importance” would be little short of a criminal act. For human nature
is the same as it ever was, and no “enemy alien” is likely to do “work
of national importance” for his jailer or conqueror without at least
_trying_ to do it in such a manner that it shall never be done, or else
done so badly that it shall not serve its purpose. What sane Englishman
imagines that an “enemy” born of a ruthless race, which has proved
itself murderous and treacherous, will serve _him_ in “work of national
importance” without a good effort to blow him and his “work” to the
four winds of heaven? The guileless simplicity of Sir George Cave
reminds one of the nursery’s “little lamb”:--
“Whichever way the German went,
The Lamb was sure to go!”
Down in the country, where we are commanded, with a sort of megaphone
shouting through the Press, to “Grow food,” when we have no skilled
labour to grow it, we are told that we can employ “enemy prisoners”
on the land. A friend, anxious to get waste land under cultivation,
asked what would be the rate of pay. The reply was: “One guinea a week;
fifteen shillings if you feed him.” Compare this with the pay given to
our British prisoners who work in Germany--“one penny a day,” _i.e._,
sixpence a week! My friend decided to put guineas in the War Loan
rather than spend them on a German prisoner who, if he worked on the
land, would be sure to work “against the grain.” And one asks again:
Why so much indulgence and care for the men of a dishonourable race
who have plunged Europe into blood and tears, and who have murdered
innocent women and children, and who, far from repenting their crimes,
add to them the awful blasphemy of calling God to witness their
“humanity”? Surely it is time this weak and nerveless inaction on the
part of the authorities concerned should cease, and that they should,
in the words of Shakespeare,--
“Take our cause
Out of the gripes of cruel men.”
THE POTATO “SCREAM”
A PROTEST AGAINST A STUPID PANIC
(_Published in the “Pall-Mall Gazette”_)
No potatoes! Dear, dear; whatever shall we do? Some of the clever boys
who write the “purple patches” for the sensational Press say that the
present shortage is “nothing compared to the grim possibilities of
the near future.” “Grim possibilities” is good--a phrase that will
delight the Huns! But, quite dispassionately, may it not be asked how
Britain got on without potatoes in her historic past? Henry VIII. was
a goodly King; he ate greedily, drank heavily, and married profusely,
but never a potato adorned his groaning banquet board. He “fared
sumptuously every day,” and his subjects were not starved. Strong
armies, victorious navies, existed without potatoes. Crècy, poitiers,
Agincourt were fought on other food. People lived in those days even
more hazardously than they live now, and did not worry about “grim
possibilities.” They grew their own food produce, and had no chance of
Overseas supplies. And they never knew the potato!
* * * * *
The history of the potato is quite modern, proving that it is by no
means a necessity of life. According to some historians, it is a native
of Chili and Peru, and was introduced from Santa Fé, in America, by Sir
John Hawkins in 1563--one year before the birth of Shakespeare. So, as
it was a new product and uncommon, it is possible that the Poet of the
World struggled up to manhood without so much as one potato scream! The
soliloquy in _Hamlet_ owes nothing to the potato--the famous adjuration
in _Henry V._:--
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the walls up with our English dead”--
has nothing of the “mealy”-mouthed about it! Other authorities say
it was brought over by Sir Francis Drake in 1586, but not generally
introduced till 1592, and that Sir Walter Raleigh cultivated it first
in Ireland on his estates in the county of Cork. It apparently was
not known in Flanders (according to its biographers) till 1620. Well,
then, how on earth did we get on without it? And if we _did_ get on
without it, why cannot we get on without it again? I imagine that it
is very much the fault of our gifted melodramatic actors on the stage
of the Press that we are startled and “shivered” by the thrilling
exits and entrances of the potato at stated intervals. One Bathurst is
responsible for an actual “potato boom,” he having made it appear that
this particular edible is a main prop of existence, when it is nothing
of the kind. He has frightened a number of unreasoning women into “long
queues” that “besiege” the potato dealers. If these women would only
stay at home and decide to do without potatoes at all, the “shortage”
and the dealers would soon display an altered aspect! One does not like
to be rude about any portion of the human anatomy, but surely people
who know Ireland have heard of the “potato _abdomen_” (the actual word
is too Scriptural for polite usage). There _is_ such a thing; and it
is not at all a desirable ornament. Women who wish to keep graceful,
_svelte_ figures never eat potatoes. In all dietetic rules for the fat,
“grave” warnings are uttered against potatoes, and “grim possibilities”
are in store for any obstinately large man or woman who continues to
eat them!
* * * * *
Why should the restless Bathurst seek to create a sort of South Sea
Bubble in potatoes? The frenzy need not spread, if reasonable folk
will collect their wits (some of which have gone a wool gathering) and
realise that the potato, though an excellent vegetable when properly
cooked (which it seldom is) is not a necessity of life. If it were,
the brilliant history of Britain from the beginning up to Tudor times
would be a mere record of famines. Pessimist Bathurst “gravely” states
that “there will be no potatoes for any one in about six weeks.” Well,
all who have vegetable gardens know that there is always a scarcity of
potatoes every year, when the old ones are practically finished and
we are waiting for the new; and owing to the general “sensationalism”
the scarcity this year is likely to be more pronounced. But it need
not disturb any one’s equanimity. Potatoes are no more necessary to
life and health than the “hot roll,” of which the following amazing
report appears in the Press: “The passing of the hot roll is the chief
sacrifice.” (Think of these noble words! “The chief sacrifice!” One
would imagine it was the life of a hero!) “Tens of thousands of people
will lament the loss of a breakfast luxury!” “Lament the loss?” Oh, oh!
Tens of thousands of people lamenting a hot breakfast roll! Ye Gods! “A
roll,” continued the Press-interviewed baker, “alters its character
when stale.” True, deplorably true! But if those tens of thousands
of lamenting people do not alter _their_ character and “lament” to
better purpose than for the daily indigestion provided for them in “hot
roll” at breakfast, it is time they felt the pinch, not only of “no
potatoes,” but “no food” at all for a wholesome period of fasting, with
shame and penitence!
“HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF”
A STUDY IN WAR BREAD
(_Published in the “Pall-Mall Gazette”_)
Complaints are rife and bitter concerning the tough, indigestible,
and injurious mixture permitted to the taxpaying public as “war
bread.” General condemnation of Government flour has been expressed
at a meeting of the London Master Bakers’ Protection Society, where a
resolution was passed asking for an interview with the Prime Minister
to point out the “ineptitude” of the Ministry of Food. Thousands of us
are of the same mind with the Master Bakers! Thousands of us affirm
the “ineptitude” of which they speak. Thousands of us know that a more
lamentable display of ignorance concerning the “things that matter”
could hardly be seen between now and the next world. Furthermore, the
Master Bakers (God bless them!) have actually declared that if the
Bread Order is not revoked or amended they, to safeguard the health
of consumers, will be compelled to take “drastic action.” Well done,
Master Bakers! The sooner this drastic action is effected the better
for many ailing, suffering human creatures. The faddists and health
specialists may talk as they will, nothing can satisfy the appetite or
suit the palate of the average man and woman so well and so safely as
bread made with _pure white flour_. The raw germ of wheat, though in a
sense nutritious, exercises a “very deleterious effect,” so say the
bakers, on the colour and keeping qualities of the loaf. In many cases
“war bread” causes internal hæmorrhage, to say nothing of fermentative
dyspepsia and severe inflammation of the delicate coating of one’s
interior mechanism, and it would be easy to compile a volume of
statistics proving the poisonous effect produced by this coarse stuff
on our soldiers in hospital who are slowly recovering from gunshot
wounds or shell shock, and who are peculiarly sensitive to the quality
of their food. The distinguished muddlers who are muddling with the
grain and the “milling” thereof, seem to judge the fine and complex
human organism as somewhat tougher than shoe-leather and less liable to
injury than pig-iron. But they are not the first of their class by any
means! There were muddlers before them, as senseless, as callous, and
as deaf to reason as they--men who, like themselves, were “dressed in
a little brief authority” during that terrific upheaval of which the
very name is ominous--the great French Revolution. Here is what Carlyle
writes of the bread trouble in those days:--
“Complaints there are that the food is spoiled and produces an effect
on the intestines, as well as ‘a smarting in the thoat and palate,’
which a municipal proclamation warns you to disregard or even to
consider as drastic--beneficial! But ... the Mayor of Saint Denis, so
black was his bread, has, by a dyspeptic populace, been hanged on ‘La
Lanterne’ there!”
“La Lanterne” is not a pleasant theme to dwell upon, and we may
be deeply thankful that we have something nowadays less ferocious
than such a form of settling disputes between the people and their
rulers--the great trade unions and protection societies, consolidated
bodies of reasoning and reasonable men, who can, when necessity calls,
take concerted action against Sentimental Cant and wilful Ignorance.
For, to quote Carlyle again, “Is not Cant the _materia prima_ of the
Devil, from which all falsehoods, imbecilities, and abnominations body
themselves, from which no true thing _can_ come?” And are not the
Master Bakers, as well as the Seamen’s and Firemen’s Union, conscious
of this Cant somewhere? Whether in pacifism or food-controlling,
matters little, so long as they can put an exterminating finger on the
spot!
Ours is a land of cranks; we produce cranks as quickly as untended
grass grows plantains. We have peace cranks, food cranks, health
cranks; and, without doubt, plenty of these will dash wildly into the
open with hysterical hymns of praise for the utterly detestable “war
bread,” more vigorously possibly when they think their fellow-creatures
are being made ill by it. But “let ’em gnash as can,” as the toothless
old dame blandly observed after hearing a sermon on hell where “there
shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Happily deprived of all
ability to “gnash,” hell offered no alarms for her. Similarly, those
whose powers of digestion cannot tolerate “war bread” will support
the screams of whole-meal faddists with equanimity, saying, “Let ’em
masticate as can.” If “whole-meal” gives strength and sustenance with
hæmorrhage, most of us will prefer to be a little less strong and
well-nourished, without internal bleedings. The complaints of the
bread sold in Paris during the fateful months preceding the French
Revolution are precisely the same as now; but, whatever the rising
tide of discontent may be, we have bulwarks against it in our own
people’s organisations, which bind the members of every trade together
against any possible injustice or tyranny. This Empire has cause to be
thankful for its vast network of trade unions; they are in very truth
a governing body whose weight and importance cannot be over-estimated.
And so it may be that the Master Bakers will be the saviours of
the country’s health, despite Food Controllers and their ideas of
“milling.” We are losing enough life, Heaven knows, on the fields of
battle; we do not want illness and the spread of disease at home.
We can be sparing and careful of grain and precious with our “white
flour,” but we need not debilitate or poison our people with food which
they cannot digest or which in any way proves injurious to women and
children. Waste is encouraged by the making of bread which the people
dislike. They would rather throw it away than suffer illness--which is
very natural. The Food Controller is safe from “La Lanterne” in these
days; but everybody will be glad if the London Master Bakers’ Society
will take the matter well in hand and see to it that we need not “live
on the husks which the swine did eat.” The country will not starve
because we prefer to be well on white flour rather than dyspeptic on
brown!
“SHODDY CHIVALRY”
A NAVAL CHADBAND
(_Published in the “Pall-Mall Gazette”_)
So now we know! No longer need we denounce the “submarine menace”; no
longer need we (as the German Press suggests) “grow pallid with fear,”
for we are in “brave and gallant hands!” “Brave and gallant” are the
noble creatures who sink hospital ships; “brave and gallant” are the
sharers of dividends in the corpse-fat factory; “brave and gallant” are
the raiders who sought to intercept the Prime Minister on his way back
from France across Channel in order to make short work of him and his
escort--“brave and gallant” are they all! Our own Vice-Admiral at Dover
implied as much when, with all the unctuousness of Dickens’s immortal
Mr. Chadband, he laid a wreath of flowers on the coffin of one of the
Hun raiders with the inscription: “To a brave and gallant enemy!” He
spared no wreath and offered no tribute to any of the dead among our
own bluejackets, whose “brave and gallant” conduct had succeeded in
beating off and sinking the enemy’s ships; they were “only” British
sailors. But for the dead Huns, this British Vice-Admiral publicly
displayed the tenderness of a twin brother. One wonders what Nelson
would have said to such an action? How does it accord with the
Defence of the Realm? One can imagine the noble dust of the victor of
Trafalgar stirring for very shame at such a lack of dignity at the
very time when British ships are being wickedly sunk and British lives
wickedly lost by the nefarious “brave and gallant” brutality of an
enemy with whom honour is a mere straw. It may perhaps be easier now to
understand the rumours that these “brave and gallant” Huns are allowed
to work with our men in British docks, where they watch our ships
loaded with millions of munitions, and count up our troops leaving for
the front, and then, without doubt, communicate with their kinsmen of
the submarines, letting them know the hour and moment of departure! No
wonder that our ships are sunk! Such methods prepare the way for their
sinking. No action is taken by the authorities to put a stop to the
inroad of German labour in the docks alongside of the British--a state
of things which, on the face of it, invites and encourages spying and
treachery. Such scandals are “an offence that’s rank, And smells to
Heaven”; and the powers in office who allow them to go on without check
are nearly as guilty of the loss of torpedoed ships and lives as the
Huns themselves. And when a British Vice-Admiral sets the hall-mark of
“brave and gallant” on even a dead specimen of the most treacherous,
inhuman, and barbaric foe his country has ever had to contend with, we
can hardly wonder at anything except the amazing excess of patience,
wellnigh lethargy, with which the British people tolerate such an
exhibition of Chadbandism in the Navy. One is thankful for the plain
speaking of Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, who, in the House of
Lords, designated this action as one of “maudlin sentimentality and
shoddy chivalry.” There spoke the sturdy seaman and loyal Britisher,
untainted by the pro-German measles, which infect only the degenerates
of our race. The Vice-Admiral at Dover, by his openly displayed
admiration for the Hun, would seem to wish us to understand that he is
something neither British nor of the sea--“neither fish, flesh, fowl,
nor good red herring.” We can almost hear him soliloquising over the
flower-strewn coffin of the “brave and gallant” Hun: “My friend, you
are to me a pearl, you are to me a diamond, you are to me a gem, you
are to me a jewel! And why, my friend? Are you a beast of the field?
No. A bird of the air? No. A fish of the sea or river? No. You are a
Hun, my friend! You are much worse than any beast of the field; more
voracious than any bird of the air; more slippery than any fish of
the sea or river! Oh, how glorious to be a Hun! And if I went forth
as far as the Southampton Docks and there saw a ‘brave and gallant’
fellow-countryman of yours taking stock of troops and munitions, and I
was to come back and call unto me Sir Edward Carson and say unto him,
‘Lo the docks are barred against Huns,’ would that be terewth?”
No; it would not be “terewth”--unless, as the original Chadband
propounded, such terewth, or truth, were another form of deception.
Until we have loyal men “above suspicion” in authority at home we shall
never satisfy our Allies abroad. America will be unable to understand
a British Vice-Admiral laying flowers on the coffin of an enemy whose
intent was, without doubt, to sink and slay a valuable life on which
much of Britain’s welfare depends, any more than she will understand
the collection of a large sum of money for the assistance of Germans
in England (more than £17,000) to which liberal subscriptions have been
made by two German members of the Privy Council. As Mark Twain observed
during his tour in Palestine, “Blessed if I believe a turtle can sing!”
“HINDENBURG’S EYE!”
THE BABIES’ BOGEY
(_Published in the “Pall-Mall Gazette”_)
There are several objections raised to the merry-go-round “National
Service” whirl devised by Mr. Neville Chamberlain. “Uneasy lies the
head that wears a crown” nowadays, even if it only be the crown of
a temporary Director of Service or of Food Production. Even Lord
Devonport comes in for his share of contumely, especially since
he assumed that a 5-oz. chop was sufficient for a busy City man’s
luncheon. Lord Devonport has evidently never tried his hand at cooking,
and is blissfully unaware how soon 5 oz. may be reduced to 3 oz. on
the fiery grill! The public resent this ignorance; but nothing excites
their indignation more than the blatant, vulgar, and positively
offensive advertisements which have been spread broadcast to call them
forth to voluntary enrolment. Whoever it may be that is the inventor,
designer, or word-weaver of these newspaper roarers, he serves his
country ill, and is guilty of the worst possible taste. Instead of a
dignified, effective appeal to Labour, these wretched advertisements
are mere gibes and insults flung in the face of a brave, patiently
enduring people, whose homes have, in many thousands of cases, been
invaded by Death, and whose hearts are wrung by sudden and bitter
bereavements, none the less hard to bear because borne with such noble
and uncomplaining fortitude.
“Are You Fiddling While Rome Burns?” asks one of these idiotic
newspaper Fat Letters, a question met with the silent scorn of many
tired eyes grown dim with weeping, or strained and anxious with
watching and waiting for the beloved ones who may never return. Is it
impossible to expect from these Government Press agents (if they are
Government Press agents) a little thought for the people they seek to
attract, a little decency and respect? At present their loud, even
coarse, advertisements represent--
“The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes.”
The last form of their coster-like shouting is perhaps the worst.
“HINDENBURG’S EYE IS UPON YOU!”
Now, what in the name of all that is British, do we care about
“Hindenburg’s Eye”? Are we a whimpering troop of babies to be frighted
with the eye of a Hun? or to be told “Hush-oh! Mind its little P’s and
Q’s! Go and do its little National Service properly, or ‘Hindenburg’s
eye’ will be on you!” Was ever such arrant, open, disgraceful nonsense!
What have we to do with “Hindenburg’s eye,” except bomb it out if we
can? What terrors can it have for us? Does it roll or squint, blink or
wink? Nobody cares, but if it is to be “on” anywhere, it had better be
fixed to Berlin! It’s an old eye and a filmy one--probably, as Hamlet
pointedly remarked, “purging thick amber and plumtree gum”--it’s a
false eye and a brutal one, but just now it has enough to do to see
its own surroundings without dropping out of its socket. The tactless,
witless individual who dares to write and circulate would-be “scare”
lines about this bloodthirsty old eye being “on” the brave men and
women of Britain, watching (as if such a brute had authority to watch!)
to see how many of them work (and weep!) willingly enough in their
country’s service, should be at once convinced of his unfortunate lack
of intelligence and discernment. Any one with the smallest spark of
imagination must almost see and hear the loud German guffaw of mockery
and delight at this fool’s placard for the British:--
“HINDENBURG HAS HIS EYE UPON YOU!”
“Ha, ha! Dot is goot!” says Hans to Fritz. “Unser Hindenburg! Dot is
fright for Gott strafe England!--and de English _demselves_ say it!”
Weird inventor of megaphone press-roarings, whoever you are, don’t do
it! You may be a Bernard Shaw in the bud for all we know, but we have
enough already of the perfect flower. National Service demands your
brilliancy elsewhere. Offer yourself as a substitute for the bootblack
who may be glad to go “on the land.” The Cause is injured by these
unwarrantable music-hall methods. Call up the people with a friend’s
cheerful and inspiring voice--a silver trumpet-blast if you will--but
not with a donkey’s bray!
(_The above little article had the fortunate effect of causing
several of these placards, so offensive to the British spirit, to
be removed._)
“HOARDING”
A MODERN SETTING OF AN OLD PLAY AND A LITTLE STORY OF THE Y.M.C.A.
“_Man, proud man,
Dress’d in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,
His ghostly essence like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep!_”
_Measure for Measure._
Nothing in all the various confused and contradictory orders issued by
the capricious and neurotic “Dora” gave such unalloyed festive delight
as the edict against “hoarding.” It opened the door to all the little
spies and scandal-mongers of every neighbourhood, especially to the
provincial types of these gentry, who are always of a more inquisitive
and slanderous disposition than the same class found in large cities,
for the reason that they have little other excitement beyond the
gratifying stimulus of inquiring into their neighbours’ affairs and
meddling with them if they can. The “Hoarding” order suited them down
to the ground and set them all on the alert, peering into windows and
peeping through open doors--following their “dear friends” into shops
and taking eager notes of their purchases, till every eye grew hard
and sharp as a gimlet, and every nose as pointed as the beak of a
crow. It was astonishing and amusing to watch the alteration for the
worse in the looks of men and women during this period; the theory
of “psycho-suggestion” was amply verified in the visible fact that
people who were previously open-faced and good-natured were almost
unrecognisable in the sudden “squeezing-in” of their features to the
ugly furrows of suspicion and meanness.