prudent view and will not allow this, holding that their agility on the field in League Matches and so forth is of high service as an anodyne and distraction. I have heard of more than one case of a well-known herculean player, accustomed not only to big money but applause and hero-worship, seriously wondering if fighting were not his real duty and if he ought not to make a bolt for the Front, but being compelled to acquiesce in the Government's plans and go on drawing his salary for the public pursuit of an air-bladder. This shows you to what a pass things have come.
There are also hundreds of young actors in Londone alone who are being forcibly kept in the country to go on entertaining and playing the fool for the same sedative purpose. These youths are all healthy and fit, but it is held that their true function is to work in the theatres and halls to beguile the audiences and divert their thoughts from the terrible reality of German invasion. With each step that the Germans draw nearer the mummers redouble their efforts to excite laughter. Thus did Nero fiddle.
The terror produced by your nerve-racking Zeppelins is constant. Hardly a soul is now to be seen in the streets of London. Everyone is below the earth, in the Tubes and subways, which are packed by white and trembling crowds. Every cellar is congested, and top floors having been wholly abandoned. As a sign of the times I may tell you that a Company, called the Aerated Dread Co., has been formed to provide iron suits for those who can afford them, and on the Board of Directors are both the Prime Minister and Sir Edward Grey. So awful is the agitation from which everyone here is suffering under the Zeppelin menace that the noise of a tyre bursting in the street often prostrates as many as forty passers-by.
No more to-day, my friend. I will write again soon and add to the melancholy picture of a once powerful nation shuddering with craven fears.
Give my love to your dear children.
Your devoted K——— L———.
FROM THE RECRUIT'S POINT OF VIEW.
Sergeant. "Form Fours!"
"As you were! Form Fours!!"
"As you were!! Form Fours!"
"***!!! *****!!!!"
[Encouraged by the example of some eminent followers of Tyrtaeus, Mr. Punch has great pleasure in printing the following topical soldiers' song, composed by one of his young men after reading about a British force that seized Archibong in the Cameroons.]
And we're going most particularly strong;
For our beef is really "bully,"
And they feed us very fully—
Yes, the feeding 's fit for any restaurong,
Très bong,
Fit for any fust-class London restaurong.
We didn't come out here to play ping-pong
Or to get up a gymkhana—
But we'll all have a banana
When we've driven back the Proosians to Hong Kong,
Ding-dong,
When we've driven back the Proosians to Hong Kong.
It isn't quite as lively as Boulong;
But the name is very tuneful—
Yes, I'll have another spoonful,
For I never liked my soda-water strong;
It's wrong
For a man to drink his soda-water strong.
Where the natives play divinely on the gong;
It's not so cool and airy
As the town of Tipperary,
But it's just as good for tittuping along
In a song,
It's just as good for tittuping along.
Scalped.
From Battalion Orders of a certain regiment:—
"The Brigadier-General regrets that the 5th are noticeable throughout the brigade for the long, slovenly and unkempt condition of men's hair. The Commanding Officer considers that this reflects on the credit of the battalion and directs Company Commanders to take immediate steps to have this slight removed for good and all."
What's in a Hyphen?
From a cinema advertisement:—
"THE TWO-STEP CHILDREN (DRAMA)."
It sounds rather more like Musical Comedy.
"Between them the vessels of the Allies succeeded in destroying a German battery of field artillery, dispersed a German bridging train collected to force the passage of the Yser, blow up an ammunition column, killed General von Tripp, expressed pleasure at the Russians winning in Galicia, and even regarded it as compensation for his wound."—Aberdeen Free Press.
Is there anything the Fleet can't do ?
