According to the Correspondent of _The Daily Mail_ who described the
festivities at Nish, the King of BULGARIA "has a curious duck-like
waddle." This is believed to be the result of his effort to do the
Goose-Step while avoiding the Turkey-Trot.
***
Owing to the extraction of benzol and toluol from gas for the purpose of
making high-explosives it is stated that consumers may have to put up
with some decrease in illuminating power. It is expected, in view of the
good object involved, that the announcement will be received in a spirit
of toluoleration.
***
We cannot agree with the actor who complains that his manager forbids
him to wear his armlet on the stage. The sympathies of the audience
might be entirely deranged by the discovery that the elderly villain was
an attested patriot while the young and beautiful hero was either
ineligible or a slacker.
***
Describing the depressed condition of the laundry trade a witness at the
Clerkenwell County Court said, "We are eight million double collars
short every week." It is shrewdly conjectured that they are in the
neighbourhood of the Front.
***
Nothing in the course of his Balkan pilgrimage is reported to have
pleased the KAISER so much as a steamer-trip on the Danube. It was
looking so sympathetically blue.
***
The Government is going to close Museums and Picture-galleries to the
public. No one shall accuse us of being Apostles of Culture.
***
It is said that the Australian and New Zealand soldiers now in London
are very fond of visiting the British Museum, and take a particular
interest in the Egyptian antiquities. But it is not true that they now
refer to England as "The Mummy Country."
***
Austrians and Hungarians are said to be quarrelling as to whether the
occupied Serbian territory should eventually belong to the Monarchy or
the Kingdom, and the jurists on either side are ransacking the history
of the past for arguments to support their respective cases. Here we
have another instance of the fondness of learned men for disputing about
purely academic questions. Serbia will belong to the Serbians.
***
An American gentleman, who started out to visit his wife when she was
staying with her mother and failed to find her after three days' search,
excuses himself on the ground that he had forgotten her maiden name. He
puts it down to absence of mind; and his mother-in-law is inclined to
agree with him.
***
Soap is the latest article to be placed on the list of absolute
contraband; and it is now more certain than ever that the Germans will
not come out of the War with clean hands.
***
In view of the impending paper-famine a widely-circulated journal
announces its readiness to receive back from the public any parcels of
old copies marked "waste paper." In the opinion of its trade-rivals the
inscription is superfluous.
***
A suggestion has been made by a Registrar in Bankruptcy that the
Tercentenary of SHAKSPEARE'S death should be celebrated by the
performance in every large town of one of the Bard's plays; and some
regret has been expressed that anybody should take advantage of a
national celebration to boom his own business.
***
"'How many of us realise that, were it not for America, the War to-day
in Europe, as fought, could not even exist?'" is the question put,
according to a New York correspondent, "by Mr. Gutzon Borglum, the great
American sculptor." Still the War has its compensations. But for its
existence we might never have heard of Mr. GUTZON BORGLUM, the great
American sculptor.
***
A correspondent, describing the recent food riots in Berlin, says that
they were chiefly due to "women who were fed up with the difficulty of
providing meals for their families."
***
The following notice was found affixed to a building somewhere near the
Front: "SIR OFFICERS,--Ask the bathroom's key to the office. The
bathroom shall be wash by the servant after bath. Sir Officer without
servant shall not have the key." It sounds rather abrupt.
***
Owing to the Government demand that nothing in the way of unnecessary
expenditure should be allowed, it is expected that all paid lecturers on
War Economy and National Thrift will be given a week's notice.
***
Opposing a suggestion of the Wandsworth Borough Council to discontinue
the issue of fiction from the free libraries, a member of the Women's
Freedom League said that a novel was to a woman what a pipe was to a
man. Well, not quite, perhaps. We never saw a man begin a pipe at the
wrong end.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "THEY OUGHT TO BE AT THE FRONT. THAT'S THE SORT THEY WANT
THERE."
"THEY WON'T GO, SIR. THEY'RE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS."]
* * * * *