[Being specimens of the work of Mr. Punch's newly-established Literary
Ghost Bureau, which supplies appropriate Press contributions on any
subject and over any signature.]
III.--Are we going to the Dogs?
_By Vice-Admiral (Retd.) Sir Boniface Bludger, K.C.B_.
I was standing the other day at the window of the only Club in London
where they understand (or used to understand) what devilled kidneys
really are, musing in post-prandial gloom on the vanished glories of
this England of ours. "_Ichabod!_" I cried aloud to the unheeding stream
of Piccadilly wayfarers; and echo answered, "_Bod_."
What is wrong with us? Or what is wrong with me? Are we actually going
to the dogs, or is it merely that the Club kidneys are going to the
devil? Jeremiah or _Mrs. Gummidge_--which am I? Let the facts
attest and let posterity decide; thank Heaven I shall not be there to
hear the verdict.
After our half-baked victory over the Hun the popular watchword was
"Reconstruction." We have now enjoyed a year and more of this
"building-up" process, and the net result is that houses for those that
lack them are as scarce as iced soda-fountains in the Sahara.
In this work of restoration, we were told, our women voters and
legislators would play a leading part. What part are they in truth
playing? Their main object apparently is still further to embitter the
Drink question, although if they would only put a little more bitter
into our national beverage they might help to lubricate matters. Is it
not a significant fact that the slackness evidenced in every phase of
industry manifests itself at a time when it becomes more and more
difficult to get a decent drink? In this respect our progress is not so
much to the dogs as to the cats, who sneak along on the padded paws of
Prohibition.
The crazy conditions to be observed in the industrial world are well
matched by the state of anarchy that prevails in the sphere of the arts.
Take music, for example. I do not lay claim to more than a nodding
acquaintance with Euterpe, and at a classical concert, I am afraid, the
nodding character of the relation becomes especially marked. To me the
sweetest music in the world is the roar of a fifteen-inch gun on a day
when the visibility is good and plentiful. But I do know enough to be
able to say that the wild asses who with their jazz-bands "stamp o'er
our heads and will not let us sleep" (slightly to amend my old friend
FitzGerald) are nothing less than musical Trotskys.
Music was once regarded as the staple nourishment of the tender passion,
and in my younger days the haunting strains of "The Blue Danube"
assisted many a budding love-affair to blossom. But these non-stop
stridencies of the modern ballroom, even if they left a man with breath
enough to propose, would effectually prevent the girl from catching the
drift of the avowal. You can't roar, "Will you be mine?" into a maiden's
ear as if you were conversing from the quarterdeck, and if you did she'd
only think you were ecstatically emulating the coloured gentleman in the
orchestra with the implements of torture and the misguided voice.
I will pass over in the silence of despair such other symptoms of
national decadence as zigzag painting, whirlpool poetry, cinema
star-gazing and the impossibility of procuring a self-respecting Stilton
(which assuredly is not "living at this hour"). Nor can I trust myself
to speak of the spirit of Bolshevism that seems to animate our so-called
Labour Party, though I comfort myself with the conviction that this
doctrine will not wash, any more than will its authors.
I will conclude these few reflections by drawing attention to the
manners of the modern girl, who is so busily engaged in kicking over the
traces that formerly kept her in her proper place. Nowadays flappers who
should still be in the schoolroom consider themselves called upon to
teach their grandmothers how to conduct their lives; and, to complete
the chaos, the grandmothers are eagerly lapping it up, and in the matter
of dress and deportment are even bettering the instruction. _Si
vieillesse savait!_
Oh for a prophet's tongue to lash our visionless leaders into a
realisation of the rocks on to which we are drifting! We need the
scourge of a Savonarola, but all we get is the boom of a
Bottomley.
"Gone are our country's glories.
_O tempora, O mores!_"
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