a quite good King. The minor parts upheld the standard of His Majesty's; and a pleasant rattling of steel and shimmer of mail ran through the scenes of active service. Mr. Percy Macquoid had seen to it that the period was there, and Mr. Joseph Harker had taken good care that the jewelry of Shakspeare's verse should have the right setting, though I could easily have mistaken his Gadshill scene for a section of the Lake Country.

O. S.

A GRIEVANCE.

Nothing is too good for our fighting men. Let my subscription to that axiom be complete; and yet——

Well, it is like this. A man who is only a year or so too old for active service, but feels as fit and keen as a boy, has so many opportunities for regretting his enforced civilism and absence from the arena that it is hard when additional ones are thrust upon him.

He may do his best at home. He may guard gasworks, or organise funds, or campaign as an enlister, or visit the hospitals; but all the time he is conscious that being here is so different from being there. It galls him day and night, and the only thing that can help him at all is the society of lovely women, and now he has lost that!

I hate to grumble, and I have, I believe, shouldered my share of the new taxes like a man, but I am not made of such stern stuff as to be superior to all human aid, and in my own case the mortification of non-combating, which now and then becomes depressingly acute, is to be alleviated only in this way. Nice women must do their part.

But do they? No. They did at first, but no longer.

Let me tell you. The other evening I found myself one of the complacent hosts of a party of merry chattering young women, who seemed to be quite satisfied with our attention. All of us were just beginning to be very jolly, and I had actually forgotten my hard destiny of inactivity, when who should come into the room but an officer on crutches, who happened to be an acquaintance of each of our guests but was unknown both to me and my other just too elderly male friends. In an instant we were alone, and alone we remained for certainly half an hour, while every attention was being paid by our guests to that other. When at last they tore themselves away and returned, their conversation was wholly confined to their wounded friend's adventures, and we need not have been there at all, except to pay the bill.

Now it is no fun to me to deceive anyone but myself, and hence I shall not go about with my arm in a sling and win sympathy and attention to which I am not entitled; but I do appeal to all the young women to have a little pity on some of us compulsory stay-at-homes. Nothing is too good for our fighting men. I repeat it. But just a tiny spark of animation might be retained in the feminine eye when it alights upon an old friend who is debarred from taking arms. Just a spark, otherwise we shall go into a melancholy decline.

Smart Work.

"Owner gone to the front, friend offers his Wolseley ... £165, an extraordinary opportunity."—Advt. in "Autocar."

If we were not confident that we should be wrong in putting upon these words the sinister interpretation which they invite, we shouldn't envy the advertiser when the owner returns.

From verses in Punch, October 21st:—

"We have made progress near to Berry au Bac,

And on our right wing there is nothing new."

From the French official report, November 12th:—

"We have also made some progress around Berry au Bac."

And on the right wing there was nothing new.

UNRECORDED SCENES FROM THE HISTORY OF THE WAR.

Public speakers attend a class for the purpose of learning to pronounce correctly the phrase: "We shall not sheathe the sword until, etc., etc."

FAN.

Fan, the hunt terrier, runs with the pack,

A little white bitch with a patch on her back;

She runs with the pack as her ancestors ran—

We're an old-fashioned lot here and breed 'em like Fan;

Round of skull, harsh of coat, game and little and low,

The same as we bred sixty seasons ago.

So she's harder than nails, and she's nothing to learn

From her scarred little snout to her cropped little stern,

And she hops along gaily, in spite of her size,

With twenty-four couples of big badger-pyes:

'Tis slow, but 'tis sure is the old white and grey,

And 'twill sing to a fox for a whole winter day.

Last year at Rook's Rough, just as Ben put 'em in,

'Twas Fan found the rogue who was curled in the whin;

She pounced at his brush with a drive and a snap,

"Yip-Yap, boys," she told 'em, "I've found him, Yip-Yap;"

And they put down their noses and sung to his line

Away down the valley most tuneful and fine.

'Twas a point of ten miles and a kill in the dark

That scared the cock pheasants in Fallowfield Park,

And into the worry flew Fan like a shot

And snatched the tit-bit that old Rummage had got;

Eloop, little Fan with the patch on her back,

She broke up the fox with the best of the pack.

FOR THE CHILDREN.

[The Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street, where many Belgian children are now being cared for, is in very urgent need of funds to enable it to maintain its beneficent work. The Treasurer will gladly receive and acknowledge any subscriptions that may be sent.]

O generous hearts that freely give,

Nor heed the lessening of your store,

So but our well-loved land may live,

Much have you given—give once more!

For little children spent with toil,

For little children worn with pain,

I ask a gift of healing oil—

Say, shall I ask for it in vain?

For, since our days are filled with woe,

And all the paths are dark and chill,

This thought may cheer us as we go,

And bring us light and comfort still;

This, this may stay our faltering feet,

And this our mournful minds beguile:—

We helped some little heart to beat

And taught some little face to smile.

R. C. L.

"Monitors at work off Knocke," says The Daily Mail, and by way of reply the Germans knocked off work.

THE PATRIOT.

This is a true story. Unless you promise to believe me, it is not much good my going on.... You promise? Very well.

Years ago I bought a pianola. I went into the shop to buy a gramophone record, and I came out with a pianola—so golden-tongued was the manager. You would think that one could then retire into private life for a little, but it is only the beginning. There is the music-stool to be purchased, the library subscription, the tuner's fee (four visits a year, if you please), the cabinet for the rolls, the man to oil the pedals, the——however, one gets out of the shop at last. Nor do I regret my venture. It is common talk that my pianola was the chief thing about me which attracted Celia. "I must marry a man with a pianola," she said ... and there was I ... and here, in fact, we are. My blessings, then, on the golden tongue of the manager.

Now there is something very charming in a proper modesty about one's attainments, but it is necessary that the attainments should be generally recognized first. It was admirable in Stephenson to have said (as I am sure he did), when they congratulated him on his first steam-engine, "Tut-tut, it's nothing;" but he could only say this so long as the others were in a position to offer the congratulations. In order to place you in that position I must let you know how extraordinarily well I played the pianola. I brought to my interpretation of different Ops an élan, a verve, a je ne sais quoi—and several other French words—which were the astonishment of all who listened to me. But chiefly I was famous for my playing of one piece: "The Charge of the Uhlans," by Karl Bohm. Others may have seen Venice by moonlight, or heard the Vicar's daughter recite Little Jim, but the favoured few who have been present when Bohm and I were collaborating are the ones who have really lived. Indeed, even the coldest professional critic would have spoken of it as "a noteworthy rendition."

"The Charge of the Uhlans." If you came to see me, you had to hear it. As arranged for the pianola, it was marked to be played throughout at a lightning pace and with the loudest pedal on. So one would play it if one wished to annoy the man in the flat below; but a true musician has, I take it, a higher aim. I disregarded the "FF.'s" and the other sign-posts on the way, and gave it my own interpretation. As played by me, "The Charge of the Uhlans" became a whole battle scene. Indeed, it was necessary, before I began, that I should turn to my audience and describe the scene to them—in the manner, but not in the words, of a Queen's Hall programme:—

"Er—first of all you hear the cavalry galloping past, and then there's a short hymn before action while they form up, and then comes the charge, and then there's a slow bit while they—er—pick up the wounded, and then they trot slowly back again. And if you listen carefully to the last bit you'll actually hear the horses limping."

Something like that I would say; and it might happen that an insufferable guest (who never got asked again) would object that the hymn part was unusual in real warfare.

"They sang it in this piece anyhow," I would say stiffly, and turn my back on him and begin.

But the war put a stop to music as to many other things. For three months the pianola has not been played by either of us. There are two reasons for this: first, that we simply haven't the time now; and secondly, that we are getting all the music we want from the flat below. The flat below is learning "Tipperary" on one finger. He gets as far as the farewell to Leicester Square, and then he breaks down; the parting is too much for him.

I was not, then, surprised at the beginning of this month to find Celia looking darkly at the pianola.

"It's very ugly," she began.

"We can't help our looks," I said in my grandmother's voice.

"A bookcase would be much prettier there."

"But not so tuneful."

"A pianola isn't tuneful if you never play it."

"True," I said.

Celia then became very alluring, and suggested that I might find somebody who would like to be lent a delightful pianola for a year or so by somebody whose delightful wife had her eye on a delightful bookcase.

"I might," I said.

"Somebody," said Celia, "who isn't supplied with music from below."

I found John. He was quite pleased about it, and promised to return the pianola when the war was over.

So on Wednesday it went. I was not sorry, because in its silence it was far from beautiful, and we wanted another bookcase badly. But on Tuesday evening—its last hours with us—I had to confess to a certain melancholy. It is sad to part with an old and well-tried friend, particularly when that friend is almost entirely responsible for your marriage. I looked at the pianola and then I said to Celia, "I must play it once again."

"Please," said Celia.

"The old masterpiece, I suppose?" I said, as I got it out.