Various

“ I'll see to that. Listen. You have that slip entitling you to immediate demobilisation?" He nodded, wondering. "Then demobilise yourself now, at once, instantly!" I cried. "Run like blazes to Calais, Boulogne, Havre, Marseilles—anywhere you like; only run, you little devil, run!"
"But you, Sir?" he stuttered.
"Oh, don't worry about me," I smiled; "I shall be quite all right. I'm going to lay all the blame on you."
He shot one scared glance, at me, then, picking up the skirts of his dressing-gown, scampered off down the road as fast as his ammunition boots would let him, never looking back. ”

“ His dilemma is a very painful one for a man so sensitive and at the same time so enamoured of stockbroking. Hard as the renunciation will be, I really believe he will end by turning his back on the Exchange for ever and taking a regular commission, though I try to persuade him that if he will only brave the horrors of peace as he braved the horrors of war he will win through in the end and grow out of his face. ”

“ If a man's achievement be rightly gauged by the difficulties he has overcome, then M. CLEMENCEAU, called unwillingly and unwilling at the most desperate crisis of the destiny of a distracted and dispirited France hammered by the enemy's legions and with the pass ready for sale by false friends, may well justify Mr. HYNDMAN'S verdict on him as the statesman of the Great War. The man who came into the War a mere Tiger will go out of it an authentic Lion. ”

“ And in The Land Girl's Love Story (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) , a theme after her own heart, she has given us what is, I think, her best achievement so far. It is an excellent slight tale of two heroines who took their patriotic turn at the work of the land army on a Welsh farm, and the adventures, agricultural and (of course) amorous, that befell them there. It is all the best-humoured affair imaginable, refreshingly full of country airs and brisked up with a fine flavour of romance. ”

“ The morning after his arrival he went for a solemn tour of investigation, finally taking up his abode in the middle of the tennis-court, as being to his mind the most salubrious spot—and from there he ruled despotically. "That blooming bird fears neither man nor devil," Cook was heard to mutter, after he had embedded his beak in her ankle; and it was quite true. He so terrified Horatio, our portly bull-dog, by pecking at his sensitive kinky tail from behind when he was absent-mindedly lapping water from Daisy's bath, that he never again ventured alone on to the lawn. ”

“ He knows how to create the right Chelsea atmosphere and he is most artful in leading his readers on, just as a little dog shows himself every now and then at a decoy and thus draws the inquisitive ducks after him till they drift in with all exit cut off. ”

“ Now my unhappy friend is on the horns of a dilemma. He pines to go back to broking as sincerely as some men pine to travel or to write poetry, but every time he ventures out in mufti some painful incident warns him what he will have to suffer as a civilian, with his round rosy face, innocent blue eyes, curly hair and bright smile. ”

“ His hatred of the military profession is indeed equalled only by his love of stockbroking and by his natural pride in having scrapped right on from the word "Go!" till November 10th, 1918, when he was sent home slightly wounded.
Now the tragedy of which he is the pathetic central figure is the result of his remarkably youthful appearance. Every time his portrait figures in The Daily Scratch, people say, "Why, he looks a mere child! But then these Press photographs always do distort one so." Yet in this instance people are unjust. ”

“ Yesterday morning, a freckled child, dripping oil and perspiration and clad in a sort of canvas dressing-gown, stumbled into "Remounts" (or "Demounts," as we should more properly call ourselves nowadays) and presented me with a slip of paper which entitled him, the bearer, to immediate demobilisation on pivotal grounds. I handed it back to him, explaining that he had come to the wrong shop—unless he were a horse, of course. ”

“ When he (Daisy) emerged from his basket we saw that, like NELSON, he was blind of an eye. Percy, immediately inspired, quoted from WORDSWORTH'S Ode to the Daisy, "A little Cyclops with one eye"—and the result was inevitable. Daisy resented the name from the first, for at the very font, so to speak, he drew blood from us both, and then, utterly indifferent to our feelings, settled himself on the top of an empty beer barrel and there performed his evening ablutions. ”

“ The remaining admirer, left alone in the company of the lady, ignores with a fine detachment the impotent rage that his captives are presumably venting in the passage just outside, and declares the ardour of his passion as a man might do in the breathless calm of a moonlit solitude à deux. ”

“ The last we beard of him was from a fisherman friend who, when in search of sea-birds' eggs, saw and recognised our Daisy by the fierceness of his one eye. He was reluctantly taking his turn on the family egg while Mrs. Daisy stretched and titivated herself after her domestic labours.
Does he sometimes, we wonder, think regretfully of his celibate days and the beer barrel, where he lived en garçon?
"Widower, 35, abstainer, would like to correspond with respectable widow, or otherwise, view matrimony."—Provincial Paper.
He seems an easy-going fellow who would make any woman happy. ”

“ We were going down-hill again, a steep hill at that, with wicked hair-pin bends in it.
The engine began to cough, the cough became chronic, developing into a galloping consumption.
"Brakes!" thought I (forgetting they were out of action) , and wrenched at a handle which was offering itself. The car jumped off the mark like a hunter at a hurdle, jumped clear away from the child (who sat down abruptly on the pavé) and bolted down-hill all out. ”

“ The LEADER of the House of Commons labours under similar disabilities, which are beginning to try even his amiable temper. Until Paris has spoken he cannot give definite information about the Government's fiscal policy, the amount of the German indemnity and other pressing topics, and, as he told some of his persistent questioners this afternoon, it is no good putting the same question to him every week and expecting a different answer. ”

“ German Days (MURRAY) is a plain tale of everyday life in Germany before the War, with just those gaps in it which would naturally occur in the narrative of any one observer who also hadn't been aware at the time that she was observing. "A POLISH GIRL (C.B.) " has written this account with an engaging frankness and an apparent lack of exaggeration which distinguish it among books of its kind. ”

“ Civilians are obliged to take off their hats to British officers—a very grim business. In reality, except that we are the hated English, it makes very little difference to the Bosch, for the innkeeper here says that orders concerning the taking off of hats to all and sundry became so stringent in 1918 that the local postman was constantly interrupted in his duties to answer the salutes of people who wished to be on the safe side. ”

“ I was not in the least surprised. "Probably dropped off round that last bend," said I. "Very nearly did myself. How many have we got left?"
He gaped, muttered something incoherent and plunged back into the trunk. The noise of coughing and tinkering redoubled. The smoke enveloped us in an evil-smelling fog.
"Think she'll go now," said the child, emerging once more. He climbed back over me, grasped the helm and jerked a lever. The car gave a dreadful shudder, but there was no other movement. ”

“ A young Englishwoman, paying a farewell call upon the criminals of The House of Peril, has been drugged by them. She wakes up prematurely to find them collecting her pearl necklace—four thousand pounds' worth of it. Murder is in the air, when suddenly, to the surprise of the villains (but not to ours, for we had had fair warning of the dénouement) , enter to the rescue two admirers of the lady. ”

“ I doffed my British warm and returned to the job. A quarter of an hour later we had another talk. All was well. The engine had suffered a regular spasm of coughing and one back-fire, so the child informed me. In half a jiffy we should be off.
I shed my collar, tie and tunic and bent again to the task. At Notre Dame de la Belle Espérance we parleyed once more. He was most enthusiastic. Said a few kind words about the good work I was doing round at the back and thought everything was going perfectly splendidly. The car's cough was developing every minute and there had been two back-fires. ”

“ Somewhat similarly the English Socialist refused to let logic press him into the premature Internationalism of so many of his associates, nor did he share their trust, so ruthlessly betrayed, in German Social Democracy as having either the power or the serious intention of thwarting German Imperialism. ”

“ The terrible pact, by which in the ten years preceding the War thousands of German women bound themselves to combat the predominance of the landed classes, which was making life for ordinary people a slow starvation, is one of the things which I am induced to believe, because "C.B." has dealt so faithfully with others of which I knew already. ”

“ It is only fair to remark that, although the Government has recently been found guilty of profiteering, they have never during the War raised the price: of their ten-shilling notes.
Much difficulty is being experienced by the Allies in deciding what. to do with the German Fleet. Curiously enough this is the very dilemma that the Germans were faced with during most of the War. ”

“ Anyway, from these people the procedure does not greatly interest us; but the overdressed Bosch profiteer, fat and muttony—to hoot him up in his own village! Really, you know, in some ways the War has been worth while.
But the knowledge that he is carrying out a perfectly definite order does not make the subaltern turn any the less pink the first time he ticks off a civilian for failing to comply with the regulations. No, you can't produce a really good Hun without lots of practice. ”

“ It may be said at once that, if a life of Biffin had to be written, Captain GRAHAM was emphatically the man for the task; indeed, from the preface, with its absorbing account of the inception of the work in certain alleged convivialities between author and publishers, to the final chapter, there is not a page that is not calculated to inspire the reader with profound (and in my own case frequently uncontrollable) emotion. Nor is the work valuable for the central figure alone. ”

“ AT THE PLAY. "THE HOUSE OF PERIL."
The maker of a plot that turns upon murder and drugging in the neighbourhood of a Continental gambling haunt must be aware that his work is not going to be brought to the test of common experience, and he is therefore less likely to be hampered by the laws of probability. But there are limits even to the British public's gift of credulity. ”

“ I read a story the other day of an American who said that if you want an egg here for breakfast it is cheaper to buy the hen and hope she'll lay next morning, and in any case you've got the hen. Eh bien, should you desire a set of wooden jewellery you might save money if you bought a forest. ”

“ It read to the effect that both he and his car were at my disposal for the day. I wriggled into a coat and followed him out to where his chariot awaited us.
I never pretended to be a judge of motor vehicles, but it does not need an expert to detect a Drift when he sees one; they have a leggy, herring-gutted appearance all their own. ”

“ Bosches who have really fought for their country do not object to "Hoot-upping." They of course are the first to realise that inhabitants of occupied countries were forced by them to "hoot up," and that therefore there is a certain justice now in the retaliation. ”

“ The movie-producers are not idle. After the greatest difficulty in procuring an actor of prophetic mien willing to undertake the rather trying part of DANIEL, an intrepid dompteur has been found in France and the story of the Lions' Den is to be filmed at once. ”

“ I do not know any novelist who brings to her work a greater sympathy with or a finer feeling for South Africa than Miss YOUNG, and if her moderate methods do not find favour the reason can only be that for the moment moderation is a rather unpopular quality. ”

“ As for the best approach to Mount Amaranth he was convinced that the only feasible route was to work up the Yulmag valley to the Chikkim frontier at Lor-lumi, crossing the Pildash at Gonglam, and, skirting the deep gorge of the Spudgyal, ascend the Takpa glacier to Teshi Tsegpa.
Professor Parbatt expressed his keen appreciation of the vivid descriptions of Himalayan scenery given by the lecturer, and the admirably-selected photographs which had enlivened his address. He wished, however, that he could have furnished more details as to his camp equipment. ”

“ Meanwhile a company is being formed for the exploitation of a new system of muscular development under the name of "Samsonism," and a powerful company of public men is being enlisted to write daily articles in its praise. ”

“ Primroses, daisies and wallflowers are in full bloom in many parts of the country and young lambs may now be seen frisking in the meadows. Can the POET LAUREATE be waiting for someone to get sun-stroke? ”