LANDLADY; "'Ere's the Zeppelins, sir!"
LODGER: "Right-o! Put 'em down outside."
A new phase has been reached in the Conscription controversy, and the burning question appears to be whether the necessary men are to be compelled to volunteer or persuaded to be compulsorily enrolled. One of our novelist military experts, who is not always lucky with figures, though he thoroughly enjoys them, is alleged to have discovered that there are no more men than can be raised by conscription, but that the same does not, of course, apply to the voluntary system.
The Daily Mail asks, "Have we a Foreign Office?" We understand that a search-party is going carefully through Carmelite House. We have certainly got a Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, so efficient in the discharge of his duties that he has made himself an accomplished landscape painter in three months.
A visitor to a remote East Anglian village in search of rest has found recreation in discussing with the inhabitants the Great War, of which he found some of them had heard. "Them there Zett'lins," said one old woman, "I almost shruk as I heerd the mucky varmints a-shovellin' on the coals--dare, dare! How my pore heart did beat!" And an onlooker, who had seen a bomb drop near a church, informed the visitor that it "fared to him like the body of the chach a-floatin' away--that it did and all! It made a clangin' like a covey of lorries with their innards broke loose." Another inhabitant said that he had two boys fighting. "One on 'em is in France, wherever that might be, and Jimmy's in that hare old Dardelles." He couldn't rightly say when the elder had gone out, "but it might be a yare ago come muck-spreadin'."
November, 1915.
More money and more men is still the cry. The war is now costing five millions a day, and the new vote of credit for £400,000,000 will only carry us on till the middle of February. This is "Derby's Day," and the new Director of Recruiting inspires confidence in his ability to make good, in spite of the Jeremiads of Lord Courtney and Lord Loreburn. The lot of a Coalition Government is never easy, and public opinion clamours not for Jeremiahs but for Jonahs to lighten the Ship of State. Mr. Winston Churchill, wearying of his sinecure at the Duchy of Lancaster, has resigned office, explained himself in a long speech, and rejoined his regiment at the Western front. Lord Fisher, whose doubts and hesitations about the Dardanelles expedition were referred to by the late First Lord, has been content to leave his record of sixty-one years' service in the hands of his countrymen. In the briefest maiden speech ever delivered in either House he stated that it was "unfitting to make personal explanations affecting the national interest when my country is in the midst of a great war." Here at least the traditions of the "Silent Service" have been worthily maintained, just as they are maintained by the Port Officer R.N.R. at an Oriental seaport, a thousand miles from the front, out of the limelight, with no chance of glory, with fever from morn till night, who "worries along by the grace of God and the blessing of cheap cheroots."
In Flanders the rain has begun its winter session, and, as a military humorist put it, trench warfare is becoming a constant drain. The problem of parapet mending has been reduced to arithmetical form à la Colenso, as follows: "If two inches of rain per diem brings down one quarter of a company's parapet, and one company, working about twenty-six hours per diem, can revet one-eighth of a company's parapet, how long will your trenches last--given the additional premisses that no revetments to speak of are to be had, and that two inches of rain is only a minimum ration?" The infantryman finds the men of the R.F.C. interesting and stimulating companions. "These airy fellows talk of war as if it were a day's shooting, and they the cock pheasants with the best of the fun up aloft. Upon my word, the hen who hatched such birds should be a proud, if anxious, mother." The same correspondent sends a pleasant account of the mutual estimates of French and English, prompted by their experiences as brothers in arms. "Our idea of our Ally as a soldier is that his élan and gay courage are very much more remarkable even than supposed; but for the dull, heavy work of continued warfare there is wanted, if we may say so without offence, the more stolid qualities of the English. On the other hand, the French opinion of their Ally as a soldier is that his dash and devilment are really astonishing, even to the most expectant critic; but for the sordid, monotonous strain of this trench business it needs (a thousand pardons!) the duller persistence of the French."