Various

“ Alfred Noyes said that "our art and literature were increasingly Bolshevik, and if they looked at the columns of any newspaper they would see the unusual spectacle of the political editor desperately fighting that which the art and literary portions of the paper upheld." ”

“ But as a symbol only it must remain, for the voices of the outer world that call us up as they search for other friends or obstruct us when we in turn are, as it were, groping after ours, have already frayed the temper of our staff. It was inevitable that under such constant irritation these ex-Service men of ours would one day burst into strong military idiom, so we have disconnected our telephone in order to avoid the calamity of losing our lady-typist. ”

“ The idea of installing a telephone in this office is not in itself a novel one, as you may recollect that the suggestion has cropped up in the correspondence that has passed between us...."
And now, as I have said, the telephone is installed. The instrument is fashioned in a severe style (receiver and mouth-piece mounted on an ebonite column of the Roman Doric Order) , and it stands for all to see as a symbol that in the seclusion of our offices we are in touch with the world at large. ”

“ One of our juniors, Major Bays Waller, O.B.E., who came to us from a Control Office and who advises us on our filing, says that it is like coming from a home to a home. You must come round and have a chat with him; you would have so much in common.
"Trusting that you will expedite the little matter of our telephone installation, and assuring you that the spirit of our staff continues to be excellent, etc...." ”

“ Maureen is not a story that I should recommend save for readers with abundant leisure; but those whose pluck and endurance carry them to the kill will certainly have their reward.
In Memories of a Marine (Murray) Major-General Sir George Aston records for us, cosily and anecdotally, a life spent in service, not only of the active kind—in Egypt and South Africa—but also as a Staff College Professor, and, more intriguingly, as an expert in Secret Intelligence in the cloisters of Whitehall or up and down the Mediterranean. ”

“ Well, these people are ready to succumb to all sorts of poisonous doctrines, if they're served up in what I presume to be the fashionable mode of the moment; and I expect your precious Applecart is one of the Bolsh agents who are laying the trap. You'll have to stop booming him, you know. He's not doing the paper any good.
L.E. My dear Sir, literature takes no account of the fads and fancies of party politics. And I gather from you that party politics have no use for literature except from a propagandist view. Let us be content to go our own ways in peace. ”

“ Better a dish of Croat Serbs where love is than a bifteck Petrograd—Never mind, go and get the thing."
When he returned with it I fell to, but my thoughts remained with the waiter. What a man! With his dispassionate judgment, his calm sane outlook on men and affairs, shaken a little perhaps in 1914, but since then undisturbed, was he not cut out above all others to settle the vexed frontier lines of Europe? ”

“ My special article this morning—three thickly-leaded columns—actually revealed the existence of a most insidious plot to undermine the restraining influence of the House of Lords by the spread of Bolshevik propaganda masquerading as literature. You see, there's a certain section of the Lords, mainly new creations who've only recently been released from various employments, who now for the first time in their lives have leisure for reading; then there's the spread of education among the sporting Peers. ”

“ P.E. No time to read the literary columns, and modern poetry's as good as Chinese to me. Who's Applecart?
L.E. My dear Sir, is it possible that you are unfamiliar with the author of I Will Destroy? He's the hope of the future as far as English poetry is concerned.
P.E. (cheerfully) . Never heard of him. What's he done?
L.E. (impressively) . He has overthrown all the rules, not only of art, but of morality. He has created a new Way of Life. ”

“ In these days when robbery with violence is an everyday occurence, few people will trust themselves alone in railway carriages. Imagine, therefore, my surprise, not unmingled with pleasure, on seeing a somewhat pompous-looking individual, with the circumference and watch-chain of the successful merchant, sitting alone in a first-class carriage on the suburban up-line from Wallingford. I always travel from Wallingford, as it is the one station on the line at which you are not required to show a ticket on entry. ”

“ We English may only win one battle in a war, but that battle is the last.
Possibly, my dear Charles, you have a soft spot in your heart for this Cox and Co., never failing in courtesy and attention and ever heaped with abuse? So, to be frank, have I. Let us turn round and blackguard the other fellow. The sequel is incredible.
I next handed my Box and Co. pass-book to Cox and Co., giving them a brief and touching résumé of my sad story of wrong and oppression, and bidding them do their damnedest in their turn. ”

“ When Ireland is governed like Cuba
And grows her own smoke.
DEAD SEA FRUIT.
To-day the telephone has been installed. The members of our staff are going about their duties in a dazed fashion, and I, to whose single-handed tenacity the achievement is due, find myself unable in these first full moments of triumph to concentrate on my every-day affairs. ”

“ Cecilia and John were laughing loudly and coarsely and Christopher was chanting "Uncle's got the wind up" in a piercing treble. Not at all a nice phrase for a small boy to have on his tongue.
It was all very galling for one who has fought and, I may say, bled for his country. I almost decided to go back and fight if necessary. Then I heard a stage-whisper from Christopher:
"Let's creep upstairs after him and tickle him to death. Shall we, Dad?"
Sheer hooliganism. It was impossible to fight with honour against such opponents. ”

“ Colonel W.T. Reay's book will stand as a record of invaluable service performed by a devoted body of men, service for which the whole nation—and London in particular—has every reason to be grateful. If I understand Colonel Reay rightly he doesn't wish bouquets to be thrown at the Specials, but he would not, I think, discourage me from saying that they performed dangerous and ticklish work with unfailing resource and tact. All of us know that they desire no other reward for their services than the satisfaction of having done their duty ”

“ Not that Judy is a minx. She did her level best to make two people who obviously didn't love one another fulfil their engagement, instead of, like a sensible woman, accepting the inevitable, which was, as it happens, so congenial to her. What puzzled me was Peter's indignation with poor Milly when he found that she really didn't love him (but, on the contrary, a bounder called Crauford) , yet couldn't bear to cause him unhappiness, and was sacrificing herself for him. ”

“ For Aletta, who was married at twenty-eight and died at sixty-two, to have had at that time a grandson on the staff of the Viceroy of India, he must have received his appointment before the age of fifteen—which even in these experimental days sounds a little premature.
Do not allow yourself to be misled by the fact that the portrait on the paper cover of Maureen (Jenkins) does, I admit, remarkably suggest a lady whose mission in life is the advertisement of complexion soap. You probably know already that the methods of Mr. Patrick Macgill are made of sterner stuff. ”

“ I devoted my young life to the search for some person, firm or corporation, expert in pass-books, haughty of demeanour, capable of getting blood out of a stone and not likely to give even the devil his due ”

“ Only an elect bricklayer, for example, may lay bricks—though anybody can heave them—and the mere fact that a man has shouldered a rifle in the service of his country in no way entitles him to carry a hod.
Thursday, February 19th.—The impending advent of a Home Rule Bill is greatly perturbing the little remnant of Irish Nationalist Members, threatened with the extinction of their pet grievance. ”

“ Although this letter was signed "Henry Thomas, James & Sons," the District Contract Agent's vague reply on the file before me commences: "Sir (or Madam) ;" and I feel now, as I did then, that it is not in the best of taste for him to brag as he does about his telephone and his "Private Branch Exchange" on the very paper on which he writes to baffled applicants for installation.
From this time the correspondence is marked by an increasing bitterness on my side and a level colourlessness on his. ”

“ We were on a bus whose "route" terminated some five miles from home, which we proposed to reach by a tram, and, the hour being late, it was our chances of catching a car that were worrying Mary.
"Never get flurried," I went on. "If people would only go ahead calmly and steadily.... What causes half our traffic congestion? Flurry. What makes it so difficult to move quickly in the streets? Flurry. What is it clogs the wheels of progress everywhere?" ”

“ The Chief Secretary did his best to soothe them, but his remark that "no man in Ireland need be in prison if he will obey the law" poured oil on the flames.
Despite the reduction of the Question-ration from eight to four per Member, the House collectively grows "curiouser and curiouser." ”

“ It was in that dark hour, I suppose, that the Vienna steak set its face towards the steppes. But this was in 1914, and a good deal had happened since then. It appeared to me that the restaurant was not exactly au courant with international complications and the gastronomic consequences of the Peace. I felt entitled to further illumination.
"I don't feel at all certain," I told the man, "that I ought to eat a Petrograd steak. Is it a white steak?"
"Ah, no, not vite, not vite at all," he assured me. "Eet is underdone—not much, but a little underdone. Ver good mince-up." ”

“ It is gratifying to learn that the workman who last week fell from some scaffolding in Oxford Street, but managed to grasp a rope and hang on to it till rescued fifteen minutes later, has now been elected an honorary member of the Underground Travellers' Association. ”

“ The idea of a company of women that bans the society of men is at least as old as the Attic stage. But it is to his credit that though the theme invited suggestiveness he at least avoided the licence of The Lysistrata. ”

“ Sexton's rather maladroit attempt to shift the blame on to the employers only deepened the impression that trade-unionism is developing into a system of caste, in which certain occupations are reserved for certain people. ”

“ A reader living in Hertfordshire writes to say that spring-like weather is prevailing and that a pair of bricklayers who started building about three weeks ago can now be seen daily sitting on three bricks which they laid last week.
With such energy are the inhabitants of Leeds carrying out their campaign against rats that it is considered unsafe for any rodent under three years old to venture out alone after dark. ”

“ And the public knows its papers. The last thing it wants from us is consistency, which is always boring. Besides (still more confidentially) , the public doesn't take us quite so seriously as we like to pretend. ”

“ But the torpedo could not be launched unless the buoy were first cleared away, and the mine, if fired, would blow up the boom. One would have welcomed more of this sort of thing, for the truth is that even restfulness may be overdone and discretion become almost too admirable. Occasionally too the writer enlarges a little on—well, he enlarges a little, as anyone would with half his provocation. Still, for all comrades of his service, at any rate, every word he has written will be of interest ”

“ Devlin, the Government had as much right as the Germans in Belgium. The House, however, seemed to agree with the Irish Attorney-General that in the present state of Ireland it would not be wise to dispense with the regulations, and gave the Bill a second reading by 219 votes to 61.
Then the House turned to the discussion of the levy on capital. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was still inexorably opposed to a general levy, but would like a toll on war-wealth alone, and proposed to set up a Committee to consider whether it was practicable. Mr. ”

“ I have always remained a civilian, and as such have retained my other banker. A man of unlimited possessions, I may state accurately that I have to-day no fewer than two banks of my own. Let us call this other one Box and Co. ”

“ Scene.—A Club-room near Fleet Street. The Political Editor and the Literary Editor of "The Daily Crisis" are discovered seated in adjoining armchairs.
Political Editor. Excuse me, but haven't I seen you occasionally in The Crisis office?
Literary Editor. Possibly. I look after its literary pages, you know.
P.E. Really? I run the political columns. Did you read my showing-up this morning of the Bolshevik peril in the House of Lords?
L.E. I'm afraid I never read the political articles. Did you notice my two-column boom of young Applecart's latest book of poems? ”

“ A contemporary states that the old theory, that when your ears burn it means that people are talking about you, is accurate. Upon hearing this a dear old lady at once commenced to crochet a set of asbestos ear-guards for Mr. ”