Read Ebook: Punch or the London Charivari Volume 156 February 5 1919 by Various

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A PLEA FOR PROPORTION.

If so--or indeed if it's not so-- One cannot but gently deplore That the custom of chronicling rot so Has not been expunged by the War. When the world with its horrors still stunned is And waits for vast hopes to come true, What boots it if delegates' undies Are scarlet or blue?

All facts of those delegates' labours I'm ready to read with a zest, And they must, like myself and my neighbours, I know, have their moments of rest; I do not begrudge them their pleasures, But frankly I don't care a rap If the sport that engages their leisure's "Up, Jenkins" or "Snap."

Since the founts of its wisdom present us Each morning with gems of this kind, Such matters must strike as momentous The news-editorial mind; 'Tis time this delusion was done with, High time that some voice made it clear We don't want those fountains to run with Such very small beer.

We rather like this telescopic style of reporting. It leaves something to the reader's imagination.

A distressful country, indeed, where the children do not own their own feet.

WINCHESTER'S OPPORTUNITY.

Winchester Cathedral, as we need hardly remind our readers, has only been rescued from subsidence and collapse at an immense cost by a lavish use of the resources of modern engineering. The building itself is not without merits, but its site is inconspicuous and the swampy nature of the soil is a constant menace to its durability. The scheme which we venture with all humility to suggest is that it should be removed and re-erected, in the same spirit though in the architectural language of our own day, on the summit of St. Catherine's Hill, where it would look better than ever, and be connected by a scenic neo-Gothic railway with Meads. This would not only add to the amenities of the landscape, but enable the present cathedral site to be utilized for a purpose more in consonance with the needs of the age. We do not presume to dictate, but may point out that if the deanery and the canons' houses were pulled down and re-erected on the golf-links, where they would look better than ever, space would be available for a majestic aerodrome, or, better still, an experimental water-stadium for submarines, in memory of KING ALFRED, the founder of our Fleet.

CIVIL EDUCATION FOR SOLDIERS.

When the armistice was signed and the close season for Germans set in, it occurred to the authorities that it would be a waste of labour to continue to train some few million good men for a shooting season that might never re-open, and the weekly programme became rather a sketchy affair till some brain more brilliant than the rest conceived the idea of giving a good sound education in the arts of peace to this promising and waiting multitude. The idea was joyfully accepted, and gradually filtered through its authorised channels, suffering some office change or other at each stage till it finally reached one of our ancient seats of learning. It arrived rather like the peremptory order of a newly-gazetted and bewildered subaltern, who, having got his platoon hopelessly tied up, falls back on the time-honoured and usually infallible "Carry on, Sergeant."

There were some six-hundred white-hatted cadets stationed at this spot, all thirsting for information on gas, and Mills bombs, and studs on the cocking-piece, and forming fours, and vertical intervals and District Courts-martial; and when the order came to "carry on" with education it caused something like a panic. A council of war nearly caused Head-quarters to cancel a battalion parade, but they pulled themselves together and held the drill, and the appointed Jack as "Battalion Education Officer," and empowered him to draft a scheme of work.

When produced it consisted of fourteen paragraphs, each of which finished up with the sentence, "This is obviously a problem for the Company Commander." Jack had nothing to learn as to the duties of a battalion specialist and realised that his responsibility lay simply in providing Company Commanders, and then finding problems for them to solve. As the Company Commanders were already in being his work was simplified.

However, the Company Commanders, being men of merit, cheerfully accepted the situation and approached their victims. "We are going to teach you," they said. "What would you like to be taught?"

"Well," said the victims, "what have you got?"

"Oh, anything you like," said the Company Commanders. "Just you choose your subject and we'll do the rest."

Now that was very generous, but rather rash. For the victims took them at their word, and so by the time the perspiring Platoon Commanders had produced their returns it was found that there were forty-three subjects to be provided for, including seven languages, six branches of science, four kinds of engineering, six commercial subjects and various sundries, such as metaphysics, wool-classing and coker-nut planting.

The way the Company Commanders dealt with this problem was quite simple and ingenious. They sent for all junior officers and asked what they were prepared to teach. The result seemed really rather good. Tom said he would take French, having spent three months in Northern France before they sent him to Salonika. Dick's father has an allotment and Dick himself occasionally hunts, so he chose Agriculture, Oswald chose Mathematics, on the strength of having been a Quartermaster-Sergeant in the Public Schools Brigade in September, 1914. Wilfred once went to a gas course for ten days, so of course his subject was Science. Arthur really does know something about Architecture and can also enlarge a map quite nicely, so he put down Drawing. John chose Theology. He said he once read the lessons in church; really he thought he was safe to draw a blank.

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.

Let FOCH be warned.

"BAD BOYS AND THE BIRCH.

"Stern measures" is good.

Believed to be under the patronage of the FOOD-CONTROLLER.

THE FOOD PROBLEM IN PARIS.

"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."

"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."

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.

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.

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."

"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.

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