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Page 17
* * * * *
[Illustration: MORE ADVENTURES OF A POST-WAR SPORTSMAN.
_P.W.S._ (_who has taken a Spring fishing_). "AND THIS IS WHAT I'VE PAID
THREE 'UNDRED QUID FOR!"]
* * * * *
THE NEW COLOUR: ASQUITHIAN ROSE.
"To-day everything Asquithian has a rosy hue. To begin with, there
arrived a horseshoe of white chrysanthemums with the words 'Good luck'
worked in green."--_Daily Paper._
* * * * *
"Shakespeare's 'Otehllo' has fallen upon evil days."--_Evening Paper._
It certainly seems to be having a bad spell.
* * * * *
"The vexed question, 'What is a new-laid egg?' is at present
confronting a committee of poultry experts."--_Daily Telegraph._
The Committee should invite a hen to sit on it.
* * * * *
An "under-cut":--
"Earl Beatty is setting an example in hustle at the Admiralty.
Photographed yesterday hurrying to lunch."--_Daily Paper._
His Lordship's example is superfluous. The Admiralty has nothing to learn
about hurrying to lunch.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Mistress._ "CAN YOU EXPLAIN HOW IT IS, JANE, THAT WHENEVER
I COME INTO THE KITCHEN I ALWAYS FIND YOU READING?"
_Jane._ "I THINK IT MUST BE THEM RUBBER 'EELS YOU WEARS, MA'AM."]
* * * * *
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
Mr. JOHN HASTINGS TURNER, who had already to his credit a play, a novel and
various successful revues, has now produced, in _A Place in the World_
(CASSELL), what is, I understand, to some extent a fictional version of his
play. How far this may be so I am uncertain (not having seen the play), but
I am by no means uncertain that it makes here a wholly admirable story, one
moreover that shows a notable advance in Mr. TURNER'S art as novelist,
being firmer in touch and generally more matured than anything he has yet
written. The plot concerns the adventures, spiritual and other, of _Madame
Iris Iranovna_, pampered cosmopolitan beauty, when fate or her own
egotistical whim had dumped her as a temporary dweller in the semi-detached
villas of suburbia. The theme, you observe, is one that might excuse the
wildest farce, since the effect of _Iris_ upon her unfamiliar surroundings
was naturally devastating. Mr. TURNER however has chosen the more ambitious
path of high comedy. In _Iris_ herself, and even more in the kindly old
vicar who so unexpectedly confronts her with her own weapons of wit and
worldly wisdom, he has drawn two characters of genuine and moving humanity.
I shall not tell you how the conflict (essential to real comedy) works
itself out, nor after what fashion the empty brilliance of _Iris_ is
humiliated and transformed. If I have a criticism of Mr. TURNER'S method,
it is that, as with _Bunthorne_, a "tendency to soliloquy" is growing upon
him which will need watching. But he clothes his reflections pleasantly
enough. Already known as what the old lady called "an agreeable
rattlesnake," he has now proved himself a story-teller of conspicuous
promise.
* * * * *
VON FALKENHAYN'S _General Headquarters 1914-1916 and its Critical
Decisions_ (HUTCHINSON) seems an honester book than LUDENDORFF'S; less
political, less querulous, less egoistic. VON FALKENHAYN, who was War
Minister when the War began and retained his office after he had superseded
VON MOLTKE as Chief of the General Staff, shows himself incurably Prussian,
refusing even to consider the possibility that any State which could wage
war effectively would hesitate to do so from any ethical or humanitarian
scruple. "Don't bother about a just cause, but see that it appears just
before men," he seems to say. "The surprise effect of gas (at Ypres) was
very great," is all the comment that tragic episode draws from him. He was
a submarine campaign whole-hogger. But he has his own soldierly virtues of
modesty and loyalty, and refuses to air his personal grievances in the
matter of his supersession by the HINDENBURG-LUDENDORFF syndicate. If, as
seems likely, he speaks the truth, as he had opportunity to see it, we must
revise our too flattering estimates of the German superiority in numbers
and attribute a good deal of the stubbornness of their defence to their
quicker appreciation of the character of siege war. The holding of
front-line trenches with few men and consequent immense saving of life was,
according to the General, practised by the German Command long before we
discovered its value. He gives a reasoned criticism, which has to the
layman a plausible air, to the effect that the relative failure of Joffre's
great combined Champagne-Flanders offensive of 1915 was due to the
overcrowding of the attacking armies. General VON FALKENHAYN, though he has
a prejudice for the German soldier, can bring himself to testify to the
valour of his British and French opponent. A readable and conscientious
account of a difficult stewardship.
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