Various

“ Thus it was that when Hippolyte Larivière, the cornet-player of the Palais de Cinéma, ascended the stairs to his eerie on the top-floor of 10 bis the following evening the appetising odour of frying batter enveloped him as a garment. He sniffed appreciatively.
"Le gros Bonneton can eat crêpes freely without considering the effect on his temperament," he said. "One sometimes regrets the demands of Art." ”

“ If Germany was in doubt as to the amount she might be called upon to pay, she had her remedy, for the Peace Treaty especially provided that she might offer a "lump sum." The list of war-criminals was long, no doubt, but we had limited our own demands to those who were guilty of gratuitous brutality. As for the condition of Central Europe, that was not the fault of the Peace Treaty, it was the fault of the War, and this country had done all it reasonably could to remedy it. ”

“ Coghlan wud like your opinion on these pancakes," said the Sergeant-Major, dexterously fielding one that was sliding from the plate.
"And permit me to beg your acceptance of these crêpes, a dish peculiar to France and eaten as a matter of custom on Mardi Gras," said M'sieur in his most correct English, producing his plate with a flourish worthy of a head-waiter.
"'Tis with all the pleasure in life we'll be tasting thim—" commenced Coghlan. Then his eye fell on the dish and his voice dropped. M'sieur was also showing signs of embarrassment. ”

“ All these accepted lines of distinction are absolutely wrong. It isn't what people work at that divides them, it's the way they travel to their work. Sir Thomas Malory knew that. When Lancelot was going to rescue Guinevere he had his white horse badly punctured by a bushment of archers and had to finish the journey in a woodcutter's cart. And that was a great disgrace to him and made the Queen's ladies laugh. It would be just the same with the typists of a rich employer if his motor-car broke down and he had to arrive in a bus. How do you get to town in the morning yourself? ”

“ It is a pity to have to speak thus moderately of a war-book obviously written with care and treating of an enterprise which must have cost much labour in the achieving and, in the achievement, must have duly contributed to our victory. ”

“ So it is pleasant to find her son so actively associated in the good work of finding permanent musical engagements for demobilised soldiers in the British Symphony Orchestra.
The B.S.O. men are not home-keeping soldiers. Every one of them has served over-seas, and it was a pity that their names and the record of their services were not printed in the programme, for it is a fine and inspiriting list, and a striking disproof of the old tradition that musicians must needs be long-haired, sallow and unathletic. ”

“ When you have for your leading character an actor-manager, who plays the part of Othello, with his wife as Desdemona (how well we know to our cost this conjugal form of nepotism) , and discusses in private life the character of the Moor—whether a man would be likely to indulge his jealousy on grounds so inadequate—speaking with the detached air of one who is absolutely confident of his own wife's fidelity, you don't need much intelligence to foresee what the envy of the gods is preparing for him. ”

“ Miss Brown then asked me what I did for mine.
Edward spluttered merrily. "He rises with the nightingale, comes bounding downstairs some time after tea and wants to know why breakfast isn't ready. Only last week I heard him exhorting Harriet to call him early next day as he was going to a dance."
They all looked reproachfully at me because I didn't keep a pet insomnia too. I spoke up for myself. I admitted I hadn't got one, and what was more was proud of it. All healthy massive thinkers are heavy sleepers, I insisted. ”

“ It's severely disappointed Peggy will be to find thim wasted."
"And Madame will be desolated to despair."
They stared blankly at each other for a few minutes. Then M'sieur took a heroic resolve.
"We must not hurt the feelings of those excellent women," he said firmly. "There is but one course open to us."
Coghlan nodded assent. Solemnly and without enthusiasm they sat on the stairs and consumed the pancakes to the last crumb. Then, leaden-eyed and breathing hard, they took their empty plates and entered their respective flats. ”

“ The essence of a present lies not in its value but its appropriateness. A few crêpes on Mardi Gras would be a novel acknowledgment to the Sergeant-Major of his liberality in the way of cigarettes. At present my case is empty. ”

“ There is an immediate strike of the Bus Union until she is reinstated. If necessary the two other branches of the Amalgamated Society of Passengers are called out. No case of hardship will be too insignificant for the A.S.P. We shall all carry a symbol in the shape of a secret season ticket. When the strike occurs nobody will go to work in the morning. All the stations and starting-places will be picketed; business will be paralysed. ”

“ Men, bent with the weight of secrets which, if known, would send a shiver through the Chancelleries of Europe, could be seen hurrying across the Mall in the pale light and going towards the great building in which England's foreign policy is shaped and formulated. ”

“ We learn that the new Labour daily is substantially backed by a nobleman of pronounced democratic ideals. From his Lordship down to the humblest employee there exists among the staff a beautiful spirit of fellowship unmarked by social distinction. ”

“ On any other matter M'sieur would probably have taken his wife's decision as final, but he had a consuming passion for crêpes, and was moreover a diplomat.
"La vie chère!" he said sadly; "it cuts at the very vitals of hospitality. With what pleasure I could have presented myself to our amiable neighbours, the Sergeant-Major Coghlan and his estimable wife, and said, 'It is the custom in France for all the world to eat crêpes on Mardi Gras. ”

“ In attacking the provisions of the Peace Treaty with Germany as "impracticable," Sir Donald Maclean revealed himself as a diligent student of a recent notorious book. Most of his observations—excepting, perhaps, the statement that he had "no sentimental tenderness for the Germans"—were marked with the brand of Keynes, and his assertion that the utmost Germany could pay was two thousand millions came bodily from that eminent statistician. To the same inspiration was possibly due the unhappy suggestion that our chief Ally was pursuing a policy of revenge. ”

“ Lord Robert had, however, his own quarrel with the Government, who, according to his account, had done nothing to set Central Europe on its legs again, except to send it a certain amount of food—not, one would would have thought, an altogether bad preliminary.
It was a pity that Mr. Balfour had not a stronger indictment to answer, for he was dialectically at his best. After complimenting the Opposition leader on his "charming tones and anodyne temper" he proceeded to take up his challenge—"if I may call it a challenge." ”

“ McMunn seems always keener on popping his puns than on selling his goods. Specimens are given of speeches, press articles, posters and cinema productions, but the fun rages with the most furious intensity round the golf links, where eighteen holes have been compressed into the usual space of one and the winner stands to lose drinks. ”

“ It was while Hippolyte was dabbing his cheeks with a damp towel that M'sieur Bonneton and Sergeant-Major Coghlan, having comfortably satisfied their respective appetites with crêpes and pancakes, proceeded to call upon each other, bearing gifts. ”

“ Nationalization was proposed not to gain increased wages for workers, but in the national interest.... They were prepared to produce to the last ounce of their capacity to give to the nation and to humanity all the coal they required. ”

“ If life doesn't give you what you want, then "cross your legs, put your hands behind your head," go to sleep and live a dream-life of your own devising—that is the theme. The bare essentials of the story are that the beloved Mimsy of Peter's happy childhood becomes the wife of a distinctly unfaithful duke ”

“ Turner's art as novelist, being firmer in touch and generally more matured than anything he has yet written. The plot concerns the adventures, spiritual and other, of Madame Iris Iranovna, pampered cosmopolitan beauty, when fate or her own egotistical whim had dumped her as a temporary dweller in the semi-detached villas of suburbia. The theme, you observe, is one that might excuse the wildest farce, since the effect of Iris upon her unfamiliar surroundings was naturally devastating. Mr. Turner however has chosen the more ambitious path of high comedy. ”

“ Every bright morning I say I will go by bus, but when I reach the Tube station the draught sucks me in through the door, the man grabs me by the collar, throws me into the sink, lifts up the plug and down we go into the drain-pipe together. ”

“ They must sleep heavily to recuperate the enormous amount of vitality expended by them in their waking hours. Sleep, I informed my audience, is Nature's reward to the blameless and energetic liver. If they could not sleep now they were but paying for past years of idleness and excess, and they had only themselves to blame. ”

“ The transformation of a hamlet into a seaside resort has been treated as a sort of psychological romance by Mr. Oliver Onions in Mushroom Town, where the human beings are a background as it were for the bricks and mortar ”

“ It was commanded by General Dunsterville, and briefly its objects were to combat Bolshevism, train Persian levies, prevent the Huns and Turks from threatening India by way of the Caspian Sea, and a few other little things of the same nature. The men of this "party" were picked men, and it is enough to say that their courage was as high as their numbers were few. It is indeed a mystery why any of them escaped with their lives, for, as experience proved, it was one thing to train Persian levies and another to get them to fight when they were wanted to. ”

“ General von Falkenhayn, though he has a prejudice for the German soldier, can bring himself to testify to the valour of his British and French opponent. A readable and conscientious account of a difficult stewardship.
I wish I could feel as enthusiastic about The Booming of Bunkie (Jenkins) as Mr. Peter McMunn, who, falling off a motor-cycle, landed in that quiet Scots village and proceeded to turn it, by a series of stunts, into a well-known watering-place. ”

“ The collecting of moleskins has been forbidden by the Belgian Government except in gardens. Lure the beast into the strawberry bed by imitating the bark of the wild slug and the rest is mere spade-work. ”

“ Punch gives the scheme his blessing without reserve, but with a word of advice. To win for the B.S.O. the success it deserves will need good judgment as well as energy and efficiency. The art of programme-framing has to be studied with especial care in view of the powerful but, we believe, perfectly friendly competition of other established organizations. Last week's programme had its beaux moments, but it had also at least two mauvais quarts d'heure. ”

“ Brace we should view the advent of a Labour Government without any of Mr. Churchill's misgivings. The Member for Abertillery argued the case for the nationalisation of mines so gently and genially that before he sat down I am sure that a good half of his hearers began to think that, after all, there was "something in it." Visions of a carboniferous millennium, when there would be no more strikes and hardly any accidents, and altruistic colliers would hew their hardest to get cheap and abundant coal for the community, floated before the mind's eye as Mr. ”

“ But I told her the story of some friends of mine who had been in a similar position and had succeeded in reorganising their establishment by an ingenious strategy.
"The wife went away to stay with friends in the country," I said, "and the husband went to the registry-office, representing himself to be a bachelor, a rather easy-going bachelor. It seems that such establishments are popular with the few domestic servants still at large. After a short time he let it be known that he was really married, but separated from his wife ”

“ One has been, of course, before to seaside places that were a bit too bracing, and I am afraid that the air of Bunkie leaves me cold.
I really think that The World of Wonderful Reality (Hodder and Stoughton) may come to be something of a test for your true follower of Mr. E. Temple Thurston. You recall the ingredients that went towards the first, or Beautiful Nonsense, book? Sentiment in the slums, Venice with a very big V and poverty passim might be regarded as its composition. Well, here you have John and Jill home again ”

“ Moreover, he made it clear that coal was only a beginning and that the Labour Party's ultimate objective was nationalisation [pg 134] all round, and wound up by reminding the House that "we are many and ye are few."
The Prime Minister is not the man either to miss a chance or refuse a challenge. ”

“ Aunt Angela exclaimed in horror.
Miss Brown shook her grey head. "Oh, no, not by myself. Our sympathetic young friend had a touch of insomnia himself for once and was good enough to keep me company." She smiled sweetly in my direction. "He was most entertaining. I've been chuckling ever since."
Patlander.
Urchin (who has been "moved on" by emaciated policeman) . "Ain't yer got a cook on your beat?"
Our Spartan Editors.
"Wanted: The Cat. By Horatio Bottomley."—John Bull.
[pg 126]
MARDI GRAS. (With the British Army in France.) ”