Nor'-East of Piddinghooe.
AT THE PLAY.
"THE COST."
Mr. Samuel Woodhouse, of the middle classes, being anxious to distract his son John during the critical moments of Mrs. John's confinement, relates how, in similar circumstances more directly affecting himself, he had been playing tennis, and the strain of the crisis had quite put him off his game. The little jest is, of course, adapted from the familiar lines:—
"I was playing golf the day
When the Germans landed ..."
It is of material interest not so much because it is borrowed (for it is not the only joke that Mr. Thurston has conveyed) as because it serves as a brief epitome of the play. For the thing started with the War, and we were getting on quite well with it when an element of obstetrics was introduced and became inextricably interwoven with the original design. Indeed it went further and affected the destinies of the country at large. For England had to wait till the baby was born before it could secure its father's services as the most unlikely recruit in the kingdom.
But you must hear more about this John. He was an intellectual who threatened to achieve the apex of literary renown with a work in two volumes (a third was to follow) on the Philosophy of Moral Courage. At the outbreak of the present war he was at once torn asunder between his duty to his country and his duty to himself. The latter seemed to have the greater claim upon him, and this view was encouraged by an officer who found himself billeted upon the Woodhouse ménage. The dilemma had already worried John (and us) a good deal even before the extension of the age limit made him roughly eligible for the army. Indeed I never quite gathered what it was that ultimately decided him to enlist. Anyhow, six months later he received a bullet in the head, and the wound, though I am glad to say that he survived it, left him incapable of any further intellectual strain.
That was "the cost" of the war to him. Its cost to us (in the play) was almost as heavy. For John's head still retained such a command of brain power that he contrived to be very fluent over his theories of war in general, theories not likely to be of any vital service at a time when our men of fighting age are wanted to act and not think.