various contributors

“ Record opens in the year 1859, when Lord Charles entered the Navy, closing just half-a-century later, when he hauled down his flag and permanently came ashore. Within the space of fifty years there is crammed a life of adventure richly varied in range. A man of exuberant individuality, which has occasional tendency to obscure supreme capacity, of fearless courage, gifted with a combination of wit and humour, Lord Charles is the handy-man to whom in emergency everyone looked not only for counsel but for help. ”

“ To the question, "What do you mean, Sir, by bringing lizards and white rats to school?" Tommy said, "Yes, Sir," and then, after thinking for fully three seconds, he said he had a ferret at home, and did the Headmaster know how to hold a ferret so that it couldn't bite you?
It seems that ferrets, if they once get hold of your thumb, never let go—not never—and that you have to force their jaws open with a penholder; also ferrets exhibit a marked preference for thumbs. All this information Tommy conveyed without drawing a breath. ”

“ Here is a man whose life should be written. Fortunately the task has been undertaken by Lord Charles himself, and the world is richer by a book which, instructive in many ways, valuable as throwing side-lights on the slow advance of the Navy to the proud position which it holds to-day on the North Sea, bubbles over with humour. ”

“ Twenty-two terrific fellows, whose united salaries came to a respectable fortune and whose united transfer fees, should their Clubs every let them go, would be sufficient to build a Dreadnought, had been charging up and down the ground in a series of magnificent rushes, while ten thousand North of England lads roared themselves hoarse to see such glory. ”

“ Outside suggestion has its share, too. Morning papers are a matter of course. One reads one's regular morning papers and no others. But after that the trouble begins with the evening paper placards, each with its lure. How can one resist them? The progress of the Allies! The repulsing of the enemy! The ten miles gained! The Russian advance! A German cruiser sunk! Each newsman has a different bait, and as the day goes on they become more attractive, so that one goes to bed at night filled with optimism. ”

“ Grievances are for peace time, when a general huffiness and stuffiness about the way that everyone else conducts business is natural and indeed expected. In war-time no one should be harassed by criticism. So I pass on to the paper which I like best of all those now being published. I like it because it contains the news I most want to read, and every day, or rather every night, it gets better and will continue to get better until the Brandenberg gate opens to let the Allies in. This paper is not a morning paper and not an evening paper. ”

“ Dear Charles,—We haven't gone yet. Upon my word, we don't know what to do about it. We start off for the Continent and then we halt and ask ourselves, "Won't they be wanting us to go to Egypt and have a word with the enemy there?" So we come back and change our underclothes and start out again; but we haven't got far before a persistent subaltern starts a scare about invasions. At that we halt again and have a pow-wow. Thick underclothes for the Continent; thin underclothes for Egypt, but what underclothes for home defence? ”

“ You too, Sire, sanguine and impetuous as is your nature, are no doubt beginning to realise that a great nation—let us say France, for example—is not to be overcome by mere shouting and the waving of sabres, or by the making of impassioned speeches in which God, having been acclaimed as an ally, is encouraged to perform miracles for the benefit of the Prussian arms. ”

“ I asked.
"It isn't tea; it's tobacco," Joan replied, "and I'm making cigarettes for the soldiers at the front."
"Where on earth did you get that tobacco from, if it is tobacco?" I went on.
"Let me see now," mused Joan, pausing to lick a cigarette-paper—"was it from the greengrocer's or the butcher's? Ah! I remember. It was from the tobacconist's."
Joan gets like that sometimes, but I do not encourage her.
"But what made you choose this Hottentot stuff?" I enquired.
"The soldiers like it strong," Joan replied, "and this looked about the strongest he'd got." ”

“ Moreover—and this you had perhaps overlooked—they have something which is deadlier and more enduring than shot and shell and steel—the unconquerable spirit which leaps up in the hearts of men who are gathered to defend their country from invasion and their national existence from destruction. ”

“ I do not deny that your soldiers are brave and that your armies are well equipped; but Frenchmen too have guns and bayonets and swords and shells and know how to make use of them, and their portion of courage is no smaller than that of the Prussians, or even of the Bavarians whom you have lately been vaunting. ”

“ For example, I find among these headings on the day on which I write a reference to a German admission of failure and dismay. But can I find the thing itself? I cannot. It may be there, but again and again has my eye travelled up and down the columns seeking the nutritious morsel and not yet has it alighted thereon, and that is but one case out of many. Sometimes after a long hunt I do track these joyful tit-bits down, and then discover that they are separated from the heading by several columns. Some day a newspaper editor will arise who can achieve a really useful index to his contents. ”

“ It really isn't fit to smoke, and is only good for destroying wasps' nests or fumigating greenhouses, which I thought your lady wanted it for, seeing as how she picked it out for herself. Some ladies nowadays know as much about tobacco as what we do."
I left the shop hurriedly. The problem of the disposal of Joan's well-meaning gift was now solved. I returned home and furtively stole up the side path into the garden. Under cover of the summer-house I undid the parcel and proceeded rapidly to strip the paper from those of the cigarettes that had not already become hollow mockeries. ”

“ At parting, Tommy offered to lend the Headmaster his tortoise for a week, and told him that, if he stood for a whole hour on its back, it wouldn't hurt it, because Tommy had trained it; also it never crawled out of your pocket.
Tommy apologised to Miss Price for bringing the white rats to school—they weren't white rats really, not to look at; they were rather piebald through constant association with ink. Also he brought an apple and showed her how, by holding it a certain way whilst eating it, she would miss the bad part. ”

“ So the weedy young man dared him to come to a haunted cottage at midnight, and, dressed up as a spectre, terrified the soldier into something more than a strategic retreat, with the result that he surrendered his daughter. In real life of course it is different. ”

“ Tommy Brown has already been in disgrace, although it is only a fortnight since he wrote the famous patriotic essay which determined Mr. Smith, his Form-master, to go to the Front. You see, Miss Price, who is deputising for Mr. Smith, does not like lizards, and has an especial aversion to white rats, whereas Tommy is very fond of these and other dumb animals. ”

“ But don't you know it is extremely reprehensible conduct to bring animals to school in your pocket?" Well, you see, that is how Tommy's mother talks to him, so he knew what to do, and, looking up into the Head-master's face with that wistful look of his, he imparted the deep secret that he had a tortoise. ”

“ They stoned me for the Kaiser yesterday!
At a time when every penny that can be spared is needed for the help of our soldiers in the field and of our wounded, or to relieve the distress of the Belgian refugees or our own sufferes from the War, a public appeal is being made to the citizens of Newcastle-on-Tyne for subscriptions to a fund for presenting a testimonial to their Lord Mayor, on the ground that he has done his duty. We beg to offer our respectful sympathy to the Lord Mayor of Newcastle-on-Tyne. ”

“ I sincerely hope that the noble work she is now doing with the Red Cross at the front—where the best wishes of her many friends follow her—may make more clear the claim that is laid upon her to devote her exceptional powers as a writer to the higher issues of life and death ”

“ Not that Tommy had removed many stones from horses' hoofs, not very many, but if you had a tooth that was loose it was very helpful. Miss Price gave him a new threepenny bit, and Tommy tried hard to please her in arithmetic by reducing inches to pounds, shillings and pence.
With ninepence in his pocket Tommy felt uneasy. It was a question between a lop eared rabbit and a mouth-organ. A lop-eared rabbit, that is to say a proper one, cost two shillings; for nine-pence it was probably that you could only get a rabbit which would lop with one ear. ”

“ Some of us bring clothes and others butter or umbrellas, or French books, or razor-strops or cigarettes. Hepburn, the dairy farmer, keeps sending cart-loads of cabbages; old Miss Mackintosh at the Brae Foot sends threepence a week. And when we are short of anything we just stick up a notice to that effect in the village shop. I issued a call for jam yesterday and ever since it has rained pots and pots. We have three large families of Belgians and we have already got to the stage where the men are at work and the children at school—though no one really has the least idea what they do there. ”

“ If I were a woman I should always be a little irritated with any story which shows two women in love with the same man. Miss May Sinclair in her new novel does not mind how much she annoys her own sex. ”

“ Lord Charles, whether in office, on active service, or from his familiar place above the Gangway in the House of Commons, bringing to bear upon Naval affairs the gift of keen intuition and the endowment of long practical experience, has, with one exception, done more than any many living to deliver the Navy from mistakes inevitable in the case of the over-lordship of a civilian who is subject to currents of political and party feeling. By way of reward he has received more kicks than ha'pence.
GERMANISED TURKEY.
"Dere you are, mein friendt; der same old flag mit a leedle difference." ”

“ Some time ago Monica Jermyn brought round some terrific mitts she'd knitted to go in one of my parcels for the troops. She'd easily the worst knitter who ever held needles! "My dear child," I said, "what simply ghastly mitts! They're full of mistakes." "What's it matter?" Monica answered. "Mistakes will keep them quite a warm as the right stitches. ”

“ He lived a week or two on the mountain, to get used to the atmosphere and prepare all his things, so he didn't know what was going on in the world below. And then, just as the eclipse or whatever it was began, and the Professor was looking up at the sky for all he was worth, a lot of fearful creatures came rushing up the mountain and said there was a war and that he was an alien enemy and that he was making signals and that his big telescope was a new sort of howitzer ”

“ Manifestly preposterous evidence, freely given, was freely admitted by trained legal minds—evidence on which innocent lives were sacrificed at the average rate of over a thousand a month in England and Scotland in the two centuries of the chief witch-baiting period. ”

“ We all work along in the jolliest possible way, and we have no meetings, or agenda, or minutes, or co-opting of additional members, or remitting to executives or anything of that kind. We just bring along anything that we think will be useful. ”

“ Even their beautiful devotion to vegetables of all sorts cannot, we feel, compensate for their attitude of negation towards this very staple of existence. There is a strong party among us bent on their conversion. We hope with all our hearts that they will be comfortable and contented among us till the day comes when they can return to their own country ”

“ Of course we all have pocket-dictionaries, but even they don't always help us out. I found my wife once engaged in a desperate hand-to-hand encounter with the one who does the cooking about some household necessity that was sadly lacking. ”

“ The journalist's apologetic gesture was one of the most delicate things I have ever seen."
Another tells us:—"When Mr. Begbie put his question so great a stillness reigned throughout the crowded railway station that you could have heard a goods-train shunt. Mr. Bryan looked long and earnestly at the journalist, then, placing his hand affectionately on his shoulder, he said to him in a throbbing voice, 'Oh, Harold, how can you?'"
"The Incorrigibles." ”

“ The British steamer Remuera reported on reaching Plymouth last week that a German cruiser had attempted to trap her by means of a false S.O.S. signal. We ought not, we suppose, to be surprised at a low trick like this from the s.o.s.sidges.
⁂
There is one quality that no one can with justice deny to the Germans, and that is thoroughness. The other day, having laid a mine, they seem to have used one of their own cruisers to test its destructive power.
⁂
"It is noticeable," says The Daily Mail, that the Kaiser's speeches no longer include references to God, only Frederick the Great." ”

“ The Kölnische Zeitung complains that English prisoners in Germany "are allowed to live the lives of Olympian Gods." Our choleric contemporary is evidently unaware that we are allowing German prisoners to reside in Olympia, which is the next best thing to Olympus. ”

“ After describing how, in the course of a great reception given to him by a large crowd at the station, two or three buxom matrons insisted upon embracing him, our contemporary continues: "Driver Osborne has now practically recovered, and reports himself for duty again at the end of the week."
⁂
The municipality of Berlin has decided to substitute for the existing designations of some of the principal streets in that city the names of "German generals who have become famous during the present war." This, however, will not involve many alterations. ”