Old Gentleman (to father of conscientious objector). "BUT SUPPOSING A GERMAN WAS GOING FOR YOUR SON WITH A BAYONET—WOULDN'T HE GO FOR THE GERMAN?"
Father of C.O. "AY! I DOUBT HE'D SAY SUMMAT. 'E'S GOT A SHARP TONGUE WHEN 'E'S VEXED."
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
I think I prefer Mr. WELLS'S recent essay in the Newest Theology to this too concrete illustration of The Soul of a Bishop (CASSELL). It's not that I object to the irreverence of stripping a poor tired bishop of cassock and gaiters, pursuing him to a sleepless bed and cinematographing all his physical twistings and turnings, his moral misgivings, his torturing doubts. I owe too much to Mr. WELLS' irreverences to mind that sort of thing; and I must say that, for a man who can't have had very much to do with the episcopacy in his busy life, he does manage to give a confoundedly plausible atmosphere to the whole setting. There are two letters from an older bishop to Dr. Scrope, the one, yieldingly tolerant, to dissuade him from resignation, the other, written after the accomplished fact, with touches of exquisitely restrained yet palpable malice, which strike me as masterly projections. Mr. WELLS also contrives a wonderful impressiveness in certain passages of the bishop's three visions. But I can't, even after careful re-reading, see the point of making the bishop's enlightenment depend upon a mysterious drug. This has an effect of impishness. There is nothing in Dr. Scrope's development that might not have taken place without this fantastic assistance ... I suppose the general suggestion of this rather wayward and hasty but conspicuously sincere book is, that if only an occasional bishop would secede it would make it easier for the plain man to listen to the rest. And there may be something in this.
To those who are in love with Mr. W.J. LOCKE'S incurable romanticism or who have a taste for heroines that "stiffen in a sudden stroke of passion looking for the instant electrically beautiful," let me commend The Red Planet (LANE). As a matter of fact Betty, the heroine, is quite a dear, and the narrator, Major Meredyth, a maimed hero of the Boer War, who looks at this one from the tragic angle of an invalid chair, is, apart from a habit of petulant and not very profound grousing at Governments in The Daily Rail manner, a sport who thoroughly deserves the reward of poor widowed Betty's hand on the last page but one. Perhaps he does not show a very ready understanding of the phenomenon of physical cowardice in the case of a brother-officer, though later he makes amends. But I take it that it was Mr. LOCKE'S idea to present a very ordinary decent sort with the common man's prejudices and frank distrust of subtleties. A sinister mystery of love, death and blackmail runs, a turbid undercurrent, through the story. The publisher's pathetic apology for the drab grey paper on which, in the interests of War Economy, the book is printed, makes one wonder how the other publishers who still issue books in black and white manage to live.
Of the literary reputations that the War has, so to speak, dug in, I suppose none to be more firmly consolidated than that of Mr. PATRICK MACGILL. The newest of his several battle-books is The Brown Brethren (JENKINS), a title derived from the campaigning colour that has amended a popular quotation till it should now read "the thin brown line of heroes." I can hardly tell you anything about Mr. MACGILL'S new book that you have not probably read or said for yourself of the previous volumes. For my own part, if the War is to be written about at all (a question concerning which I preserve an open mind), I say let it be, as here, the real thing, and the hotter and stronger the better. There is rough humour in these sketches of soldier types, and just enough story to thread them together; but it is the fighting that counts. Certain chapters, for example that about Benner's struggle with the Hun sniper, seem to leave one bruised and breathless as from personal conflict. Mr. MACGILL writes about war as he knows it, horribly, in a way that carries conviction like a charge of bayonets, and with an entire disregard of the sensibilities of the stay-at-home reader. For all which reasons The Brown Brethren and their French friends are assured of the success that they certainly deserve. Here's wishing them the best of it!