Various

“ I see little and am impressed by nothing; all things and men are assumed to be good, and none [pg 251] of them is given the opportunity of proving itself to be the contrary. As for the A.M.L.O. at any other port but this one, I remark nothing about him except his princely generosity in letting me have an embarcation card. He is just one more good fellow in the long series of good fellows who have authorised my move. I am borne out to sea in a dream—a dream of England and all that England means to us, be that a wife or a reasonable breakfast at a reasonable hour. ”

“ The Adjutant was for having Oswald moved on; we should be missing things presently, he warned—saddle-blankets, rifles, horses, perhaps the portcullis. However, the O.C. would have none of it; he maintained that this constant menace at our gates kept the sentries on the qui vive and accustomed them to practically Active Service conditions.
So all the summer the wigwam remained on the turf-patch and the sentries on the qui vive.
How Oswald existed is a mystery—probably on manna, for he toiled not neither span, and if he stole for a living it was not from us. ”

“ It is altogether magnificent in its sheer sangfroid. Why is it that such a one is labelled merely A.M.L.O., when he should obviously be the M.L.O.? He has his subordinate, happily insignificant and obsequiously proud to serve. Let the subordinate be the a.m.l.o., and let It, Itself, be openly acknowledged to be It, Itself.
By the way, where is his M.L.O.? Has anybody ever seen him? I haven't. Does he exist?... Has he been got rid of?
There is a convenient crevice between the quay and the boat with a convenient number of feet of water at the bottom of it. ”

“ For all I know it may require a technical knowledge so profound that any man who can master it is already half-way on the road to greatness. On the other hand, it may require no technical knowledge at all, and, the whole of a Military Landing Officer's duties being limited to watching other people working, the Assistant Military Landing Officer's task may consist of nothing more complicated than watching the Military Landing Officer watching the military land. ”

“ We determined that they must have been washed out to sea and pictured them astride the wigwam in a beam-roll off Kinsale, keeping a watchful eye for U-boats.
We had seven days of unrelieved downpour. On the morning of the eighth, Freddy and wife returned from leave, and, opening the front door of the villa—which they discovered they had forgotten to lock in the delirium of their departure—stepped within. At the same moment, Oswald, the hairy dog and the woolly donkey heard the call of the great spaces, and, opening the back door of the villa, stepped without and departed for haunts unknown. ”

“ I think I shall ask Cuthbert's opinion, as an artist, of a brother artist who himself does perfectly unrecognisable sketches of farm-yards"—he waved a golden-syrup spoon towards the Colonel and the manure-heap—"and yet demands a finnicking and altogether contemptible realism in the matter of trench maps. Pass the honey, please."
"It seems to me," said the Major reflectively as he rose from table, "that 'Artist, 33, literary, travelled, mentally isolated' (one) is going to be buried beneath the weight of the world's grievances—or the grievances of this battalion, at any rate." ”

“ To return to the night of which I want particularly to speak, no sooner had the clock made his monosyllabic utterance than "I am probably unique," the Vimy Ridge inkstand said.
"How?" the cigarette-lighter sharply [pg 254] inquired, uniqueness being one of his own chief claims to distinction.
"Strange," said the inkstand, "the blacksmith who made me was not blown to pieces. The usual thing is for the shell to be a live one, and no sooner does the blacksmith handle it than he and the soldiers who brought it and several onlookers go to glory. ”

“ Oswald was a tall bony grizzled child of the Open.
Years ago he would have been dismissed briefly as a tramp, but we know better now; we have read our Georgian poets and we know that such folk do not perambulate the country stealing fowls and firing ricks from any dislike of settled labour, but because they have heard the call of far horizons, belles étoiles and great spaces. ”

“ A smile, half cynical, plays across his proud face. He knows he has but to flick the ash from his cigarette and the Army will spring to attention and the Navy will get feverishly to work. He has but to express consent by the inclination of his head and sirens will blow, turbine engines will operate as they would never operate for anybody else, thousands of tons of shipping will rearrange itself, and even the sea will become less obstreperous and more circumspect in its demeanour, adjusting, if need be, its tides to suit his wishes. ”

“ No sound of war is to be heard in it, and when I think how completely some of our novelists have failed when trying to deal with contemporary events I cannot be too thankful that this novel is laid in a period before the Germans became an uncivilised nation. Olive, the heroine, a delightful girl, is the supposititious child of Sir James Wenborough, whose wife, in his absence and without his knowledge, secured her as a substitute for their own child, who died at its birth. ”

“ And could you oblige him with a little pepper?"
"Certainly not," said my wife. "The man's a nuisance. He is not even respectable—looks like a gipsy or a disreputable artist. I'll speak to him myself." And she flounced out of the room.
I felt almost sorry for the man; but really the thing was overdone when, not content with overcrowding our village, these London people took to living in dug-outs on the common.
Matilda rushed back into the room with a metal jug in her hand. ”

“ When the lean brown hero with the hawk lip extends an arm of steel from the six-cylinder Rolls-Royce in which he is lounging and snatches the beautiful mannequin from between the very jaws of an omnibus, we realise that we are in the presence of Romance in its purest form. ”

“ I take it my condition is typical when I am "proceeding" (one will never come and go again in our time; one will always proceed) —when I am proceeding to the U.K. The whole thing is too good to believe, and I don't believe it till I have some written and omnipotent instructions, in my pocket and am actually moving towards the sea. The youngest and keenest schoolboy returning home for his holidays is a calm, collected, impassionate and even dismal man of the world compared to me. ”

“ Neither would hurt a fly, but since they had grandsons fighting for England, honour and the world, it chanced that they were the incongruous possessors of quite a number of war relics, which included an inkstand made of a steel shell-top, copper shell-binding and cartridge-cases; a Turkish dud from Gallipoli to serve as a door-stop; a pencil-case made of an Austrian cartridge from the Carso; a cigarette-lighter made of English cartridge-cases; and several shell-cases transformed into vases for flowers. ”

“ In spite of these conveniences our fortress is past its prime and a modern burglar would treat it as a joke. It is so weak in its joints that when the wind blows it shakes like a jelly, and we have to shave with safety-razors.
In a small villa opposite lives Freddy, our married subaltern, and Mrs. Freddy.
On a patch of turf up a neighbouring lane Oswald and Co. took up their residence this summer. ”

“ OSWALD AND CO.
We live in a fortress on the crest of a hill overlooking a little Irish town, a centre of the pig and potheen industries. The fortress was, according to tradition, built by BRIAN BORU, renovated by Sir WALTER RALEIGH (the tobacconist, not the professor) and brought up to date by OLIVER CROMWELL. It has dungeons (for keeping the butter cool) , loop-holes (through which to pour hot porridge on invaders) , an oubliette (for bores) and a portcullis. ”

“ If this is so, the work may be so simple that, once a man has satisfied the very rigid social test to be passed by all aspirants to so distinguished a position, he must simply be a silly ass if he doesn't automatically become a great man, after a walk or two up and down the quay. ”

“ There is a smash, and when the heroine comes to she is being called Lady Alice in an ancestral castle. Everything has been obliterated from her memory, including her own identity and that of the hero, and the author can now make a fresh start. If you wish to know how it all ends you must get The Woman Who Was Not (WARD, LOCK) , but there is no compelling reason why you should.
"OH, YOU AWFUL BOY—YOU'VE LEFT THE TACKS IN THE ROAD, AND NOW THE TANK'LL GET A PUNCTURE." Air-Raid Fashions at Manchester.
"Monday commences the final week of Sir Thomas Beecham's
Season of Nighty Promenade Concerts." ”

“ It is a tangle of complications, which, since they have nothing solid to rest upon, begin by baffling, and end by boring, the reader who strives to keep pace with them. A young officer, wishful to dine at a smart hotel and having no appropriate clothes, is struck with the idea of pretending to be a foreign royalty, and thus incapable of sartorial indiscretion. ”

“ Lodger (who has numbered his lumps of sugar with lead pencil) . "OH, MRS. JARVIS, I AM UNABLE TO FIND NUMBERS 3, 7 AND 18." THE DOOR.
Once upon a time there was a sitting-room, in which, when everyone had gone to bed, the furniture, after its habit, used to talk. All furniture talks, although the only pieces with voices that we human beings can hear are clocks and wicker-chairs. Everyone has heard a little of the conversation of wicker-chairs, which usually turn upon the last person to be seated in them; but other furniture is more self-centered. ”

“ GEORGE MOORE, the novelist, declares that ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON "was without merit for tale-telling." But how does Mr. GEORGE MOORE know?
"Is Pheasant Shooting Dangerous?" asks a weekly paper headline. We understand that many pheasants are of the opinion that it has its risks.
Only a little care is needed in the cooking of the marrow, says Mrs. MUDIE COOKE. But in eating it great caution should be taken not to swallow the marrow whole. ”

“ A spin in the Park and a cosy dinner in a Soho restaurant are quite sufficient to convince hero and heroine that they are each other's own. Some novelists would let it go at that, but not Mr. ARTHUR APPLIN, who has only got to chapter II, and wishes to give us value for our money. What's to come is, as SHAKSPEARE says, still unsure, but apparently the heroine, who has gone to break the happy news to a poor but respectable aunt in Devonshire, is met at the country station by a chauffeur, who calls her "Lady Alice" and waves her towards a large Limousine. ”

“ Men are not Madame ALBANESI'S strongest points, but in Roderick Guye and Michael Wenborough we have well-contrasted characters, and the worst that can be said of them is that they belong to rather stock types. ”

“ We are pleased to say that the Wimbledon gentleman who last week was inadvertently given a pound of sugar in mistake for tea is going on as well as can be expected, though he is still only allowed to see near relations.
The Grouser. "JUST OUR ROTTEN LUCK TO ARRIVE 'ERE ON EARLY-CLOSING DAY." COMMERCIAL CANDOUR.
"ANTIQUES.—All Lovers of the Genuine Antiques should not fail to see one of the best-selected Stocks of Genuine Antique Furniture, &c., including Stuart, Charles II., Tudor, Jacobean, Queen Anne, Chippendale, Sheraton, Hepplewhite, Adams, and Georgian periods. ”

“ A Berlin coal merchant has been suspended from business for being rude to customers. It is obvious that the Prussian aristocracy will not abandon its prerogatives without a struggle.
The lack of food control in Ireland daily grows more scandalous. A Belfast constable has arrested a woman who was chewing four five-pound notes, and had already swallowed one.
An alien who was fined at Feltham police court embraced his solicitor and kissed him on the cheek. ”

“ In particular he touches in his minor folk with extraordinarily deft defining lines. Perhaps in general there is a little hesitancy in craftsmanship, a slight quavering between the fashionable modern realism and an older romanticism. ”

“ It is in every way right that they should be commemorated for future generations. WILLIE REDMOND'S book consists of a series of sketches of the War contributed by him to The Daily Chronicle. They are written with great charm and, even in the gloomiest surroundings, reflect the sunny nature of the man. ”

“ Told that enemy aircraft were on their way to London a dear old lady immediately rushed into her house and bolted the door.
Owing to a shortage of red paint, several London 'buses are being painted brown. Pedestrians who have only been knocked down by red-painted 'buses will of course now be able to start all over again. ”

“ To record the effect of meals on the physical condition of children, Leyton Council is erecting weighing machines in the feeding centres. Several altruistic youngsters, we are informed, have gallantly volunteered to demonstrate the effects of over-eating without regard to the consequences. ”

“ Mechanic. "YES, LADY, THEY CAN DRINK WATER, BUT (confidentially) IT MAKES 'EM SO GIDDY."
"Boy, to heat at hearth and to strike occasionally."—Sheffield Daily Telegraph.
A case for the N.S.P.C.C.
Appended to a quotation from The Globe on German intrigues with the Vatican:—
" ”

“ They make a picturesque group, which a Press writer will try to describe to-morrow morning."—Portland Daily Press (U.S.A.) .
We trust that he did not dwell unduly upon the scantiness of their attire.
[pg 248]
MODEL DIALOGUES FOR AIR-RAIDS.
[A few specimen conversations are here suggested as suitable for the conditions which we have lately experienced. The idea is to discourage the Hun by ignoring those conditions or explaining them away. For similar conversations in actual life blank verse would not of course be obligatory.] I.
A. Beautiful weather for the time of year! ”