RAID JOTTINGS.

A good deal of dissatisfaction is expressed with the state of the cellars to which people have been invited during the raids. "Surely," writes one of our correspondents, "it is a scandal that, at this time in the world's history, some cellars should be totally destitute of wine. That there should be no coal in the coal-cellars is understandable enough; but to ask the timid public into empty wine cellars is a travesty of hospitality."

Every effort will be made when the House reassembles to provide separate cellars for the SPEAKER and Mr. PEMBERTON BILLING.

Mr. JIMMY WILDE, the Welsh boxer, it has been widely announced, had a marvellous escape from an air-bomb. The little champion (for once not in a position to hit back) was standing in the door of his hotel when the projectile dropped, and blew him along the passage, but inflicted no injuries. The world will therefore hear from Mr. WILDE again, whose future antagonists should view with a shudder this inability of the Gothas to knock him out.

Mr. WILDE is, however, not alone in his good fortune. From all the bombarded parts, and from some others, come news of remarkable pieces of good luck, due almost or wholly to the fact that the bombs fell on spots where our correspondents were not standing, although they might easily have been there had they not been elsewhere. The similarity of their experience is indeed most striking.

Mr. HAROLD BEGBIE, for example, who disapproves of soldiers laughing, happened to be in the country on the night of the 24th. Had he been in town he might, in a melancholy reverie caused by the incorrigible light-heartedness of his fellow-countrymen, have wandered bang into the danger zone. No one can be too thankful that he did not.

Sir HENRY WOOD'S project to play TCHAIKOVSKY'S "1812" in such perfect time that the audience will have the pleasure of hearing our anti-aircraft men supply the big-gun effects, although laudable, is, it is feared, doomed to failure.

There was no air raid over London on Wednesday the 26th. The sudden noise (which happily produced no panic) in His Majesty's Theatre was merely Miss LILY BRAYTON dropping the clothes she was not wearing.

A CONSTANT RAIDER writes:—"It is understood that the German airmen's motto—borrowed, without acknowledgment, from the dental profession—is 'We spare no panes.'"

In view of recent events Miss TENNYSON JESSE is considering whether her new novel, Secret Bread, should be renamed Air-raided Bread.

Mr. CHARLES COCHRAN is very anxious that it should be known that not a single bomb hit him. Had any of them done so, the consequences might have been very serious. This happy immunity being his, he wishes it also to be known that his various and meritorious theatres are doing even more astonishing business than before.

Mr. COCHRAN, however, together with other theatrical managers, has a dangerous rival. The raids are threatening to ruin the matinées now so prevalent by setting up counter attractions. The thousands of people (not only errand-boys) who now stand all day to watch the workmen mend a hole in the roadway caused by a bomb would otherwise, but for this engrossing and never tedious spectacle, be in this theatre or that.

Mr. HALL CAINE telegraphs from the Isle of Man that no bombs having fallen there he remains intact.

The Ideal Lodger.

"Wanted, two Single Rooms, in private or boarding house; special arrangements for constant absence."—Australian Paper.

LETTERS OF A GENERAL TO HIS SON

(On obtaining a Junior Staff appointment).

MY DEAR BOY,—We both congratulate you heartily on your appointment. Acting on your suggestion, I have hinted to your mother that her anxieties for your safety may be considerably lessened in consequence. You will, of course, continue to address letters likely to cause her any apprehension to my club. On entering this new phase of your career you will not take it amiss if I offer you a few words of practical advice:—

1. Do not neglect your advantages. Always visit the line with a double mission, one for the right of the line and one for the left—and see which they are shelling.

2. If they are strafing all along the line, inspect Transport.

3. Cultivate the detached manner when dealing with all but the very senior. This will give you what is called distinction. Charm will come later.

4. What you don't know, guess. If wrong, guess again.

5. Always put off on to others what you cannot do yourself.

6. What little you do, do well—and see that it gets talked about. Medals are going round, and you may as well have them as anybody else.

7. Belong to a good Mess and invite people who are inclined to criticise.

8. When rung up on a subject of which you know nothing, learn to conduct the conversation so that you abstract the necessary enlightenment from the questioner himself (while appearing to be perfectly conversant with what he is talking about), and, if possible, get him to suggest the answer to his own conundrum. In other words, bluff as in poker (which I trust you don't play).

These are just a few little hints that have occurred to me. Your own good sense will guide you as to the rest. Everybody at home is taking a tremendous interest in the War, I'm glad to say. Hardly a day passes but I am asked at least a dozen times when it is going to be over.

Your affectionate Father, etc., etc.

From an order recently issued at the Front:

"Great care must always be exercised in tethering horses to trees, as they are apt to bark, and thereby destroy the trees."

Wow, wow!

SIGNS OF INNS.

"INSTANT DEMAND FOR WARNINGS.

"MAYORS OF LONDON MOVING."

Evening News.

They ought to set a better example.

"Certain people seem to have misread the statement last week that flour would be reduced 1s. 1½d. that flour would be reduced to 1s. 1½d. but that that that flour would be reduced to 1s. 11½d. but that amount or somewhere about it would be taken off the former price."—Rossendale Free Press.

There ought to be no misunderstanding after this.

"At such close quarters were attackers and attacked that to have used grenades would manifestly have been equally dangerous to both. So, after a brief pause to collect the means, our men began to pelt the Huns with bottles filled with water. Apparently the enemy thought this was some new form of 'frightfulness,' for they speedily threw down their arms and tossed up their hands."—Daily Telegraph.

Our contemporary, while rightly applauding the resourcefulness of our bombers, might have given the Germans credit for their remarkable feat of acrobacy.

FOR SERVICES RENDERED.

If ever, in a railing mood, I have unjustly aspersed the Army; if, by reason of deferred pay, over-diluted stew, or leave adjourned, I have accused the Powers That Be of a step-motherly indifference to my welfare, I hereby withdraw unreservedly all such aspersions and accusations. For since my discharge tokens of kindly interest and affection have reached me in such rapid succession that I am kept wondering what the next will be. With a quarter of a million men in his care (as I suppose, since my number was 256801), my fatherly Record Officer has yet time for frequent correspondence with "crocks" like me. He registers all his letters; he makes his instructions so plain that a very suckling might understand them; he takes every precaution lest, in the press of business, I should be overlooked.

I had been at home about a week when his first communication arrived—an unexpected windfall purporting to represent the balance of my pay and allowances. The method of computation would probably have transcended my intelligence if it had been indicated; but there was no attempt at explanation, nor did I desire it. I stamped and signed the receipt form according to unmistakable directions, and returned it to Headquarters. A few days later certain arrears of Separation Allowance came to hand—arrears whose existence our own unaided sagacity would never have revealed. Guided by an illustrative diagram we signed the receipt in due form and returned it. Before we had ceased congratulating ourselves on these accessions, yet another instalment of pay was delivered, with form of receipt as in the previous case. We were almost convinced that the country cottage and the leisured ease of our dreams were within our grasp, but the well ran dry at that point. Some of my balance may yet lurk in the coffers of the Paymaster, but I dare not throw off the yoke of my bondage on the strength of a bare possibility.

After a brief interval, Records returned to the charge with a bulky envelope containing matter of great interest. One of the enclosures certified that, for the term of three months, I was transferred to Class W.P., Army Reserve. I made various conjectures as to the meaning of "W," and so did Cinderella. On the whole we favoured "Warrior," but perhaps we were wrong. At all events, the interpretation of "P" was clearly set forth by another document, which explained that I was entitled to a pension of eight shillings and threepence per week so long as I remained among the happy W.P.'s. There was also an identity certificate, whereon some clergyman, magistrate or policeman must attest that I was alive when I brought it to him, and a form of receipt for all the papers in the batch. I signed it according to instructions and returned it to Headquarters.

The identity certificate went back to a specified address, where it set in motion machinery by which my pension paper was presently delivered to me—accompanied by a form of receipt. This paper was covered with mystic circles, whose meaning I discovered when I presented myself at the post-office. They were apparently intended to appease the presiding divinity by gratifying her passion for stamping things. She hit my paper accurately in four of its rings, and then, with a pleased smile, handed me thirty-three shillings.

Meanwhile Records had stirred up a benevolent neighbour to call upon me. He belonged to an organisation for assisting discharged soldiers; he was Opportunity in person for anyone who might need him; but, as Cinderella explained, I was at that moment engaged upon work of national importance and could not claim his help. Nevertheless she thanked the gentleman and placed the incident to the credit of the Powers That Be.

No acknowledgment was required for this visit; but a week later my war services' badge was delivered per registered post, and I confessed the fact both on the usual green slip and on the form of receipt which was enclosed. Henceforth I was able to appear in public with an outward and visible sign of the ferocity which underlies my demeanour, and my most lurid tales had a substantial witness.

Two months went by, during which the O. i/c Records made no further additions to our postbag. There are mornings when your friends appear to have forgotten you, when a Levitical postman bangs your neighbour's gate mockingly and forthwith crosses the street. On such mornings our thoughts may have turned to Records with a certain yearning; but mainly we felt his care like the air about us, and had no need that it should materialise in idle correspondence.

At last my term of probation came to an end. In response to a note from Records (with form for receipt) I returned my Transfer Certificate and received in its place my final Discharge Papers—with a form for receipt. At the same time I heard that the Commissioners were in earnest consultation as to the continuance of my pension.

Thus goodness and loving-kindness have followed me ever since I handed in the uniform. To this day I am the subject of anxious consideration. Not a week ago the early post brought me my character. Imagine the incessant parental watchfulness of an authority which can testify concerning one two hundred and fifty thousandth of its charge that he is "a good soldier, willing and industrious, honest, sober, trustworthy and well-conducted." Think of the kindly interest which prompted the O. i/c Records to insert a form of receipt—"to guard against impersonation." My character might have got into base hands; some unworthy person might have gone about professing to possess that willingness, that industry, that sobriety, that trustworthiness and that elegance of conduct which are mine alone; but the form of receipt would baffle him. I cannot explain how, but Records knows.

What is yet in store for me the future bides; but this I know: while England endures and Records continues to record, I shall not walk alone.

PURE ENGLISH.

[A writer in The Daily Express has been discussing the questions where and by whom the purest English is spoken and written, and pronounces strongly in favour of East Anglia, FITZGERALD, BORROW and Mr. CONRAD.]

Extract from a sermon:—

"We meet here to-day under circumstances which are not ordinary ... We seem to hear 'the sound of a gong in the tops of the mulberry trees.'"—The Record.

This must be some air-raid warning by the rural police.

"On the roads near by 'a Verdun' signposts have been replaced by new ones reading 'A Glorieux Verdun.' The name of France herself might well be altered to 'Glorieux France.'"—Canadian Paper.

Vive le France!

From a report of the British Cotton-growing Association:—

"The negotiations with the Government for the development of the irritation scheme for the Gezira plain are still under consideration."—The Field.

We trust we shall hear no more of this vexatious project.

"War conditions have given occasion in Germany for the study of an oedema disease (swelling) unknown in peace times. Among the civil population it has been generally located in the feet and legs, and in more than one-half of the cases studied some degree of facial swelling was present."—Daily Paper.

This last symptom is especially noticeable in the case of the KAISER.

"Prior to the meeting [of the Irish Convention] in Cork the members of the secretariat attended in Sir Horace Plunkett's private room, and presented him with a solid ivory chairman's mantle."—Dublin Evening Mail.

But we are glad to state that the proceedings were quite orderly, and that the Chairman did not need this protective garment.

GOING BACK.

"In these days," I began, but Francesca interrupted me.

"When anyone starts like that," she said, "I know he's going to make the War an excuse for doing something rather more paltry than usual."

"'Paltry' is not," I said, "a very nice word."

"I'll take the phrase back and substitute 'rather less noble and generous.'"

"Yes, I like that better. I'll pass it in that form as your comment on what you haven't yet allowed me to say."

"Quick," she said; "what was it? Don't leave me in suspense."

"In these days," I said, "one mustn't spend too much on railway companies."

"True," she said. "I'm with you there in these or any other days."

"And therefore," I continued, "it will be quite enough if one of us accompanies Frederick, our lively ten-year-old, to begin his second term at school. There is no necessity whatever for both of us to go with him."

"Hear, hear!" said Francesca; "your idea is better than I thought. I will go with Frederick and you can stay at home and look after the girls."

"No," I said firmly, "I will take Frederick, and you must remain behind and keep an eye on Muriel, Nina and Alice."

"No," she said.

"Yes," I said; "my eye's not good enough for the job; it hasn't been trained for it. I should be sure to mislay one of the girls, and then you'd never forgive yourself for having put upon me a burden greater than I could bear. Besides," I added, "goings back to school are in the man's department, with football, cricket, boxing and things of that kind."

"And what," she said scornfully, "are you graciously pleased to leave in my department?"

"Oh, I thought you knew. I leave to you table-manners, tidiness (that's a tough one), hand-washing (that's a tougher), reading aloud from Kipling and tucking him up in bed."

"Quite a good list, if by no means a complete one; but in these days one mustn't be too critical. Anyhow it proves that I must take the boy back to school."

"It proves just the contrary."

"No," she said, "it proves what ought to be there by leaving it out."

"That," I said, "is a record even for you, Francesca."

"Well, it's logical anyway. How, for instance, could you talk to the Matron? You'd be utterly lost before you'd been at it for half a minute."

"Don't you worry about that," I said. "I have accomplishments of which you don't seem to be aware, and one of them is talking to Matrons at preparatory schools."

"Anyhow, you're not going to have a chance of showing it off this time, because I am going to take the boy back to school. That's final."

It was, and in due time Francesca took the boy back. Her account of the farewell moments was not without a certain amount of pathos, several other mothers and their boys being involved in the valedictory scene. Four or five days afterwards, however, we received the following letter, which put to flight any idea that Frederick might be pining:—

"I am very happy this term, and I am getting on fairly well in my work. I like football much better than cricket. I have three or four times just not got a goal, once it was when I kicked into goal the goalkeeper (3 st. 4 lb.!) rushed out and kicked it away, and once when we were playing Blues and Reds, and I was on the Blue side, and I managed by good luck to get through a crowd of shouting Reds and followed it up amidst shouts from the Blues and shot it to the Red goal; but the goalkeeper (a different one) came out and hit it away, at which I twisted my knee and collapsed (not with pain, because it wasn't anything, but with anger and desparation!) Am I to learn boxing this term? I am sorry to hear the hens are not behaving well."

I should like to have seen the bold goalkeeper of 3 st. 4 lb. It is a proud weight.

R.C.L.

YESTERDAY IN OXFORD STREET.

R.F.

Light on the Situation.

"Dr. Michaelis is the trusted no-hold-out until their plans of annexation have been carried out, and they always receive a gracious telegram in reply. So he who cares to hear knows what the hour is striking."—Egyptian Mail.

Journalistic Humility.

"Two years ago The Daily Mail begged our sluggish authorities to study the question of daylight air-raids as well as night attacks. We pointed out their risk; we asked that the best means of meeting them should be considered and the best method of warning the public investigated. The result was that nothing was done."—Daily Mail.

"Of old was it written that they who taketh up the sword shall perish by the sword, and the written word remaineth."—The Daily Mirror.

But it hath been a little damaged in the interval.

"It may be estimated the Germans opposing our troops represented an average concentration of more than four men to every yard of front."—Liverpool Echo.

Never could it have been done with four pre-war Germans!

"Up to July 26 1,559 lists had been issued officially of German casualties. Each list contained 19,802 pages of three columns per page, and each column contained between 80 and 90 names of dead, wounded, and missing officers and men—a total of nearly 6,000,000."—Daily Sketch.

We trust our spirited contemporary has not joined the Hide-the-Truth Press, for we make the sum approximately 7,872,186,090.

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)

I think I prefer Mr. WELLS'S recent essay in the Newest Theology to this too concrete illustration of The Soul of a Bishop (CASSELL). It's not that I object to the irreverence of stripping a poor tired bishop of cassock and gaiters, pursuing him to a sleepless bed and cinematographing all his physical twistings and turnings, his moral misgivings, his torturing doubts. I owe too much to Mr. WELLS' irreverences to mind that sort of thing; and I must say that, for a man who can't have had very much to do with the episcopacy in his busy life, he does manage to give a confoundedly plausible atmosphere to the whole setting. There are two letters from an older bishop to Dr. Scrope, the one, yieldingly tolerant, to dissuade him from resignation, the other, written after the accomplished fact, with touches of exquisitely restrained yet palpable malice, which strike me as masterly projections. Mr. WELLS also contrives a wonderful impressiveness in certain passages of the bishop's three visions. But I can't, even after careful re-reading, see the point of making the bishop's enlightenment depend upon a mysterious drug. This has an effect of impishness. There is nothing in Dr. Scrope's development that might not have taken place without this fantastic assistance ... I suppose the general suggestion of this rather wayward and hasty but conspicuously sincere book is, that if only an occasional bishop would secede it would make it easier for the plain man to listen to the rest. And there may be something in this.

To those who are in love with Mr. W.J. LOCKE'S incurable romanticism or who have a taste for heroines that "stiffen in a sudden stroke of passion looking for the instant electrically beautiful," let me commend The Red Planet (LANE). As a matter of fact Betty, the heroine, is quite a dear, and the narrator, Major Meredyth, a maimed hero of the Boer War, who looks at this one from the tragic angle of an invalid chair, is, apart from a habit of petulant and not very profound grousing at Governments in The Daily Rail manner, a sport who thoroughly deserves the reward of poor widowed Betty's hand on the last page but one. Perhaps he does not show a very ready understanding of the phenomenon of physical cowardice in the case of a brother-officer, though later he makes amends. But I take it that it was Mr. LOCKE'S idea to present a very ordinary decent sort with the common man's prejudices and frank distrust of subtleties. A sinister mystery of love, death and blackmail runs, a turbid undercurrent, through the story. The publisher's pathetic apology for the drab grey paper on which, in the interests of War Economy, the book is printed, makes one wonder how the other publishers who still issue books in black and white manage to live.

Of the literary reputations that the War has, so to speak, dug in, I suppose none to be more firmly consolidated than that of Mr. PATRICK MACGILL. The newest of his several battle-books is The Brown Brethren (JENKINS), a title derived from the campaigning colour that has amended a popular quotation till it should now read "the thin brown line of heroes." I can hardly tell you anything about Mr. MACGILL'S new book that you have not probably read or said for yourself of the previous volumes. For my own part, if the War is to be written about at all (a question concerning which I preserve an open mind), I say let it be, as here, the real thing, and the hotter and stronger the better. There is rough humour in these sketches of soldier types, and just enough story to thread them together; but it is the fighting that counts. Certain chapters, for example that about Benner's struggle with the Hun sniper, seem to leave one bruised and breathless as from personal conflict. Mr. MACGILL writes about war as he knows it, horribly, in a way that carries conviction like a charge of bayonets, and with an entire disregard of the sensibilities of the stay-at-home reader. For all which reasons The Brown Brethren and their French friends are assured of the success that they certainly deserve. Here's wishing them the best of it!

In The Sentence of the Court (WARD, LOCK) Mr. FRED M. WHITE contrives effectively to entangle our interest in one of those webs of facile intrigue from which the reader escapes only at the last line of the last page, muttering at he lays the volume down and observes with concern that it is 2.30 A.M., "What rot!" The title of the story is misleading. There is no Court, and nobody is sentenced, though the eminent specialist of Harley Street who essays the rôle of villain richly deserves to be. However, as he is left a bankrupt, discredited in his practice and detached from the heroine whom he had sworn to appropriate, it would perhaps be straining a point to cavil at his remaining at large. The idea upon which the story is based, and which enables the author to clothe his characters and their actions with bewildering mystery, is essentially good and, I believe, new, though far be it from me to do either Mr. WHITE or the reader the disservice of saying what it is. Suffice that we are introduced to some quite charming people, as well as two extremely unpleasant ones, and if the web of mystery is held together in places by a somewhat generous share of obtuseness on the part of the persons concerned it is not for us to complain, since we become aware of the defect only after the affair is over.

Apart from the greater complaint that I do not like her subject, which probably is entirely my own fault, I have nothing but praise for Mrs. STANLEY WRENCH'S latest volume, Beat (DUCKWORTH), except as regards her amazing fondness for drooping the corners of her characters' mouths, generally either "wistfully" or "sullenly." It only made one annoyed when Beatrix's unpleasant sisters developed the trick, but when poor little Beat herself was affected that way, in spite of the magnificent courage with which she faced the burden of deputy-motherhood, it made one miserable as well. The task she had undertaken was a prodigious one, for the sisters she had to rear were, you must understand, vexed with sex instincts of the type of the modern novel, and so in a large measure she failed, even though she sacrificed strength, happiness and even her own love-story in the effort to keep them straight. The tale is set out with every circumstance of sordid misery, in which the spiritual beauty of the heroine is meant to shine, and undeniably does shine with real strength and purity. The successive deaths of the mother and step-mother, the shabby London lodgings, the fall of Veronica, the selfishness of Beat's boy-friend, and the loathsome trade of her lover—these, and more horrors and lapses beside, are all taxed for the general effect in so able and vivid a fashion that the authoress succeeds to admiration in making her readers nearly as uncomfortable as her characters, long before the climax is reached. The end comes rather less wretchedly than could have been expected, but even so surely this is genius partly run to seed. The greatest tragedies are not written in these minor keys. Beat, woman and heroine, is so admirable that one fain would know her apart from all this unredeemed welter of sex and selfishness.

I confess I should have thought that the fictional possibilities of being as like as two peas to Royalty were fairly exhausted. But apparently Mr. EDGAR JEPSON does not share this view; and it is only fair to admit that in The Professional Prince (HUTCHINSON) he has contrived to give a novel twist to the already well laboured theme. Prince Richard (precise nationality unstated) was so bored with the common round of his exalted duties that, hearing of a convenient double, he engages him, at four hundred a year and pickings, to represent him at dull functions, and incidentally to pay the requisite attentions to the young woman, reported by photograph as depressingly plain, whom political considerations have marked as the Prince's fiancée. When later one of the characters points out to His Highness that this conduct showed some lapse from the finer ideals of taste, I am bound to say that I could find no words of contradiction. However the originality arrives when John Stuart, the deputy, instead of falling in love with the bride-elect in Ruritanian fashion, develops a marked liking for the prosaic side of his job, and insists upon lecturing his supposed relations upon the political crisis of the moment. Capital fun this. When the fiancée in her turn proved wholly different from the photograph I permitted myself to hope that we were in for a double masquerade—but this was to expect too much. Still, Mr. JEPSON has handled his wildly-preposterous plot with great verve; and even if the central situation is one that has been often encountered before, this only proves again that HOPE springs eternal.... But I wish he had avoided the War.

"Where my Caravan has Rested."

"Wanted, modern Detached Villa Residence, inside tram lines."—Northern Whig.