Various

“ Saturday.—The employers, who seem to be determined on a strike, have offered the men two shillings if they will consider the question of working five days a week instead of four. We refused their offer and demanded that our claim should be conceded unconditionally by noon, failing which our members would cease work.
Later.—The strike has commenced. Heaven knows that I did everything to prevent it which human being could do. The capitalists seem to have made up their minds to force civil war and all its horrors upon the country. ”

“ Strikes are a barbarous and futile method of redressing wrong. Rather think that an increase in wages of two shillings a day would appeal to our members. Must inquire.
Tuesday.—Have confirmed my opinion that a two-shillings’ increase would appeal to our members. They all seem enthusiastic over the suggestion. They appear to be under the impression that the idea is their own. It is not. It is mine. If it materialises I shall be most popular. But I am all for peace. A strike is out of the question. I shall spare no effort to prevent one.
Wednesday.—Presented formal demand to employers to-day. ”

“ Three masked men dashed out of the shop laden with booty and were pursued by a fourth, whom they knocked on the head and left lying for dead on the pavement. Most realistic. The crowd, led by me, cheered like mad. Then the thieves jumped into a waiting car and were whirled away. That done, the photographer and his step-dancing friend leapt into a second car and were whirled away also. Once more we cheered. I made a short speech to the effect that everything was all right with the British Cinema business and, after leading a few more cheers for myself, came home. ”

“ Do you think that had better be in the film?
Or I wonder if a Comic would be more effective—a Shaving reel or a Dressing reel? It is the small incidents of every-day life that one should look to for the key to the character of a Public Man; and once a whole third of the population had seen for themselves what pain it gives me to put links and studs and all those things in a clean shirt, they would understand the strange note of melancholy which runs through this article. ”

“ We cannot help thinking that, at a time when so much depends on the fusion of classes, a new edition of these immortal dialogues, brought up to date so as to meet the exigencies of the new poor, the new rich, the old aristocracy and the new plutocracy, would be fraught with the most salutary results. ”

“ The two-shillings’ increase is their strict due, and, if we present a united front, the grasping capitalist will be brought to his knees. Am working night and day for peace.
Thursday.—Pointed out to the employers that a strike is inevitable unless they give way. We can make no concession. My whole energies are concentrated on preventing a strike. Told our members that unless they remain firm the employers will crush them. A strike would be a national calamity and might spell ruin to the country. ”

“ His inner knowledge of the human species seems to give him plenty to laugh at. He notices everything, forgets nothing, and there is never a weakness in a man but he is on to it. He made up his mind that those secret instructions were passing and set about to find how they passed and what they were. ”

“ To write another person’s life-history in the first person, and yet give to it the verisimilitude of a genuine autobiography, would under ordinary circumstances be a difficult if not impossible undertaking. ”

“ But little by little conviction of a deeper, less understandable, horror creeps upon the reader, only to be explained and confirmed on the last page. To be honest, The Romantic is an ugly, a detestably ugly book, but of its cleverness there can be no question. ”

“ Friday.—The possibility of a strike looms larger. Can nothing be done to prevent it? Informed the employers that we declined to abate one iota of our claim. "All or nothing" is our motto. Also refused to go to arbitration. Warned the employers that a strike means starvation for women and children. ”

“ Mump and Gump, for instance, have scarcely skimmed the surface possibilities of their brilliant notion. This invention is going to make politics tolerable at last. No man minds being in the House of Commons; it is being in his constituency which is so dreadful. And now he need never go there.
For instance, when the constituency is tired of the letter-film, he can be filmed making a speech, which can be taken down and handed to a typist, which action can be followed by the speech itself being thrown on the screen—in instalments. ”

“ He takes with him twenty or more films. Your constituents must see and know you before you can hope for their vote. The Cinema introduces your personality and your policy.
"Your film will cost you—
First reel ... Three guineas.
Each extra reel. One guinea."
The more I see of business-men the less they seem to me to know about business. I never read an advertisement without thinking, "How much better I (or even you) could have done that!" Yet they will tell you that it is their advertisements which make the money. ”

“ The total output of conferences in this country during one year has never been computed yet, but it is supposed to exceed that of any country in the world, except Red India. If there were to be a strike of conferents or conferees, whatever they are called, in England, it is impossible to say what would happen. But it might be possible to lay down a datum line—a shilling extra for the first million words above two hundred and fifty million per shift, and two shillings more for every million words above that. ”

“ Only a very strong man can hew coal, and only a very reckless one can make a speech, but almost anyone can confer if he has a large enough ash-tray; and there seems no reason why more people shouldn’t confer. Everybody is interested in conferences, whatever they are about, and the British public ought to be admitted to this kind of thing. One is always reading in the paper that the sound commonsense or the traditional sense of fair play of the great British public will support the miners in any just claim ”

“ The point is that a Candidate of that kind never need be seen by his constituents now. A handsome young private secretary, uniformed and beribboned, and the film does the rest.
Then I rather resent the assumption that Members of Parliament, Mayors, Lecturers and Actors are the only people who require publicity. I should have thought that those who spend their time writing things in the public Press, which are read by the public (if anybody) , might have had at least the courtesy title of Public Man. ”

“ But not even Barrie has ever made a better scene than that which showed us the disillusionment of the visionary when she is confronted with her blue-and-gold hero of romance now transformed into a plain Stock Exchange man, his air of banality enhanced by the last word in golf suitings. The humour of this scene, in which she made conventional conversation without any real effort to conceal her sense of the bathos of the situation, was very perfect. ”

“ The country requires half-a-million houses built. "Here are men who could assist," said the Prime Minister, "and we propose that they should be allowed to assist."
Over a prospect already sufficiently bleak there broods the shadow of the coal-strike. ”

“ Some idea of the evils consequent on a coal strike can be obtained when we hear there was talk of a football match in the North having to be cancelled.
Mr. Lloyd George is certainly most unlucky. As a result of the coal strike the New World has again been postponed.
We are assured that everything has been done to safeguard our food supply. We ourselves have heard of one grocer who has sufficient fresh eggs to last him for many months.
"Large numbers of South Wales miners left by train yesterday for the seaside," says Lloyd’s News. Unfortunately they did not travel by the Datum Line. ”

“ The modern Hydra, embracing innumerable adverse factors, would appear at least as many headed as the ancient, for as fast as one is more or less effectively decapitated up comes another to upset the applecart. ”

“ I have seen a good many Candidates in my time, and I can think of some to whom I should have said, "Your constituents must never see you if you hope for a single vote." I mean, when one looks round the present House of Commons, one really marvels how.... ”

“ Adamson, who has just been instrumental in throwing out of work some hundreds of thousands of his fellow-citizens, to initiate a debate on unemployment. Most of the speakers endeavoured to throw the blame on "the other fellow"—the Government on the trade unions, the trade unionists on the employers, and the employers on the Government. ”

“ Persia and Mesopotamia—not to mention Ireland—are still unsettled; the Turkish Treaty is not yet ratified; the cost of living continues to rise, and the ratio of unemployment has alarmingly advanced, especially in the case of ex-service men. ”

“ An American has invented an aeroplane capable of remaining in the air for hours and hours. This is nothing to Mr. Asquith’s Irish solution, which is guaranteed to remain in the air for years and years.
Brides are getting rather tired of Harris’s lilies, says a writer in The Daily Graphic. It is only natural that brides should become rather bored if they always wear the same sort of flowers every time they’re married. ”

“ Our Little Man is a chubby lad, standing about four foot ten in his stockinged feet, rubicund and corpulent, and he wears a mackintosh with a very mackintoshy smell in all weathers. He never did a day’s work, and he never means to try, but he is a genius at getting it out of others. ”

“ E. A. Douse has spent forty-two years in a Cheshire post-office. It is only fair to say that the young lady behind the counter didn’t notice him standing there all that time.
A Hertfordshire farmer, says The Daily Mail, has counted one hundred and twenty-three grains of wheat in one ear. Our contemporary has not yet decided what can be done about it.
"What is the right age for a man to marry?" asks Miss Gertie Wentworth-James. The answer is, Not yet.
While addressing a meeting of miners an extremist declared that the idle rich were the cause of all industrial troubles. ”

“ C. E. Gouldsbury tells us in a note to Reminiscences of a Stowaway (Chapman and Hall) , and most of us will cordially agree with him. But, after reading this volume of reminiscences, I think you will also agree that Mr. Gouldsbury has acquitted himself admirably of a most difficult task. The man into whose skin, if I may so express it, he has temporarily tried to fit himself was Mr. Alexander Douglas Larymore, who started his adventurous career as a stowaway in an "old iron tub," and eventually became Inspector-General of Jails in India. ”

“ Ollendorff cannot have been a mere symbol. And as students of Shakspeare have endeavoured to reconstruct the man from his plays so I feel sure that the character of Ollendorff, his interests and politics, might very well be reconstructed from a study of his dialogues. ”

“ Northcliffe is becoming impossible and I must find another paper. Several of my best commas cut out of to-day’s article. All reference to the necessity for immediately beheading Asquith omitted yesterday. Was comforted by lunch at the Carlton with Doris Keane, Gertie Millar and Scatters. We had some good jokes.
The news of my resignation from The Times has set my telephone ringing all the morning with congratulations, requests for interviews and offers of employment. Also some attractive invitations to dinner and week-ends. The War for the moment seems to be forgotten. ”

“ It seemed, too, the most natural thing in the world that the author, Miss Laura Wildig, should have collected Priscilla and Cynthia (the latter in tow of a third-rate millionaire husband whom she loathed) at the same address.
It was at this juncture that Mr. [pg 337] Bensley Stuart Gore was inspired with a Great Thought. In order to set Priscilla free (I ought to say that he hadn’t recognised her) he would elope with Cynthia. How Priscilla set out to frustrate this noble sacrifice and secure her husband for herself ”

“ A welcome exception was Mr. Hopkinson, who boldly blamed the short-sighted selfishness of some of his own class. Employés would not work their hardest to "make the boss a millionaire." As a fitting finale to an inconclusive debate the Prime Minister announced that in order to force a settlement of the coal-strike the railwaymen—Mr. Thomas, apparently, dissenting—had threatened to join the unemployed.
[pg 334]
Harassed Secretary. ”