Various

“ Charles is shy and very modest, and no bigger than so many French youths—he is only twenty-two—with dark-brown hair and blue eyes with very black centres, and a moustache that never succeeds in looking more than three weeks old. Being, however, brave, he does not let his maimed condition unduly trouble him, but runs his errands (all that he can now do) and whistles as he runs, and is glad to be alive at all, instead of dead, as so many of his comrades are and as his Colonel is, as I shall tell. ”

“ If you have lived all your life all alone in the middle of a howling desert with Grandfather it's a very frightening thing when a complete Frontier Force marches forty miles for the sole purpose of capturing you.
But the day's excitement was not over yet. Towards evening I took my troop off at a gallop in person and captured a camel. It was a very young camel, hardly bigger than a sheep on stilts, and it cried like a child at the sight of me. ”

“ More significant perhaps to an outside spectator is the undeniable fact that the Wild Western portions of Cinemaland are to-day in a state of turbulence bordering upon anarchy. The Cowboys, who are its chief denizens, would seem, so far as my experience goes, to spend their entire time in exploits of murderous violence; though here (as elsewhere among this remarkable people) the influence of sentiment is often unexpectedly potent. It can hardly be doubted that a populace so emotional and ill-balanced as that of Cinemaland will have little power to withstand the strain of disaster. ”

“ Evening dress is worn whenever possible, and the costumes of the ladies are invariably the last word in ultra-fashionable extravagance. Food is as yet obviously plentiful; what is not consumed being frequently flung about, especially by the humorous elements of the population, and wasted with reckless prodigality.
In spite however of this ostentation signs are not wanting that the true condition of the country is increasingly precarious. Crime of all sorts is rampant. Judging even by what I myself witnessed within a short period, the detectives of Cinemaland must all be working overtime. ”

“ If the Germans were in occupation of the Black Country, if Oxford were being daily shelled, as Rheims is, and if with a favouring breeze London could hear the dull rumble of the bombardment, as Paris can, I wonder if Members would still be encumbering the Order-paper with the sort of trivialities that now find place there.
An exception may be made in favour of Mr. Joe King. He has discovered a little late in the day that a war is going on in Europe, and that it affects a little country called Belgium, whose neutrality was guaranteed by the Powers. ”

“ We see a Yank store in full swing, learn much of the way it is worked, and the folk who run it are well drawn. To be frank one could scarce think that so chic a tale could be made out of the prose of New York. But to the Bills—if I may so call them—all the world is a stage, and they see through the heart of the New Eve with a gaze that is quite weird. In fine this is a tale in which the Bills, while they take new ground, write with all their old flair and charm. ”

“ A Lady Marshall, the wife of a Sir Everard Marshall, a comic scientist in perpetual flight from his overwhelming spouse, is one of the sort that finds a new religion every few months and is now in the first fast furious throes of her latest, which is some form of psychomania, whereof the high priest is one Beverley, a plausible ringletted charlatan of alcoholic tendencies (Sludge the Medium, without his cringe and snarl) , who ekes out his spasmodic visitations of genuine psychic illumination with the most shameless spoof. This is the cork. ”

“ These two shepherds, however, did seem to support his theory of the existence of Arabs, but as to their hostility there was still room for doubt. They were both extraordinarily old and unbelievably dirty. Also they were, as was very natural, extremely frightened. Seeing that they knew themselves to be the only living people for quite a number of miles round, it must have appeared to them that the entire —— Frontier Force had come out solely for the purpose of capturing them, and that, as it had ridden some forty miles to do it, it would not be in a good temper. ”

“ This, I hope, was not so much due to my frightful appearance in my red moustaches as to the fact that it had probably never seen a man at all (not being eight years old) , let alone an army.
The curious aversion which it conceived for my moustache threatened to hold up the entire Frontier Force for the rest of the day, for it would neither be led nor driven. Fortunately, however, we had a very black Soudanese camel-driver with us as guide, and he came and spat at it, which soothed it considerably, and it followed him like a lamb. ”

“ Mr. Holman Clark as the sceptical Sir Everard, completely spoofed by Beverley in the end, with an elaborate make-up ruthlessly reminding us of our simian ancestry, potters cleverly about the stage with that admirable and amiable craft which he has at such easy command. Miss Marie Illington as Lady Marshall, the seeker after light, kept the burlesquerie of her part skilfully within bounds—indeed this matter of key was extraordinarily well handled by the three players entrusted with what I have ventured to call the cork motif. ”

“ Those who knew the writer only as the poet of 1914 will perhaps wonder to find him the whimsical and smiling young adventurer who moves with such boyish enjoyment through these pages. There is holiday humour in them, even in the occasional statistics—holiday tasks, these latter; and everywhere the freshness of an unclouded vision. "Only just in time," one thinks, sharing the happiness that his Letters reflect, and grateful for it as for a beautiful thing snatched so narrowly from fate. ”

“ We rode seventeen miles that day and camped at some wells. As we rolled ourselves in our blankets round the camp-fires to rest for the glorious contest of the morrow our hearts should have been filled with dreams of undying fame. ”

“ Here she gives us a short tale in which the three chief rôles are filled by a man who earns lots of dibs by his pen, his wife, and their, or his, friend—a peer's wife, who takes him up for her own ends. She tries in her hard bright way to shape his course as she views it, which means a place in the sun for her. The wife, who has brains as well as a warm heart, will not be robbed of her man like this, puts up a good fight, and in the end has the best of the bout with the pale witch with dark eyes who had waved her wand o'er the knight of the pen. ”

“ Of course, if there were any Arabs near us, they would be so enraged at finding themselves at a spot two hundred miles from anything except sand that they would be violently hostile to anyone, especially to the people who had engaged the only three palm-trees in the neighbourhood. ”

“ Our servants do their best to support the official illusion by neglecting to clean our boots and regarding with surprise and some little sadness any tendency on our part to wash.
But you must not imagine that life here is all honey. Even here we do a bit for our eight-and-sixpence. Every evening there comes down from the front line a report that our men there want more food. ”

“ As to the promise, I know it is being rigidly kept. All the willing single men are gone or going, and the unwilling are being compelled to join as quickly as is possible. What more can be done?"
"Something ought to be done."
"That is very true," said Socrates; "something ought always to be getting itself done, and the something at this moment is that the Barbarians ought to be beaten. But tell me, with regard to the married men, are they not concerned in the safety and welfare of the State?"
"That, indeed, they are," said Philogamus ”

“ A despatch—a pli, as they call it—would be given him either back of the lines to deliver in the trenches, or in the trenches to deliver back of the lines, and in order to get there, if fighting was in progress, it was necessary for him to crawl for perhaps one or two kilometres on his stomach. On a certain day of intense activity, Charles in his trench was handed one of these critical missives for the commanding officer, who was a kilometre or so behind, and this he placed in his satchel and then began the hazardous journey.
No one ever knows when the supreme moment of his life is coming ”

“ Another significant symptom is that respect for law and authority as such appears to be almost non-existent. The police force of Cinemaland is a body of men who are most of them of conspicuously full habit. ”

“ In the second place it seemed to promise a settlement of the long-standing dispute between me and the General. The General has a preposterous theory about the existence and hostility of a vast number of mythical Arabs in our immediate neighbourhood. Now this is obviously absurd. With the exception of three palm-trees, which belong to us, there is nothing but sand for about two hundred miles in all directions, and even an Arab cannot subsist entirely on sand. ”

“ Sometimes, of course, we have accidents. [pg 214] Last night, for instance, two men were proceeding (by the way the great point about being a soldier is that you never walk, run or otherwise ambulate—you proceed, or proceed at the double, which of course is much nicer for you) —yes, were proceeding, one at each end of an entanglement, along the top of a slope, when the leader missed his footing altogether and rolled down to the morass below. The second, after a brief struggle, followed with the entanglement. ”

“ Their special line of ready-made wire entanglements would entangle a hippopotamus; and when it comes to carrying one a mile-and-a-half you find it has no wheels, no handles, and simply won't fold up into the pocket. The usual procedure is for a man or two to roll on one of these barbed-wire death-traps until they are well stuck on them and then crawl to the point of delivery. ”

“ Miss Darragh was, as required, the vindictive widow to the life (this kind of life, you understand) , and Miss Hilda Bayley played very charmingly the little wilful fiancée who—but no, I must keep my promise.
With much less evidence than the applause and generally keyed-up attitude of the Savoy audience afforded me, I could risk a psychic communication in the authentic manner of a Beverley séance. "All is dark.... It is getting light.... I see a man.... He leans eagerly to a telephone.... ”

“ According to the author of In a College Garden "it is not advisable to encourage any but educated ladies to become gardeners." It is always pleasant to note the extent to which a simple thing like a potato will recognise and respond to gentility in those who associate with it. ”

“ Lowndes' picture of the little French town in which a group of Germans are left during what appears to them the triumphal march to Paris. Here Herr Doktor Max Keller meets and falls in love with a French girl who is looking after certain wounded of both nations. The peaceful and picturesque air of the little place during this quiet occupation is well contrasted with the horrors that befall it when the draggled and drink-sodden soldiery come surging back in their retreat from the Marne. ”

“ More is the pity that Mr. Pryce has weighed down David's childish back with too heavy a load of detail. My advice to you is to skip some of the earlier pages, and so husband your strength for the better enjoyment of the remainder.
The Duel (Allen and Unwin) is a study in the Gorky tradition, by Alexander Kuprin, of life in an obscure Russian regiment and an out-of-the-way provincial town before the great awakening that followed Mukden and Port Arthur purged away much dross and prepared the way for these latter days of sacrifice and heroism. ”

“ She more than fulfils the promise of her last performance in this theatre, but she must (may I tell her?) arrest the development of "the Fatal Cæsura," that exasperating histrionic device whereby every salient phrase is broken up for no conceivable reason into two halves. In the secondary stages there is but slender hope of a cure; in the tertiary there is none. ”

“ One of the most difficult feats of juggling is, I understand, the deft tossing up and catching of a heavy weight (say a dumb-bell) , a very light weight, such as a champagne cork, together with any old thing of irregular shape, a bedroom candlestick, for instance. Mr. Walter Hackett's The Barton Mystery is a most ingenious turn of this sort. ”

“ In his view the Army is too big already, and is taking too great a toll from our industrial and commercial population. The great men who won the Napoleonic War—after twenty-three years—had not a big army ”

“ Eventually, just as the Germans are leaving, Keller is fatally wounded, and dies holding the hand of the enemy who has become so dear to him. One can hardly call the tale anything but sentimental, but it is sentiment of a fragrant and wholesome kind. In the years to come such stories will no doubt multiply indefinitely, but there will be few more gracefully and gently told.
Corporal (alluding to knock-kneed man) . "It's no good; 'e never looks smart. ”

“ The carrying party is supplied by a sister battalion, and makes the night thoroughly well acquainted with its views about a unit that can't supply blanks to carry their blanked rations for their blanked selves. ”

“ The entire avalanche was precipitated on to the leaders, and remained there struggling like the population of a fly-paper until a squad arrived with wire-cutters. When the R.E. heard of it they wanted the episode published in Corps Orders as a testimonial. But what the men wanted done about the R.E. I dare not tell you.
THE TRUTH ABOUT CINEMALAND.
A distinguished neutral observer, who has just returned from a visit to Cinemaland, has furnished our representative with the following interesting account of his experiences and conclusions. ”