Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 153, August 8, 1917

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917, by Various, Edited by Owen Seamen
E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, William Flis, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

No amount of War Office approval will make hens lay, says The Weekly Dispatch . These continuous efforts to shake our confidence in the men entrusted with the conduct of the War can only be regarded as deplorable.
A workman in a Northern shell factory has been fined five pounds for having his trousers fastened on with iron nails. Why he abandoned the usual North Country method of having them riveted on him was not explained.
Charlie Chaplin, says a message from Chicago, has not joined the U.S. Army. He excuses himself on the ground that Mr. Pemberton-Billing, who is much funnier, is not in khaki.
A woman told the Lambeth magistrate that her husband had not spoken to her for six weeks. It is a great tribute to the humanity of our magistrates that the poorer people should go to them with their joys as well as their sorrows.
Cruises on the Thames and Medway estuaries will only be permitted on condition that the owners of pleasure craft agree to increase the nation's food supply by catching fish. Merely feeding them will not do.
A man who was seen carrying a grandfather clock through the streets of Willesden has been arrested. It seems to be safer, as well as more convenient, to carry a wrist-watch.
Newhaven, it is stated, is suffering from a plague of butterflies. All attempts to persuade them to move on to the Métropole at Brighton have so far been successfully resisted.
Table-napkins have been forbidden in Berlin and special ear-protectors for use at meal-times are said to be enjoying a brisk sale.
When the fourteen-year-old son of German parents was charged in a London Court with striking his mother with a boot, the mother admitted that she had cut the boy's face because he had called her by an opprobrious German name. On the advice of the magistrate the family have decided to discontinue their subscription to the half-penny press.