["Contributors are particularly requested not to send
verses. They are not wanted in any circumstances and cannot
be printed, acknowledged or returned."--_British Weekly,
July 19th_.]
I once believed the "Man of Kent"
To be the Muses' firm supporter
And only less benevolent
To bards than Mr. C.K. SHORTER.
But this untimely cruel blow
Has quite irrevocably shattered
The hopes which till a week ago
My fondest aspirations flattered.
Wounds that are dealt us by our friends
Are faithful, but the name endearing
Of friend is hardly his who lends
And then denies the bard a hearing.
How then, O brother songsters, can
You take it lying down, and meekly
Submit to this tyrannic ban
Laid on you by _The British Weekly_?
No, no, you'll rather emulate
The Minstrel Boy, and we shall find you
Storming its barred and bolted gate
With reams of lyrics slung behind you.
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"The time is ripe for the authorities to stop all street
traffic and to order all unauthorised persons to take cover
under penalty at the approach of the air raiders."--_Daily
Paper_.
Personally, as a means of shelter we prefer the coal-cellar to any
penalty.
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"Will Mr. Russell deny that 660 million gallons of milk
were produced in Ireland last year, of which half went
to the creameries and more to the margarine factories
and to England?"--_Letter in Irish Paper_.
The Irish gallon would appear to be as elastic as the Irish mile.
* * * * *
"DIVISIONAL SIGNS."
The purpose of a Divisional Sign is to deceive the enemy. Let us
suppose that you belong to the 580th Division, B.E.F. You do not put
"580" on your waggons and your limbers and on the tin-hats of your
Staff. Certainly not. The enemy would know about you if you did that.
You have a secret sign, such as tramps chalk on your wall at home,
to let other tramps know that you are a stingy devil with a dog.
There are many theories as to how these signs are chosen. One is
that a committee of officers sits _in camerâ_ for forty-eight hours
without food or drink till it has decided on an arrow or a cat, or
a dandelion, rampant.
Let us take it that a cat is chosen--a quiet thing in cats--crimson on
a green-and-white chess-board background. Forthwith (as adjutants say)
a crimson cat on a green-and-white chess-board background is painted
and embroidered on everything that can be painted and embroidered
on--limbers and waggons and hand-carts and arm-bands and the
tin-hats of the Staff. And the Division goes forth as it were masked,
disguised, just like one of Mr. LE QUEUX'S diplomatist heroes at a
fancy-dress ball, wearing a domino. You perceive the mystery of it?
None of your naked numbers for us B.E.F. men. The Division marches
through a village, and the dear old Man Who Knows, cropping up again
in the army, says, "Ha! A red cat on a green-and-white chess-board
back-ground? That's the Seventeenth Division."
You see it now? The enemy agent overhears. The false news is sent
crackling through the ether to Berlin (wireless, my dear, in the
cellar, of course). The German General Staff looks up the village on
a map, and sticks into it a flag marked 17. Not 580, mark you. And
the General Staff frowns, and Majesty pushes the ends of its moustache
into its eyes at the knowledge that the Seventeenth Division is in
----.
And all the time it is in ----! And the agent pockets his cheque. So
wars are won and lost.
Just conceive the romance of it. It is heraldry gone mad.
Myself, however, I incline to another theory as to the origin of these
symbols.
A Higher Command enters his office. Higher Commands always enter. The
office is hung, like a studio in one of Mr. GEORGE MORROW'S pictures,
with diagrams of circles and triangles and crosses and straight lines.
The Higher Command, being a man of like passions with ourselves,
has just finished tinned Oxford marmalade and a cigarette. He heads
for the "IN" basket on his desk and takes from it the "Arrivals and
Departures" paper. "Ha!" says he to the lady secretary, "I see six
new divisions landed yesterday." He pauses. Outside there is no sound
to be heard save the loud and continuous crash of the sentry's hand
against his rifle as he salutes the passing A.D.C.'s. "What about
signs?" says the Higher Command. The lady secretary says nothing. She
floods the carburettor of the typewriter preparatory to thumping out
"Ref. attached correspondence" on it.
The Higher Command stares at the diagrams on the wall. He is feeling
strangely light-hearted this morning. He has won five francs at bridge
the night before from the D.A.D.M.O. A.D.G.S. And mere circles and
squares have somehow lost their savour for him. He plunges. "What
about a lion?" he says.
The lady secretary opens the throttle and plays a few bars on the
"cap." key.
"A red lion?" says the Higher Command seductively.
"It has already been done," says the lady secretary coldly.
"Who by--I mean by whom?" inquires the H.C. indignantly.
"By the Deputy Assistant Director of Higher Commands, when you were
on leave last week," she tells him.
He mutters a military oath against the D.A.D.H.C. Then his face
clears.
"Tigers?" he suggests hopefully.
"We might do a green tiger," she says reluctantly.
"With yellow stripes!" shouts the H.C.
"On a mauve background," says she, warming to it.
And so one division is disposed of. But it is not always so, of
course.
After a Hun counter-attack, for instance, the H.C. may gaze morosely
on his geometrical figures and throw off a little thing in triangles
and St. Andrew's crosses. Or when the moon is at the full you may
have a violet allotted to you as your symbol. One never knows. My
own divisional sign, for instance, is an iddy-umpty plain on a field
plainer. We vary the heraldry by ringing changes on the colours. On
our brigade arm-band it becomes an iddy-umpty gules on a field azure.
If I could be quite sure of the heraldic slang for puce I would tell
you what it is on our Army Corps arm-band. On a waggon it used to be
an iddy-umpty blank on a field muddy. But administrative genius has
changed all that. A routine order, the other day, ordered a pink
border to be painted round it, and this first simple essay of the
departed Morse goes now through the villages of France in a bed of
roses.
We wish sometimes that our conditions were changed as easily as our
signs.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Dugal._ "I DOOT, TAMMAS, THERE'S SOME INFORMEESHUN
THAT MAN LLOYD GEORGE HAS GOT THAT WE HAVENA GOT."]
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