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Read Ebook: Punch or the London Charivari Vol. 150 March 15 1916 by Various Seaman Owen Editor
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Ebook has 204 lines and 16519 words, and 5 pages
"GERMANS' TERRIBLE LOSSES.
WHOLE CORPS WIPED OUT.
BY LORD NORTHCLIFFE."
Yet, with commendable modesty, his lordship said nothing about this in his recent despatch.
OFFICERS' INSTRUCTION CLASS.
TO THE KING OF SPAIN.
YOUR MAJESTY, There is a little village in England nestling among wooded hills. It has sent forth its bravest and best from cottage and farm and manor-house to fight for truth and liberty and justice. The news of grievous wounds and still more grievous deaths, of men missing and captured, comes often to that quiet hamlet, and the roll of honour in the little grey stone church grows longer and longer. In the big house on the hill, at sunrise and at sunset, the young Lady of the Manor stands at the bedside of her little son, and hears him lisp his simple prayers to God, and they always end like this:--
"And God bless Father and Mother and Nurse, and send Father back soon from his howwid prison in Germany. And God bless 'specially the dear King of SPAIN, who found out about Father. Amen."
The kings of the earth have many priceless possessions; they are able to confer upon each other various glittering orders of merit and distinction; but we doubt if any one of them has a dearer possession or a more genuine order of merit than this simple prayer of faith and gratitude offered at sunrise and at sunset on behalf of Your Majesty by the bedside of a little English child.
THE OLD SOLDIER.
There are some men--and such is Jones-- Who love to vent their antique spleens On any subaltern that owns He's not a soldier in his bones ; Who fiercely watch us drill our men And tell us things were different when They joined the Blue Marines.
I like them not, yet I affect That air of awed humility Which I should certainly expect, If I were old and medal-deck'd, From young men under me; But when they hint their wondrous wit Is what has made them feel so fit To do their military bit, I simply can't agree.
Possibly Jones will one day tire Of fours and fights and iron shards, Will seize his pencil and aspire To court the Muse and match the fire Of us poetic cards; Then I shall mock his meagre strain And gaily make the moral plain, How barren is the soldier's brain Compared with any bard's.
A QUESTION OF THE NUDE.
They scrambled into the carriage in a tremendous hurry, all talking at once at the tops of their voices, all very excited and very dirty. They had mud on their boots which had evidently come from France, and their overcoats had that rumpled appearance which distinguishes overcoats from the Front from those merely in training.
There seemed to be about ten of them as they got into the train, but when they had deposited various objects on the rack, such as rifles, haversacks, and kit-bags like partially deflated airships, the number resolved itself into three.
The Tommies, however, were in very talkative vein. "Now," I thought, "I shall doubtless hear some real soldiers' stories of the War, even as the newspaper men hear them and reproduce them in the daily prints: the crash of the artillery, the wild excitement of battle--in short, the Real Thing...."
A momentous question had evidently been under discussion when they entered the train, and as soon as they were settled in their seats they resumed it.
"Wot I want to know is," said the largest of the three, a big man with a very square face and blue eyes,--"wot I want to know is--is that there feller to go walkin' about naked?" The last word was pronounced as a monosyllable.
He set his fists squarely on his knees and glared around him with a challenging expression.
"No, it's agin the law," said a small man with a very hoarse voice.
"Course it is," rejoined the other. "Well, wot's the feller to do? That's wot I ast you. If 'e walks about naked, well, 'e gets took up for bein' naked; if 'e doesn't, why, 'e gets 'ad for not returnin' 'is uniform."
He looked round again and decided to take the rest of us into consultation.
"An' small kit?" burst out the third member of the party indignantly--a sprightly youth with a very short tunic and a pert expression. "Do they want you to return your small kit when you get the mitten? Watch me returnin' mine, that's all!"
"You'll 'ave to," said the voice of Discipline.
"'Ave to, I don't think!" said the rebel ironically; "I couldn't if I'd lorst it."
"I ain't got no small kit, any 'ow," said the small and husky one; "I put my 'aversack down when we was diggin' one of our chaps out of a Jack Johnson 'ole, and some bloomin' blighter pinched it! Now that's a thing as I don't 'old with. Rotten, I call it. I wouldn't say nothing about it, mind you, if I was dead; I like to 'ave something as belonged to a comrade, myself, an' I know as 'e'd feel the same, seein' as 'e couldn't want it 'imself. But, if you take a feller's things w'en 'e's alive, why, you don't know 'ow bad 'e might want 'em some day."
"Corporal 'e ses to me, las' kit inspection," broke in the fresh-faced youth, disregarding this nice point of ethics, "'W'ere's your tooth-brush?' 'e ses. 'Where you won't find it,' I ses. ''Oo're you talkin' to?' 'e ses. 'Dunno,' I ses; 'the ticket's fell off!... Wot d'yer call yourself, any'ow,' I ses, 'you an' yer stripe?' I ses. 'Funny bundle,' I ses, 'that's what I call you!'"
"'Ang on to 'is kar-kee" said the hoarse-voiced man. The setter-down of corporals retired within himself, probably to compose some humorous repartee.
"'E 'as done. 'E's wrote an' told 'em 'as 'e can't send 'is kar-kee back until 'e gets a suit o' Martin 'Enry's or thirty bob in loo of same. An' all as they done was to write again an' demand 'is uniform at once."
The warrant officer sighed and opined that orders were orders.
"Yes, but 'e 'd 'ave to carry 'em to the Post Office naked, wouldn't 'e? An' 'ow about goin' to buy new ones? That's if 'e 'd drawed 'is pay, which 'e 'asn't. Unreasonable, that's wot I calls it."
"'Asn't 'e got no civvies at all?" said the small man, beginning to look sceptical. "'Asn't 'e got no one as 'd lend 'im a soot? Anyways, 'e could get some one to post 'em for 'im, an' then stop in bed till 'is others come."
"'E's a very lonely feller," said the champion of the unclad; "'e lives in lodgin's, an 'e 'asn't got no friends. If 'e 'adn't got no clothes for to fetch 'is pay in, wot then?"
A gloomy silence, a silence fraught with the inevitability of destiny, settled on the party.
The originator of the problem thought hard for a minute.
"'E isn't a man as I'd care to trust myself," he said rather unexpectedly, "an' I don't think no one else would neither."
"'E wouldn't be naked," he said earnestly; "'e'd 'ave 'is shirt."
This was a staggerer. One of those great simple truths sometimes overlooked by more abstruse thinkers. But the owner of the problem made one more stand.
"'Oo'd walk about in a shirt?" he said scornfully.
"Me," said the large seaman, "time I was torpedoed...."
He didn't say another word; but the problem was irretrievably lost. There had been something magnificently daring about the idea of a man walking about like a lost cherub; partly clothed, nobody cared very much what became of him.
Besides, we all wanted to hear Admiralty secrets. We sat there in respectful silence while the train rattled on its way; but the large seaman only went on smiling peacefully to himself, as if he were ruminating in immense satisfaction upon unprecedented bags of submarines.
We know that architect.
We can well believe this.
ANOTHER INDISPENSABLE.
TO MY COLD.
In the cast of The Real Thing at Last:--
A sorry return for Mr. TEARLE'S excellent work.
"THE FLOODS IN HOLLAND.
It looks like an infringement of the Monroe doctrine.
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