Various

“ I, a dreary civilian, had been carefully selected as the truest representative of Angleterre and all its bravery and chivalry, even to the risk of dislocation of the perilously short neck of the speaker.
It was therefore my turn to behave, and I whispered to the waiter to fill [Pg 482] three more glasses with his excellent Fine de la maison (not the least remarkable in Paris) and place them on the next table, with our compliments. This he did, and the explosion of courtesy and felicitations that followed was terrific. It flung us all to our feet, bowing and smiling. ”

“ The fifteen inches of half-frozen mud caused my old wound from an Afghan bullet to ache viciously. I longed for some wounded to arrive—anything to end this chilly inactivity. A tall officer in staff uniform jumped into the trench beside me.
"You are wishing yourself back in Baker Street," he remarked.
"How did you know?" I exclaimed. "Why, Holmes, what are you doing here?"
"Business, my dear Watson, business. Moriarty is becoming troublesome again."
"But he was drowned."
"Far too clever to be drowned in that pool. Merely stranded on the edge like myself. But I had made England too hot for him. ”

“ Not to know a Belgian in these days is a mark of social outlawry, and you cannot know them without admiring them. The fire was warm, the room was comfortable, and the minutes ticked themselves away in the usual place on the mantelpiece.
"How long," said one of us, "will it take us to walk from here to Paddington?"
"To walk?" said our hostess in a tone of mild surprise.
"Yes," I said, "to walk. We are the ones for adventure. We are country folk, and we don't get a chance of a walk in St. John's Wood every day." ”

“ THE SEARCH FOR PADDINGTON.
I do not say that the expedition I propose to describe was accompanied by any very great risk. The streets, of course, were dark and the taxis and motor-buses were quite up to the usual average in number and well above it in speed. Still, when your mind is full of stories of shrapnel and Black Marias, you feel able to affront motor vehicles, even in darkened streets, with a feeling of comparative security. It is not so much danger as mystery that makes this story remarkable. ”

“ Night by night we guard our approaches and prod the tyres of oncoming motors with fixed bayonets. Every morning the man who held up General French tells us about it with bated breath over our bated breakfasts. ”

“ Half a lace scarf to your mother, one fur glove only to your father, afternoon-tea saucers to Aunt Emma, a Keats Calendar for 1821⁄2 days to Uncle Peter, kilt-lengths instead of dress-lengths to Cook and Phœbe, and so on, all with promissory notes for the balance attached."
"I don't mean anything of the sort," said Joan. "We shall give no half-presents. We shall give one whole present where it will be needed far more than by our relations. It will have a face-value of three pounds sixteen and a penny, but virtually it will represent a sum of seven pounds twelve and twopence." ”

“ Anyhow, we haven't actually been engaged yet, though our Private Smithson has collected three bits of shrapnel and a German rifle; and we have all heard artillery fire (off) . Which makes us think that these rumours of war aren't just a scare got up to help recruiting.
Some doubt exists among us as to our precise function out here. Here we are (as I may have mentioned) a magnificent battalion of young giants, complete with rifles—every man has at least one and Private Smithson has two—webbing equipment, cummerbunds, mufflers, cameras, sleeping caps (average, six per man) and even boots ”

“ Once upon a time, when we were first told about Karl, those of us who didn't say that it was an extraordinary coincidence observed that the world is a small place after all; but now, when the narrator reaches that part of the story where he tells us that we "can imagine his surprise when"—I usually interrupt him to say that he must forgive me, but really I cannot.
Karl was a German waiter at all the restaurants where my friends and my friends' friends were in the habit of dining. ”

“ We are "recognised" by the War Office! Our months of toil are not to go unrewarded. Two hours every evening at the end of an ordinary civilian day's work, all Saturday afternoon and the whole of Sunday, we have given these up cheerfully, supported by the hope of ultimate recognition. And now it is come!
The terms of the War Office are generous. They are these. Provided that we buy our own rifles and equipment and continue to pay our own training expenses ”

“ We think that it is a mistake to put our artists on their mettle in this way.
A black eagle, a contemporary tells us, was seen one day last week at Westgate-on-Sea. A Prussian bird, no doubt, in mourning for lost Calais.
The German Government has declared timber contraband of war owing to its alleged scarcity in Germany. Surely, as Douglas Jerrold suggested on another occasion, the German authorities could find plenty of wood in their own country if they only put their heads together? ”

“ We are thus thrown back on our sergeants, a fine body of men whose one weakness is an enthusiasm for chocolate. Acting on this knowledge certain tactful and public-spirited privates in our midst will present the sergeants with two sticks of chocolate per sergeant on the understanding that they thereafter form the battalion into fours and march them circumstantially to the trenches. ”

“ For you may remember that Dorothea, herself of Dutch-English extraction, married into a Prussian family. Nay, more, into the family of a Prussian general. A very obvious interest attaches to the impression made by these people upon the mind of the author. Of the old General we find him writing that "his lofty soul had accepted the theory of the unity on earth of the good, the true and the beautiful." Who, I ask you, would have supposed it? But throughout the book these Von Rodens stand as the perfect family, gently chivalrous, cultured and altogether charming. ”

“ Meanwhile he grasped my hand in his, which was very puffy and warm, and again thanked me for all that ces braves Anglais had done to save Paris and la belle France.
Down we all sat again, and I whispered to our party that perhaps this was enough and we had better creep away. But there was more in store. Before the bill could be made out—never a very swift matter at this house—I caught sight of a portent and knew the worst. I saw a waiter entering the room with a tray on which was a bottle of champagne and seven glasses. ”

“ Would I do him the honour of giving him a light? he asked, the face so close to mine that we were practically touching. I reached out for a match. Oh, no, he said, not at all; he desired the privilege of taking the light from my cigarette, because I was an Englishman and it was an honour to meet me, and—and——"Vive l'Angleterre!" This was all very strange and disturbing to me; but we live in stirring times, and nothing ever will be the same again. ”

“ Biffin treats of practically every branch of sport, from elephant-snaring to Sunday bridge, in the easy chatty style which made The Perfect Gentleman the inseparable companion of all who desire to comport themselves correctly in Society. ”

“ There you have the German tragedy in a nutshell. Of Dorothea herself I will say little. Probably you already know her, and may agree with me in considering her an unattractive prig, whose place in the list of Mr. Maartens' heroines is decidedly at the wrong end. But those amazing pathetic Prussians! and the conflicting emotions they stir in your heart as you read!
He. "I'm just about fed-up with all this talk about recruitin'. Who's goin' to carry on the work of the country if all the people of brains go to the front?" ”

“ At the German Headquarters.
German Officer (to prisoner) . You are a civilian and you are caught bearing arms. Have you anything to offer in your defence?
Prisoner. Civilian be blowed! I'm recognised by the War Office. ”

“ Let no man believe that we are out here on a holiday. On the contrary we give ourselves over entirely to warlike pursuits. Some days we slope arms by numbers; and other days we clean dixies and indent for new boots. ”

“ Recognition, you told yourself, would only mean that we were immediately to be employed as waterproof sheeting for the new huts or concrete foundations for the new guns. Aha! Now you wish you had joined us. We are allowed to go on living!
But I was forgetting. The War Office is being even more generous than that. In return for our not bothering them any more, it will allow us to wear (and pay for) a small red armlet with "G.R." on it; the red colour, I suppose, informing the Germans that we have just been vaccinated, and the "G.R." ("got rash") warning them that the left arm is irritable. ”

“ The first thing he knows, he will be talking to well-informed people about a flock of sparrows or a covey of weasels, and their quiet smiles will show him that he has been guilty of a ludicrous blunder. ”

“ Aunt Alice.—Lord Kitchener hardly ever accepts invitations to tea-parties, but it was nice of you to think of asking him.
"Dans l'Est, nous avons dû refuser une suspension d'armes, probablement destinée à l'inhumation des blessés."
To judge from this extract from Le Nord Maritime the French still lack a true appreciation of German culture.
Owing to the outcry against high-placed aliens a wealthy German tries to look as little high-placed as possible. ”

“ There is generally about people who mean well something pathetic and something else which is worse, and these characteristics are apt to become so exaggerated in fiction as to be almost offensive. Mr. Caine's young person is not of that sort; she is no prig, and her fault is not weakness but irrepressible activity. ”

“ In dealing with members of the medical profession it is never wise to beat about the bush; superfluous subtlety merely irritates them. I have therefore endeavoured to make the poem just the artless outpouring of the innocent passion of such a girl as I imagine your friend Mary Smith to be. ”

“ On the other hand, since in poetry, as in boxing and batting, the proper management of the feet is everything, and requires more practice than either you or your friend have apparently been able to devote to it, I have much pleasure in coming to the rescue. ”

“ I got up, kicked the waste-paper basket over and walked up and down the room. I knew Peter wouldn't tell a lie. Even for fun he wouldn't say anything like that if it weren't true.
I called Honor. She was in the drawing-room arranging the flowers. She came hurriedly with a bunch of them in her hand. I don't know one flower from one another, but they were big floppy red things.
"What's the matter?" she said.
"Matter? Italy's declared for the enemy," I said. "It's official." ”

“ Thompson, who is no end of a fire-eater and wants to be invalided home with a bullet in his left shoulder—he is engaged—has invented a scheme for getting to the front by sheer initiative. Our officers have quite a pedantic veneration for orders, field-marshals and other obsolete pink apron-strings. ”

“ Michael. "It would be too awful to die a civilian."
THE ENTENTE IN BEING.
We were sitting in a little restaurant in the gay city—which is not a gay city any more, but a city of dejection, a city that knows there is a war going on and not so long since could hear the guns. There are, however, corners where, for the moment, contentment or, at any rate, visitations of mirth are possible, and this little restaurant is one of them. ”

“ We have discovered, however, that Mary's friend is a Parsee, and therefore a worshipper of the sun, and she thinks the last line in the first verse would offend his family's religious scruples. She fears, too, that he might not endorse the epithet 'dingy' as applied by you to his female compatriots. So we have decided not to write in his album. I think however that the first poem (with modifications) would do for the album of a friend of my own, whose name, as it happens, is George. So I have asked the vicar to tone it down for me. He is a Durham man. Do you mind? ”