(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
I confess that I did not foretell the present state of affairs, and I
refuse to believe anyone else who professes to have done so unless he
can produce his prophecy in writing. _Germany and England_ (MURRAY),
however, puts the late Professor J. A. CRAMB definitely among the few
and persistent prophets who should long ago have been very much more
honoured in their own country. The book is a _résumé_ of lectures
delivered in London in the early part of 1913, and it was first
published a few months ago. The present reprint proves the lecturer to
have been wiser before the event than many of us are even while the
event is happening. Had he lived to see "the day," he would certainly
have revised his incidental opinions of French competence and Russian
honesty, British resource, and the utility of the Territorial; he would
have willingly praised what he has somewhat hastily derided. His theme,
however, is not criticism of the Allies, but appraisement of Germany;
and his arguments, simply but eloquently expressed, should be very
closely regarded by those haphazard optimists who suppose this War to be
the personal prank of a braggart Kaiser, doomed to an immediate failure
for want of his subjects' support. I have devoured more pages of printed
matter since this trouble began than I care to think about, but from the
whole lot I have had less enlightenment than from this half-crown
volume; I have learnt exactly what is taking place--and why--from one
who, unhappily, died before any of the existing wars was declared.
Clearly the days of miracles are not yet dead.
* * * * *
No doubt you already know the work of Mr. H. F. PREVOST BATTERSBY
(FRANCIS PREVOST) in "another place," _i.e._, on the battlefield, where
as a war-correspondent he has proved himself a keen observer and an
accomplished master of style. But he can also write romances uncommonly
well. His latest, _The Lure of Romance_ (LANE), displays once more
exactly the qualities that have brought its author previous renown--an
appreciative eye and a ready pen for the dramatic and picturesque
aspects of a big fight. He knows exactly what a bullet sounds like as it
whistles over the head of the person to whom it was addressed; and as no
doubt many of us are taking an unusual interest in bullets just now
there should be a large public for a story that is so largely concerned
with them. On its own merits as a tale it is bustling and picturesque
enough. The scene of it is laid in a South American Republic (that
useful variant on Ruritania), and the plot deals with the rescue of the
charming daughters of a rapscallion President, threatened by local
revolutionaries. Naturally, therefore, there is some shooting--in the
American sense--all of which bears the sign of expert handling. The
affair ends with a really thrilling climax, in which _Doyne_, the
engineer and chief hero, confounds the politics of his enemies by
letting loose a reservoir upon them. This is great fun. Especially as
the contents of the reservoir, on its way down through a
mountain-jungle, brought along with it what Mr. BATTERSBY pleasantly
calls "clattering carapes of gigantic crabs." A truly gripping finish!
* * * * *
Illustration: THE PICNIC, SEPTEMBER, 1914.
_Anxious Mother._ "I HOPE WE'VE FORGOTTEN NOTHING, FRED?--SANDWICHES,
SPIRIT LAMP, SUGAR, TEA, MILK, JAM, AMMUNITION, KNIVES, FORKS, REPEATING
RIFLE, PICKLES, BARBED WIRE, &C., &C."
* * * * *
It would seem a far cry from the clash of armies to the romance of a
honeymoon spent on a raft _de luxe_ drifting lazily down a river of
Burma. That is the theme of _Love's Legend_ (CONSTABLE), by Mr. FIELDING
HALL, author of _The Soul of a People_. But there may be a war of sex
with sex scarcely less tragic than the wars of men with men (or brutes).
The author shows us an oldish husband--a civil servant--who surmounts,
with not too much indelicacy, the primary difficulty of his young wife's
ingenuousness in relation to the sacrament of marriage. But a further
and worse difficulty is waiting for him when he comes to deal with the
incompatibility of the sexes in the matter of moral standards. The
thing, of course, has been done once for all by LOUIS STEVENSON in
_Virginibus Puerisque_. But he did it in essay form; here we have the
piquancy of personal narrative and dialogue. Husband and wife in turn
are responsible for the story, each assuming a partial attitude towards
facts and opinions; or else it is one of his old friends (a source of
foolish jealousy to the wife) who takes up the tale without warning when
they meet at some riverside station. This means a pleasant variety of
styles, and there is a certain childlike freshness about the method by
which the husband adapts himself to his wife's intelligence, presenting
his more difficult arguments in the form of fairy-tales--a habit which
the author may, for all I know, have assimilated through intercourse
with the local native. All goes badly, and things began to threaten an
_impasse_, when one foggy night the raft is cut in two by a paddle-boat
and the pair get separated and nearly killed. They are so pleased to be
restored to one another alive that they tacitly agree to waive their
differences. It is perhaps rather a puerile _dénouement_, and not likely
to be very helpful to the newly-wedded public. There must be very few
couples who can count on having their elemental differences healed by
means of a collision between a honeymoon raft and a paddle-steamer on a
Burmese river. All the same I commend the book, for it has a charm of
manner that will appeal to all. As for its matter, half of it will seem
sound to you if you are a male, and most irritating if you are a female;
and the other way about with the other half. Personally, being a man, I
thought the woman wanted smacking.
* * * * *