Various

“ Some people have the bungalow mania and build them bijoux maisonettes out of biscuit tins, sacking and what-not, but the majority go to ground. I am one of the majority; I go to ground like a badger, for experience has taught me that a dug-out—cramped, damp, dark though it maybe—cannot be stolen from you while you sleep ”

“ The batman scratched his head, then slid softly away into the night. By the time the ponies were tilting the last drops out of their nosebags the faithful servant had scratched together a few sheets of corrugated, and piled them into a rough shelter. The Major wriggled beneath it and was presently putting up a barrage of snores terrible to hear. At midnight a battalion of the Loamshire Light Infantry trudged into the village. ”

“ One day Celia came to me in great excitement.
"Have you seen this in the paper about promotion?" she said eagerly.
"No; what is it?" I asked. "Are they making more generals?"
"I don't know about generals; it's Second Lieutenants being Lieutenants."
"You're joking on a very grave subject," I said seriously. "You can't expect to win the War if you go on like that."
"Well, you read it," she said, handing me the paper. "It's a committee of Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL'S."
I took the paper with a trembling hand, and read. She was right! ”

“ He himself, as you know, has several speeches to make to-day.
Von H. Oh, those speeches! How well I know them. I could almost make them myself if I wanted to make speeches, which, God be thanked, I do not need to do.
Herr M. No, indeed. Your reputation rests on foundations firmer than speeches.
Von H. You yourself, Excellency, have lately discovered how fallacious a thing is a speech, even where the speaker honestly tries to do his best to please everybody. ”

“ Obstinate old millstone of a shipbuilder, Bransby, who simply will not give up shipbuilding for aeroplane making (and no wonder in these days!) ; nephew Stephen, with an unwholesome hankering after power and a complete inability to see the obvious; nephew Hugh, lieutenant lately gazetted, with much more wholesome and intelligent hankering after Helen Bransby; Clerk, mouldy, faithful, one who discovers deficit in the West African ledger to the extent of ten thousand pounds. ”

“ But no completely efficient form of organisation can be encompassed in an hour, nor can man legislate for the unknown factor.
In this case Kippy was not aware that, on the far side of the shrubbery, against an ancient sun-bathed wall, stood the greenhouse which sheltered the Colonel's prize grapes. And so Jim Butcher, playing this time from the rockery end, brought off the double event and caused another new clause to be added to the local rules. ”

“ Martin Slim, 25, single, categoried A 1, applied for exemption to the Bumpshire Tribunal on the ground that if he were required to do military service he would lose a substantial fortune. Applicant explained that he was engaged in an enterprise which involved the planting of 200 acres of young cork-trees. The trees would be ready for cutting in about 1945, by which time it was estimated the demand for cork legs would enable him to realise a handsome profit on the sale of the bark. Total exemption was granted, the chairman of the Tribunal congratulating the young man on his patriotic foresight. ”

“ So Stephen is again up on Hugh at the turn. Indeed in the six months that have elapsed between Acts I. and II. many things have happened, and neglected to happen. Stephen has become by common report a great man, pillar of the house of Bransby, which now makes aeroplanes like anything. He has been too busy getting power even to look into his uncle's papers (though executor) , or to have the West African ledger taken back to the office, or, queerest of all, to discover and destroy that damning confession. ”

“ On the other hand, in this country, where the warrior, when he falls on sleep suffers a sort of temporary death, bungalows can be easily purloined from round about him without his knowledge; and what is more, frequently are.
For instance, a certain bungalow in our village was stolen as frequently as three times in one night. This was the way of it. One Todd, a foot-slogging Lieutenant, foot-slogged into our midst one day, borrowed a hole from a local rabbit, and took up his residence therein. ”

“ As the cricket-field is the only level piece of ground in the district, the cricket committee began to lose its grip upon the situation, and were only saved from ignominious failure by the enterprise of the British Army, in this case represented by Sergeant-Major Kippy, D.C.M., who was recovering in the best of spirits from his third blighty one. ”

“ After vainly searching for an imaginary ball and finding that we were not actually attacked from the rear, we ventured at length to return.
Kippy and the Colonel were conversing on the centre of the well-worn pitch. The Colonel was speaking.
"... Lose ten runs and the match! I never heard such infernal nonsense. That shot was worth six runs on any ground. I shall insist on revising the rules."
At the same time I noticed that Kippy was holding a red-and-white box, and the Colonel was with difficulty thrusting something through the inadequate slit. ”

“ But as a member of the Children's Welfare League I do not consider that right. She carried a quantity of matches (ten boxes to be exact) in her old apron. Nobody had bought any of her matches during the whole long day. And since the Summer-Time Act was still in force it was even longer than it would have been in ANDERSEN's time.
The streets through which she passed were deserted. No sounds, not even the reassuring shrieks of taxi-whistles, were to be heard, for it costs you forty shillings now (or is it five pounds?) to engage a taxi by whistle, and people simply can't afford it. ”

“ Herr M. Please go on doing your best. It is so annoying and temper-spoiling for HIS MAJESTY to make so many speeches of a fiery kind, and never to have a victory—at least not a real one for which Berlin can hang out flags. ”

“ LAKE has achieved the impossible. All the same one found points—for instance, his desire that someone (apparently England for choice!) should colonise Macedonia; and his most right and appropriate plea for fairer recognition of those who have sacrificed their health in the national service. A man, he holds, who is to suffer all his life from malarial fever has done his bit no less than plenty who bear the honourable insignia of the wounded in battle and the snout of a mosquito may be as valorously encountered as the bayonet of a Hun. ”

“ My difficulty—and I hope it will not be yours—was to believe in the power of Hazel Woodus to make very dissimilar men lose their hearts and heads. That Jack Reddin, a dare-devil farmer with love for any sort of a chase in his blood, should pursue her to the bitter end is intelligible enough, but why Edward Marston, a rather anæmic minister, married her and then forgave her escapades with Reddin has me bothered. ”

“ OXENHAM'S weak points are that sometimes he fails to distinguish between real pathos and sticky sentimentality, and that when he tries his hand at telling a practical joke he does not know when to stop. ”

“ The R.S.P.C.A. grows more and more alert. A man who hid three and a half pounds of stolen margarine in his horse's nose-bag has just been fined five pounds.
"Dogs," says the Acton magistrate, "are not allowed to bite people they dislike." All the same there have been times when we have felt that it would have been an act of supererogation to explain to the postman that our dog was really attached to him.
A taxi-cab driver has been fined two pounds for using abusive language to a policeman. ”

“ There is a right of way through the park up to the house, which belongs to the Earl of C——, but is not of great architectural interest. Bear to the right in front of the house, along a path which skirts the wall of the private grounds. At the end of the wall a gateway leads into the high road, and a walk of under two miles will bring you to the, at one time, pretty village of K——, which has, however, grown rapidly into a thriving town. ”

“ Or even this:
"Second Lieutenant M—— relinquishes the rank of Acting Second Lieutenant on ceasing to command a Battalion, and reverts to the rank of Second Lieutenant."
Failing this, I have thought sometimes of making an announcement in the Personal Column of The Times:
"Second Lieutenant M—— regrets that his duties as a Second Lieutenant prevent him from replying personally to the many kind inquiries he has received, and begs to take this opportunity of announcing that he still retains a star on each shoulder. Both doing well." ”

“ On leaving the inn, turn through a gateway at the side of it, which gives on to a straight and rather uninteresting road, which has been considerably built upon and is more or less private, though a right of way has been preserved through it. A glimpse of a large mansion, chiefly of the 17th century, and now in the possession of the W——s, may be obtained through the trees on the right of the road. ”

“ And all this is in a country so desolated by centuries of war that in spite of obvious natural fertility it is a sullen treeless desert—a desert of blight and thistles, as profitless to our men as their periodically deferred anticipations of a grand advance. A book that sets out to record vacuity can hardly be crammed with thrilling literature, and I am not going to pretend that Mr. ”

“ Some commotion was caused in the Strand last week when a policeman accused a man of whistling for a taxi-cab. Later, however, the policeman accepted the gentleman's plea that he was not whistling, but that was his natural face.
From the latest reports from Dover we gather that this year the Channel has decided to swim Great Britain.
As a result of the excessive rain a nigger troupe at Margate were seen to pale visibly.
Fortunately for the Americans there is one man who will stand by them in their hour of trouble. ”

“ I do not suppose there was anyone who had not thought of it.
"We got to 'ave fresh rules," Kippy continued. "Anyone breaking a winder 'as to retire, mend the winder, and 'is side loses ten runs." Only a super mind could in the time have framed a punishment so convincingly deterrent. ”

“ It was expected, however, that the age limit would before long be substantially raised, in which case there was every reason to believe that his client, if exempted from military service, might outlive his relatives. After some consultation the chairman stated that ten years' exemption would be granted. ”

“ His son Reginald had been serving gallantly in the Army Pay Department since the outbreak of war, and he himself had been consulted by the Government on several occasions. In deciding the case of the applicant, William Dudd, he felt no bias of any kind, and the Tribunal's decision to grant total exemption was made wholly out of regard to the young man's prospects, and not in the interest of Prongingham's, Ltd. (Cheers.) ALGOL.
Farmer. ”

“ Strunski, 18, single, passed for General Service, applied for exemption yesterday before the Birdcage Walk Tribunal. Applicant's mother, who was observed to be wearing several large diamond rings and a sable jacket, informed the Tribunal that applicant was her sole support ”

“ People ought not to say these things about chemists.
"ESCAPED GERMAN FLYING MEN. "One of the men is Lieut. Josef Flink. He has a gunshot wound in the palm of the left hand. The second is Orbum Alexander von Schutz, with side-whispers. ”