Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3820/The Splendid Failure
I found my old cheerful active friend in the depths of woe.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Well," he said, "I'm done for, useless. You see I'm forty-six, and that's a devil of an age just now. You're as fit as you ever were in your life, but of course the War Office won't look at you. Forty-six is impossible! 'But I can walk thirty miles a day,' I tell them. 'Not with all the accoutrements,' they say. 'I'm a member of the Alpine Club,' I tell them. 'You're over age,' they say. 'I'm stronger than any of the your twenty-year-old recruits,' I tell them. 'You're forty-six,' they say. And it's true!"
"Then the new regiment of Sportsmen came along," he continued, "and I tried them. No good. Forty-five is their maximum. So there you are! I'm done—useless. No one wanted to help more than I did, and I can do absolutely nothing."
"I'll bet you've done a lot," I said, "if you would only confess."
"I tell you I've done absolutely nothing," he repeated testily. "I'm no use."
"But surely you're on a dozen committees?" I said.
"No," he said, "not one."
"Then you have started a Fund? Some minor fund guaranteed not to divert any money from the big ones?"
"No."
"But of course you've written to the papers?" I went on.
"No."
"Not about anything? Not to make the Government buck up about blankets or squashing German lies, or allowing Correspondents at the Front, or anything like that?"
"No."
"But surely you have views as to the better management of things? The Press Bureau, for instance. Haven't you pitched into that?"
"No."
"Not even clamoured for all Germans in this country, even the naturalised ones, to be shot? Surely you've harried McKenna a bit?"
"No."
"Well, you must at least have published a scheme for the partition of Europe after the way?"
"No; I never wrote to the papers in my life."
I shook his hand.
"Good heavens!" I said, "and this is the man who grumbles because he has done nothing for his country."