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Read Ebook: Punch or the London Charivari Volume 152 April 4 1917 by Various
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VOL. 152.
April 4th, 1917.
CHARIVARIA.
The KAISER has conferred upon the Turkish GRAND VIZIER the Order of the Black Eagle. The GRAND VIZIER has had persistent bad luck.
"A few weeks ago," says Mr. ROBERT BLATCHFORD, I asked, "What manner of man is the Tsar? And now he has abdicated." We understand that the EX-TSAR absolves Mr. BLATCHFORD from all blame.
The Amsterdam rumour to the effect that eighty thousand German soldiers had surrendered was followed the next day by the report that it was really ninety thousand. It appears that a recount was demanded.
In the Reichstag a member of the Socialist Minority Party has denounced the KAISER as the originator of the War. The denunciation made little impression on the House, as it was generally felt that he must have been listening to some idle street-corner gossip.
A cat's-meat-man informed the Southwark Tribunal at a recent sitting that he served over four hundred families a day. The unwisdom of permitting cats to have families in war-time has been made the subject of adverse comment.
"I swear by Almighty God that I will speak the truth, no nonsense, and won't be foolish," was the form of oath taken by a witness at a recent case in the Bloomsbury County Court. It was explained to him that this was only suitable for persons taking office under the Crown.
It was urged on behalf of a man at the Harrow Tribunal that there would be no boots in the Army to fit him. If a small enough pair can be found for him it is understood that he will join the police.
We fear an injustice has been done to the large number of Mexicans who have lately entered the United States. It was at first suggested that they were of pro-German sympathies, but it now appears that they were only fugitives who had fled from the elections in Mexico.
A man at Bristol charged as an absentee said that he had been so busy wilting poetry that he had forgotten all about military matters. His very emphatic assurance that he will now push on with the War has afforded the liveliest satisfaction to the authorities concerned.
"Owing to restrictions on the output of beer," says a contemporary, "the passing of the village inn is merely a question of time." Even before the War it often took hours and hours.
It is announced that a wealthy American lady with Socialistic leanings will, at the end of the War, marry a well-known conscientious objector at present undergoing a term of imprisonment. The American craze for curio-hunting has not abated one bit.
A woman in North London who two years ago offered her services to the Government in any capacity has just been informed that her offer is noted. There is good reason to believe that she will he among the first women called upon for service in our next war.
Because a man had jilted her fifteen years ago, a Spanish woman shot him while he was being married to another woman. It is a remarkable thing, but rarely does a marriage ceremony go off in Spain without some little hitch or other.
Proper mastication of food is necessary in these times, and we are not surprised to hear that one large dental firm are advertising double sets of teeth with a two-speed gear attachment.
The bones of a woolly rhinoceros have been dug up twenty-three feet below the surface at High Wycombe, and very strong expressions have been used in the locality concerning this gross example of food-hoarding.
Complaint has been made by a brass finisher at Oldham that his fellow-workmen will not speak to him because he receives less wages than they do. To end an awkward situation it is hoped that the good fellow may eventually consent to accept a weekly wage on the higher scale.
NOTICE.
PUNCH'S ROLL OF HONOUR.
THE HOHENZOLLERN PROSPECT.
REFLECTIONS OF THE HEIR-APPARENT.
When I've surveyed with half-shut eyes, Over the winking Champagne wine, What I shall do when Father dies And hands me down his right divine, Often I've said that, when in God's Good time he goes, I mean to show 'em How scorpions sting in place of rods, Taking my cue from REHOBOAM.
But now with Liberty on the loose, And All the Russias capped in red, And Demos hustling like the deuce, And Tsardom's day as good as dead-- When on the Dynasty they dance And with the Imperial Orb play hockey, I feel that LITTLE WILLIE'S chance Looks, at the moment, rather rocky.
And yet one never really knows. You cannot feed his massive trunk On fairy tales of beaten foes Or HINDENBURG'S "victorious" bunk; And if his rations run too short Through this accursed British blockade Even the worm may turn and sport A revolutionary cockade.
Well, at the worst, I have my loot; And if, in search of healthier air, We Hohenzollerns do a scoot, There's wine and women everywhere; And, for myself, I frankly own A taste for privacy; I should rather Not face the high light on a throne-- But O my poor, my poor old Father!
O.S.
THE MUD LARKS.
THE French are a great people; the more I see of them the more I admire them, and I have been seeing a lot of them lately.
I seem to have spent the last week eating six-course dinners in cellars with grizzled sky-blue colonels, endeavouring to reply to their charming compliments in a mixture of Gaelic and CORNELIUS NEPOS. I myself had no intention of babbling these jargons; it is the fault of my tongue, which takes charge on these occasions, and seems to be under the impression that, when it is talking to a foreigner, any foreign language will do.
Atkins, I notice, also suffers from a form of the same delusion. When talking to a Frenchman, he employs a mangled cross between West Coast and China pidgin, and by placing a long E at the end of every word imagines he is making himself completely clear to the suffering Gaul. And the suffering Gaul listens to it all with incredible patience and courtesy, and, what is more, somehow or other disentangles a meaning, thereby proving himself the most intelligent creature on earth.
We have always prided ourselves that the teaching of modern languages in our island seminaries is unique; but such is not the case. Here and there in France, apparently, they teach English on the same lines. I discovered this, the other day, when we called on a French battery to have the local tactical situation explained to us. I was pushed forward as the star linguist of our party; the French produced a smiling Captain as theirs. The non-combatants of both sides then sat back and waited for their champions to begin. I felt a trifle nervous myself, and the Frenchman didn't seem too happy. We filled in a few minutes bowing, saluting, kissing and shaking hands, and then let Babel loose, I in my fourth-form French, and he, to my amazement, in equally elementary English. The affair looked hopeless from the start; if either of us would have consented to talk in his own language, the other might have understood him, but neither of us could, before that audience, with our reputations at stake.
Towards lunch-time things grew really desperate; we had got as far as "the pen of my female cousin," but the local tactical situation remained as foggy as ever, our backers were showing signs of impatience, and we were both lathering freely. Then by some happy chance we discovered we had both been in Africa, fell crowing into each other's arms, and the local tactical situation was cleared "one time" in flowing Swahili. Our respective reputations as linguists are now beyond doubt.
"Which?" I inquired; there were several farms about, none of them in any great state of repair.
He thereupon pointed out all the objects of local interest in the same fashion.
"We will now give him fifty rounds for luck, and then we will return to my cellar for a cup of coffee," said he, and a further twenty yards of Hun parapet were removed.
Suddenly there came an answering salvo from Hunland, and a flock of shells whizzed over our heads.
"Tiens!" my Captain exclaimed. "He has lost his little temper, has he? Naughty, naughty! I must give him a slap. A hundred rounds!" he shouted into the 'phone, and the German lines spouted like a school of whales blowing.
Then for the next hour or so the sky was filled with a screaming tornado of shells, rushing, bumping, and bursting, and the Bosch lines sagged, bulged, quivered, slopped over, and were spattered against the blue in small smithereens.
Certainly Hans the Hun does not seem to be enjoying the same high spirits he did of yore. Possibly he is beginning to regret the day he left the old beer garden, his ample Gretchen, and the fatty foods his figure demands. The story of Patrick and Goldilocks would tend to prove as much.
The other day Patrick was engaged in one of those little "gains" which straighten out the unsightly kinks in the "line" and give the War-correspondents a chance to get their names in print.
Patrick and his friends attacked in a snowstorm, dropped into a German post, gave the occupants every assistance in evacuating, and prepared to make themselves at home. While they were clearing up the mess, they found they had taken a prisoner, a blond Bavarian hero who had found it impossible to leave with his friends on account of half-a-ton of sandbags on his chest. They excavated him, told him if he was a good boy they'd give him a ticket to Donington Hall at nightfall, christened him Goldilocks for the time being, and threw him some rations, among which was a tin of butter.
He listened to all they had to say in a dazed sulky fashion, but at the sight of the tin of butter he gurgled drunkenly and seemed to go light-headed. He spent a perfect day revelling in the joys of anticipation, crooning over that butter, cuddling it, hiding it in one pocket after the other. Towards dusk down came the snow again, and under cover thereof the Bosch counter-attacked.
Patrick says he suddenly heard the bull voice of a Hun officer hic-coughing gutturals, and they were on him. He had no time to send up an S.O.S. rocket, and his machine-gun jammed. In a minute they were all mixed up, at it tooth and claw as merry as a Galway election, the big Bosch officer, throwing off a hymn of hate, the life and soul of the party. He came for Patrick with an automatic, and Patrick thought all was up; and so it would have been but for Goldilocks, who materialized suddenly out of nowhere, deftly tripped up his officer from behind, and, dancing on his stomach with inspired hooves, trod him out of sight.
Their moving spirit being wiped out, the Huns lost whatever heart they had had, and went through their "Kamerad" exercise without further ado.
When the excitement was over Patrick sought out Goldilocks, and, shaking him warmly by the hand, thanked him for suppressing the officer and saving the situation.
"Situation be damned" , Goldilocks retorted. "He would have pinched my butter!"
THE FLOWERLESS FUTURE.
PERSONAL PARS.
We regret to learn that Lady Diana Dashweed has returned from Nice suffering from nervous shock. During a battle of vegetables at the recent carnival Lady Diana, while in the act of aiming a tomato at a well-known peer, was struck on the head by a fourteen-pound marrow hurled by some unknown admirer. There is unfortunately a growing tendency at these festivities to use missiles over the regulation weight.
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