various contributors

“ You see one instinctively pays Mr. Wells the serious compliment of assuming that he has something material to say about the things which matter.
As a demonstration of the irony of history, I can hardly imagine a better subject for romance at the present moment than the fortunes of William of Orange, and if Miss Marjorie Bowen's Prince and Heretic (Methuen) shows some traces of having been rather hastily finished it is easy to pardon this defect. ”

“ It is impossible to read the history of this disastrous campaign without being impressed by the terrible penalties of overweening arrogance and ambition, and without realising the flaming spirit of patriotism that has glorified, and will always glorify, the Russians in time of national peril. ”

“ She fights merely for a limit to the proprietorship, for the right to a separate individuality, the right to be useful in a wider sphere (a phrase that stands for so much that is good and less good) . Mr. Wells has realised this gracious, shy and beautiful personality with a fine skill. It is no mean feat. He might so easily have made a dear mild ghost. And oh if ladies of influence who regiment their inferiors in orderly philanthropic schemes had some of the wisdom and tolerance of Lady Harman in her dealings with the tea-shop girls. ”

“ Then, again, there is the small Juliette, who is dark, with a comfortable little face constructed almost entirely of dimples, and, at the age of eight, has been discovered knitting stockings at a prodigious pace while she looked the other way. I am afraid Juliette is being held up as an example to other children of the neighbourhood, but I think her great popularity may well survive even that. And there is Louis, who is a marvel at making bird-cages, and Rosalie, whose pride is in the shine of her pots and pans. They are all doing well. ”

“ It is sad to part with an old and well-tried friend, particularly when that friend is almost entirely responsible for your marriage. I looked at the pianola and then I said to Celia, "I must play it once again." ”

“ A man who is only a year or so too old for active service, but feels as fit and keen as a boy, has so many opportunities for regretting his enforced civilism and absence from the arena that it is hard when additional ones are thrust upon him.
He may do his best at home. He may guard gasworks, or organise funds, or campaign as an enlister, or visit the hospitals; but all the time he is conscious that being here is so different from being there. It galls him day and night, and the only thing that can help him at all is the society of lovely women, and now he has lost that! ”

“ That joint, however, was soon but a memory of anticipation, and our hunger was still keen upon us when the funereal strains of the Japanese Anthem coincided with the arrival of a wild duck. I had always harboured secret doubts of the advisability of Japan's joining in the War, and now they were intensified many times. Cold wild duck is an impossibility even to a hungry man. ”

“ But I admit that the truth is sometimes hard to believe, and the first six persons to whom I told the story assured me frankly that I was a liar. If one is to be called a liar, one may as well make an effort to deserve the name. ”

“ Helen and I are economising; so the other evening we dined at the Rococo.
"That's no economy," you cry; so let me explain.
In common with most other folk who are not engaged in the manufacture of khaki, or rifles, or Army woollens, or heavy siege-guns (to which I had not the foresight to turn my attention before the war came along) , we have found it necessary to adopt a policy of retrenchment and reform; and one of our first moves in this direction was to convert Evangeline from a daily into a half-daily. ”

“ Remains merely obedience in very plain and absolute terms on the part of lady to lord, obedience which, in the last resort, can be exacted by withholding supplies—not so uncommon a form of black-mail as it suits the dominant sex to imagine. ”

“ For three months the pianola has not been played by either of us. There are two reasons for this: first, that we simply haven't the time now; and secondly, that we are getting all the music we want from the flat below. The flat below is learning "Tipperary" on one finger. He gets as far as the farewell to Leicester Square, and then he breaks down; the parting is too much for him.
I was not, then, surprised at the beginning of this month to find Celia looking darkly at the pianola.
"It's very ugly," she began.
"We can't help our looks," I said in my grandmother's voice. ”

“ A vivid recollection of Phoebe's being despatched once before in an emergency for mustard and returning with custard flashed through my mind.
"She's much too unreliable," I cried. "She'd get bay rum, or something equally futile. It must be Johann or nothing."
"Then," said Joan, "let us say nothing"—an ambiguity of which I determined to take full advantage.
Johann, I must now explain, was the sole survivor of six small bottles of the genuine Rhine brand which Joan's uncle (who is in the trade) had given her last Christmas. ”

“ House of Commons, Monday, 16th November.—"Let us think imperially," said Don José in a famous phrase. Just now we are thinking in millions. Suppose it's somewhere about the same thing. Anyhow Premier to-day announced with pardonable pride that we are spending a trifle under a million a day in the war forced upon mankind by the Man Forsworn. To meet necessities of case he asked for further Vote of Credit for 225 millions and an addition of a million men to Regular Army. ”

“ I slept but little, and on five occasions watched Helen, who has dreams, get out of bed and stand to attention.
Of course it might have been worse; for the musicians of the Rococo evidently had not learnt the national airs of Serbia and Montenegro; and Portugal had not then been drawn into the War. But until the trouble is over I shall avoid restaurants which harbour an orchestra. As you say, it is no economy. ”

“ Miss Marjorie Bowen has a remarkable gift for the presentation of a number of lifelike portraits against a vivid and gorgeous background, and the successive pictures of the Dutch and Flemish Schools which she creates in Prince and Heretic, make it, if not quite so successful as I Will Maintain, at least a book which no lover of the Lowlands can afford to miss. ”

“ You would think that one could then retire into private life for a little, but it is only the beginning. There is the music-stool to be purchased, the library subscription, the tuner's fee (four visits a year, if you please) , the cabinet for the rolls, the man to oil the pedals, the—however, one gets out of the shop at last. Nor do I regret my venture. It is common talk that my pianola was the chief thing about me which attracted Celia. "I must marry a man with a pianola," she said... and there was I... and here, in fact, we are. My blessings, then, on the golden tongue of the manager. ”

“ But just a tin y spark of animation might be retained in the feminine eye when it alights upon an old friend who is debarred from taking arms. Just a spark, otherwise we shall go into a melancholy decline. ”

“ In the House of Commons on November 18, Mr. King asked the Under-Secretary for War whether he could state, without injury to the military interests of the Allies, whether any Russian troops had been conveyed through Great Britain to the Western area of the European War.
Mr. Tennant's reply:—"I am uncertain whether it will gratify or displease my hon. friend to know that no Russian troops have been conveyed through Great Britain to the Western area of the European War." ”

“ We are learning a good deal that is new about the art of knitting. One thing is that the Flemish knitter cannot get on at all comfortably unless the needles are long enough to tuck under her arms. I may safely say that I never dreamt of that. ”

“ The book appears at a most opportune date, for most of us nowadays are military critics, and here we can, if we like, compare the Russian methods of 1812 with those of 1914. On the other hand, in these strenuous days we may not have the time, even if we have the inclination, to devote ourselves to campaigns a hundred years old. For my own part, while frankly admitting the value of this book, I confess that I had sometimes to skip in an endeavour to avoid being bewildered by names and numbers. ”

“ Instead of lecturing, they talk with an engaging discursiveness that lures you from page to page, as it might from bed to border, were you an actual visitor in the exquisite Surrey garden that is their ostensible subject. One thing with them leads to another. ”

“ There is the enterprising Marie, who thinks nothing of going off on her own, on the strength of an English vocabulary only a fortnight old, overwhelming the stationmaster and boarding an ambulance train full of wounded Belgians at the local station to ask for news of her brothers. ”

“ King Henry IV., Part I.
I commend Sir Herbert Tree's obvious desire to do his duty as an actor-manager and a patriot. His true intent is all for our good; and he supports his choice of a play in which Falstaff is the central obsession by a printed quotation from the words of "That Wise Ruler Queen Elizabeth of England," where she says: "'Tis simple mirth keepeth high courage alive." But yet he does not convince me that he has chosen wisely here. For in the first place we are not closely interested in civil war, as we came near to being in the dim Ulster period ”

“ Business done.—Vote of Credit for 225 million and authority to raise another million men for Army agreed to without dissent.
Tuesday.—Lords and Commons united in paying tribute to the life, lamenting the death, of Lord Roberts—"Boss," beloved of the Army, revered in India, mourned throughout the wide range of Empire. Even in Germany, where hatred of all that is English has become a monomania, exception is made in his favour. "There are moments," writes a sportsman in the German Press, "when the warrior salutes the enemy with his sword instead of striking with it. ”

“ A correspondent in whose accuracy we place the highest trust informs us of very remarkable results which have been achieved by the adoption of a new means of alleviating pain and suffering invented by a lady in London. ”

“ I hate to grumble, and I have, I believe, shouldered my share of the new taxes like a man, but I am not made of such stern stuff as to be superior to all human aid, and in my own case the mortification of non-combating, which now and then becomes depressingly acute, is to be alleviated only in this way. Nice women must do their part. ”

“ Now it is no fun to me to deceive anyone but myself, and hence I shall not go about with my arm in a sling and win sympathy and attention to which I am not entitled; but I do appeal to all the young women to have a little pity on some of us compulsory stay-at-homes. Nothing is too good for our fighting men. ”

“ Nor is the lenitive of this little effort of imagination confined to bodily ills; for a well-authenticated case reaches us of a notoriously mean man of wealth who was not heard to utter a single word of grumbling over the new war taxes after realising what the soldier's burden was too. ”

“ A solicitor having announced that he is prepared to make the wills of the men of a certain regiment free of charge, another enterprising legal gentleman, not be be outdone, would like it to known that he is willing to act as residuary legatee without a fee. ”

“ According to a Berlin journal, about 2,000 players of orchestral instruments have been thrown out of employment by the war. It is suggested that, with a view to providing them more employment, reverses as well as victories should be musically celebrated in the capital. ”

“ We learn from a German paper that, since the brave Ottomans have discovered that their Culture and that of the Germans are one, many Englishmen who live in Crescents are crying out in fury for an alteration of their addresses. ”

“ As arranged for the pianola, it was marked to be played throughout at a lightning pace and with the loudest pedal on. So one would play it if one wished to annoy the man in the flat below; but a true musician has, I take it, a higher aim. I disregarded the "FF.'s" and the other sign-posts on the way, and gave it my own interpretation. ”

“ Upon consideration House comes to conclusion that one is quite enough, thank you. Proposals in Supplementary Budget are what Dominie Sampson might, with more than customary appropriateness and emphasis, describe as "Prodigious!" Faced by deficiency of something over three-hundred-and-thirty-nine-and-a-half millions, Chancellor launches War Loan of two hundred and thirty millions and levies additional fifteen-and-a-half millions in taxation.
Items: Income Tax doubled; three-pence a pound added to tea ”

“ Recruiting in country districts is languishing because the folk hear nothing of their regiments, and local attachment is very strong. Unfortunately this ballad had to be founded on material supplied by the C⸻r. ”