HEART-TO-HEART TALKS.

(Enter PASHA and the Sultan of TURKEY.)

The Sultan. Then you want me to press the GERMAN KAISER to come to Constantinople and pay me a visit. Is that it?

Enver. Yes, your Majesty, that is about it. It would produce a splendid effect on the populace and would electrify the soldiers.

The Sultan. But I've already told you that I cordially dislike this KAISER of yours. Wherever he goes he turns everything upside down, and there's not a moment's peace or repose for anybody. He must have reviews of troops morning, noon and night, and it's all quite useless, for our Generals tell me that he doesn't really understand anything about soldiers and their movements. You know they've had to keep him away from the fighting, both in France and Russia, because he would insist on giving the most absurd orders, and when things didn't go right immediately he always broke out into shouting and cursing, and praying and crying until his Staff felt so ashamed of him and themselves that they didn't know which way to look. There's never any knowing what a man like that will do. He's as likely as not to want to preach a sermon in St. Sophia, or to ride his horse up the steps of the Palace.

Enver. These are certainly faults, but they are the faults of an enthusiastic nature.

The Sultan. Well, I don't like that kind of enthusiastic nature. I prefer something quieter. Besides, I am told that his behaviour in the house and his table-manners are dreadful. He's quite capable, if he doesn't like a dish, of throwing it at the attendants. Then he gets so angry when people don't agree with him; the least contradiction makes him purple, absolutely purple, with passion. My dear ENVER, you would have to pretend you knew nothing about Turkey when you talked with him—at any rate nothing in comparison with his knowledge—and I'm sure you wouldn't like that; nobody would. No, I can't say the prospect of having him here as my guest allures me, but of course, if you say it must be done, I'm ready to sacrifice myself. Only I warn you it will spoil everything for me to have him here prancing about in a Turkish uniform.

Enver. I didn't know your Majesty's feelings were so strong on the subject. Perhaps it will not, after all, be necessary. I will see what can be done.

The Sultan. Yes, do, there's a good fellow. If I had to entertain that man for a week I should suffer from indigestion for the rest of my life.

Enver. If possible we will see that your Majesty is spared such an affliction. With your Majesty's leave I will now withdraw.

The Sultan. Do by all means. No—stop; you haven't given me any of the War news. I keep on asking for it, but nobody pays any attention to my requests. Honestly, I don't see much use in being a Sultan if one can't get anyone to do what one asks.

Enver. Oh, you want to hear some War news, do you? Well, I may as well tell you now as later. Baghdad's gone.

The Sultan. What—captured?

Enver. Yes, the infernal English have got it.

The Sultan. I knew it was bound to happen. I told you so only last Tuesday—at least, if it wasn't you it was somebody else. "Baghdad," I said, "is sure to be captured. The English are in great force, and if we don't watch it carefully they're sure to snatch it from us." That's what I said; but you wouldn't have it. You were all so cock-sure, and now where are you?

Enver. Who can fight against treachery?

The Sultan. Treachery? It's simply stupidity and incompetence. You and your KAISER keep patting one another on the back, and then one fine morning you wake up and discover that Baghdad has fallen. ENVER, you'll find it rather difficult to explain this to the people. They know my advice hasn't counted for anything in this; they'll put it all down to you; and you can't murder them all, as you murdered poor old NAZIM.

Enver. Silence, or—

The Sultan. Yes, I know, but I will not keep silence. Rather, I will ask again, why have you sent my best regiments to help the Austrians and Germans on their own fronts? Even I could have managed better than that. And why are we fighting in this War at all? Answer me that.

Enver. We fight for the greatness of Turkey.

The Sultan. Well, we don't seem very successful. It was a good deal bigger before we lost Erzerum and Baghdad...

(Left wrangling.)

Conscience-Money?

"The Commissioners of Inland Revenue acknowledge the receipt of first half of £100 note from 'Berlin.'"—Daily Paper.

"Half-a-dozen deer escaped from Hatfield Park some weeks ago through a gate having been carelessly left open. A wholesale clearance of vegetables followed in the district, and the damage was so serious that, with the Marquis of Salisbury's approval, shooting parties of farmers went out, and the raiders have now been run to earth."—Manchester Paper.

It looks as if they were only rabbits, after all.

AT THE PLAY.

"REMNANT."

I wish now that I had not been compelled to postpone my visit to the Royalty, for I think the fall of Baghdad must have put me a bit above myself. Anyhow, I was less moved than usual by the triumph of virtue and the downing of vice; and permitted myself to wonder how a play like Remnant ever found its way into the Royalty (of all theatres), and what Mr. DENNIS EADIE (of all actors) was doing in this galley, this melted-butter boat. And indeed there were moments when I could see that Mr. EADIE himself shared my wonder, if I rightly interpreted certain signs of indifference and detachment in his performance. I even suspected a sinister intention in the title, though, of course, Messrs. MORTON and NICCODEMI didn't really get their play off in the course of a bargain sale of superannuated goods.

Apart from the Second Act, where Miss MARIE LÖHR (looking rather like a nice Dutch doll) delivered the blunt gaucheries of Remnant with a delightfully stolid naïveté, the design of the play and its simple little devices might almost have been the work of amateurs. The sordid quarrels between Tony and his preposterous mistress (whom I took to be a model, till I found that he was only an artist in steam locomotives) were extraordinarily lacking in subtlety. In all this Bohemian business one looked in vain for a touch of the art of MURGER. What would one not have given for something even distantly reminiscent of the Juliet scene—"et le pigeon chantait toujours"? And it wasn't as if this was supposed to be a sham Americanised quartier of to-day. We were in the true period—under Louis PHILIPPE. Indeed I know no other reason (costumes always excepted) why the scene was the Paris of 1840. For the purposes of the play Tony might just as well have been a British designer of tanks (London, 1916). Nor was there anything even conventionally French about the girl Remnant, who might have been born next-door to Bow Bells.

Miss MARIE LÖHR was the life and soul of the party. Her true comedy manner, when she was serious, was always fascinating. She said with great discretion her little Barriesque piece about the desirability of babies, and she did all she knew to keep the sentiment from being too sickly-sweet. Here she had strong assistance from Mr. EADIE as her lover Tony; for, though he got a fine flash out of the green eye of jealousy when he suspected his patron, Jules, of jumping his love-claim, it was obvious at the end that the success of his professional ambitions was far more to him than any affair of the heart. And, after all, when Remnant complained of a curious bourdonnement in her ears, and Tony had to reply solemnly, "That which you hear is the beating of your heart to the music of your soul," you could hardly expect a man with Mr. EADIE'S sense of humour to throw much conviction into the statement.

Mr. C.M. LOWNE was a very passable beau, and made love to Remnant with that rich fruitiness of voice of which he is a past master. It was her business (as she explained to Tony when he surprised their two faces within kissing distance of each other) to keep Jules in good humour since Tony's chances depended upon his patronage. But it couldn't have helped much to tell Jules with such appalling candour that the shiver produced by his kiss was the same kind as she had once felt when a rat ran over her face during sleep. However, Jules was not a beau for nothing and could afford this exceptional set-back to one of his many amours. There was, by the way, an excellent little comedy scene between him and his wife, played by Miss MURIEL POPE with a quiet humour as piquant as her gown.

As Manon, the querulous termagant that Tony had taken for mistress, Miss HILDA MOORE was not very kindly served by her part—so rudimentary that its highest flight was achieved when, with a Parthian shot, she referred to Tony as a geni-ass.

I will not forecast a limited success for this play, for who would dare to say that there is not always room in the broad British bosom for yet another triumph of sentiment over ideas—I speak of the play itself and not of the performance? If only for Miss LÖHR'S sake I could wish that the best of fortune may attend it; for to have worn her hair as she did in the Second Act, out of regard for the period, was a sacrifice as fine as any that women have shown in the course of Armageddon (if I may judge of them by their portraits in the Photographic Press), and she ought to have her reward, bless her heart!     O.S.

"GENERAL POST."

It would be easy to make fun of the exaggerations and ultra-simplifications of Mr. TERRY'S new comedy. It is much pleasanter (and juster) to dwell on its wholesomeness, its easy humour and its effect of honest entertainment. Not a highbrow adventure, it is not to be judged by highbrow standards. It is decently in key, and an exceptionally clever cast carried it adroitly over any rough places. Remarkable, too, as almost the first popular testimonial since the War began to the too-much-taken-for-granted Territorials, who worked in the old days while we scoffed and golfed. That's all to the good.

Our author's hero is an excellent provincial tailor, who is also keen Captain Smith in the Sheffingham Terriers. As tailor his chief customer, as soldier his contemptuous scandalised critic, is Sir Dennys Broughton, whose wayward flapper daughter Betty is in the early fierce stages of revolt against the stuffiness of life at Grange Court, meets Smith over some boys' club work, and, finding brains and dreams in him (a formidable contrast to her loafing brother), falls into passionate first-love. Smith is just as badly if more soberly hit, and recognising the impossibility of the situation (quite apart from demonstrations by the alarmed Broughtons) decides to take his tape and shears to his London house of business. The date of all this being about the time of the misguided Panther's fateful leap on Agadir.

Act II. brings us to the second year of the War. Young Broughton, puppy no longer, is gloriously in it, and has just been gazetted to a Territorial regiment whose Colonel bears the not uncommon name of Smith. Our tailor, of course, and a rattling fine soldier too. Having discovered this latter fact and also formed a remarkably cordial relationship apparently in a single day, the enthusiastic cub subaltern (distemper and snobbishness over and done with) motors up his C.O., who is visiting his brother and partner, and brings him in to Grange Court on the way. Sir Dennys, now a brassarded private and otherwise a converted man, is still confoundedly embarrassed, and stands anything but easy in the presence of his youngster's Colonel. Lady Broughton, least malleable of the group, is frankly appalled by this new mésalliance. Perhaps Mr. TERRY'S version of blue-blooded insolence and fatuity is for his stage purpose rather crudely coloured, but who shall say that the doctrine that a man in khaki who has been an elementary schoolmaster or a tailor is a man for a' that, is quite universally accepted in the best circles even in this year of grace? Betty, now a grown girl in the cynical stage, revenges herself with feline savagery on the knight of the shears for the imagined slight of his defection.

Act III. is dated 19? just after peace is declared. The tailor is not (as I half expected) back in his shop, but a Brigadier-General Smith, V.C., is being invested with the freedom of Sheffingham and is making a spirited attack on the defences of Betty. She puts up enough of a fight to ensure a good Third Act, and capitulates charmingly to the delight, now, of all the Broughton household—butler included. I hope Mr. TERRY is right and that the places taken in this great war game of General Post and the values registered will have permanence.

I won't deny that the excellent moral of the play goes far to disarm one's critical faculty. Why not confess that one lost one's heart to the nicest tailor since Evan Harrington? Indeed, Mr. TULLY (always, I find, quite admirable in characterisation, and that no mere matter of outward trick, but duly charged with feeling) made just such a decent, lovable, sideless officer as it has been the pride of the nation of shopkeepers to produce in the day of challenge. Whoever was it dared cast Mr. MCKINNEL for the part of a weak kindly old ass of a baronet, without any ruggedness or violence in his composition? Congratulations to the unknown perspicacious hero and to Mr. MCKINNEL! Miss MADGE TITHERADGE flapped prettily as a flapper; bit cleanly and cruelly in her biting mood; surrendered most engagingly. This is less than justice. She used her queer caressing voice and her reserves of emotional power to fine effect. Miss LILIAN BRAITHWAITE made her Lady Broughton nearly credible and less "unsympathetic" than was just. Mr. DANIELL is new to me. He played one of those difficult foil parts with a really nice discretion.

The audience was genuinely pleased. It dragged from the author a becomingly modest acknowledgment. He did owe a great deal to his players, but a writer of stage plays need not be ashamed of that. T.

THE PLOT PRECAUTIONARY.

(The KAISER addresses his Transatlantic Faithful.)

Our Commercial Stylists.

"—, SONS & CO., LTD.,

ARE SHOWING A DELIGHTFUL RANGE OF CORSETS, EMBRACING THE MOST APPROVED MODELS."—Glasgow Herald.

Good, but how much?

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

The Snare (SECKER) impressed me as a tale emphatically prededicate to the footlights. Actually, by the way, Mr. RAFAEL SABATINI has dedicated it "to LEON M. LEON, who told me this story"—which, of course, only strengthens my belief. Anyhow, it has every mark of the romantic drama—a picturesque setting, that of the Peninsular War, rich in possibilities for the scenic and sartorial arts; and a strongly emotional plot, leading up to a situation that could be relied upon to bring down the house. I shall, of course, not tell you the plot. It contains a jealous husband, an injudicious wife, a hero and heroine, a villain (of foreign extraction) and a god in the machine, who is none other than our IRON DUKE himself. And the situation in the last Act offers as pretty a piece of table-turning as any audience need desire. I wish I could explain how the DUKE plays with his enemies, and finally—but no, I said I wouldn't, and I will keep my word. Two little carpings, however. Surely it is wrong to speak of "catch half-penny" journalism in the time of WELLINGTON. My impression is that the journalists of those days caught at least fourpence by their wares. And I confess to an emotion of disappointment when the heroine bounced up at the court-martial and said that the hero couldn't have committed the murder because he was "in her arms" at the time. Of course he hadn't been; and I very much doubt whether any Court would have believed her for two minutes. But leading ladies love saying it, so I suppose the very out-worn device will have to be retained in the stage version. I look forward to this with much pleasure.

That clever lady, ELINOR MORDAUNT, has collected into the volume that she calls Before Midnight (CASSELL) a series of short stories of a psychic (though not always ghostly) character, which, while not very eerie, or on the same high level, are at their best both original and impressive. The first of them, which affords excuse for a highly-intriguing cover-picture, is at once the most spooksome and the least satisfactory. That is to say that, though it opens with a genuine and quite horrible thrill, the "explanation" is obscure and tame. Far more successful, to my mind, is "The Vision," a delicate little idyll of a Midland schoolmarm, to whom is shown the death of Adonis and the lamenting of his goddess-lover. The writing of this touches real beauty (the high-fantastic, instead of the merely high-falutin', which in such connection would have been so fatally easy). To sum up, though one at least of these "dreams before midnight" may quite possibly become a nightmare after it, I fancy that, to all lovers of the occult, the game will be found well worth the bed-room candle.

There are qualities in The Bird of Life, by GERTRUDE VAUGHAN (CHAPMAN AND HALL), which cause me to look forward to this lady's future work with very considerable interest. In the present novel she sets out the life story of Rachel up to a point boldly given as being beyond the conclusion of the War, in which, by the way, both her husband and the man whom she ought to have married are killed on the same day. The first eighty-four pages of the book raised my hopes very high. They describe with great simplicity and sympathy the thoughts and feelings, the romances and difficulties, of an affectionate and lonely little girl living with her Uncle Matthew and her Aunt Elizabeth, and loving them both with a childlike fervour. There is no exaggeration; the writing goes true to its mark, and the effect designed by the writer is admirably well made. Then Uncle Matthew dies and Rachel finds a new home in the Vicarage of Mr. Venning, a family man if ever there was one, for he has fifteen children. From this point the interest is slightly diluted, and the excellence of the book diminishes. One does not recognise in the more mature Rachel the girl one had expected to find after one's initiation into the secrets of her baby mind. She marries Edward Venning, and finds too late that he is, like his father, made up of convention and narrowness. She plans a disappearance, and leaves some of her belongings on the edge of a bottomless tarn. Then, being hypothetically dead, she begins to live her life in her own way. Later on she returns to Edward, "on approval for six months"; but this period was apparently not sufficient to break the chain that bound her to Another, and, the War intervening, she is left almost doubly widowed. I feel that I have not quite done justice to Miss VAUGHAN'S book, but, on the other hand, I am sure that she has not quite done justice to her unquestionable talent.

A volume entitled Friends of France: The Field Service of the American Ambulance (SMITH, ELDER) has appeared in a happy hour to remind one, if that were necessary, that in the great nation that awaits Mr. WILSON'S call there have always been found some eager to give their services and, if need be, life itself to prove their love for the other great Republic. I don't think either you or I will grudge such an affection at this date, founded historically though it may be on a mutual dislike of ourselves, and consequently it is a very pleasant impression that is produced by this record of American efficiency and courage in Red Cross work on the French front. This being clearly remembered one need not be afraid to admit that in detail the book will be of interest mainly to the friends of those concerned, since the method of multiple authorship adopted necessarily involves overlapping, and a good deal of the volume is given up to monotonous, though undoubtedly well-earned, "tributes and citations" from the French authorities. Neither is the bulk of the matter, most generously illustrated though it is, particularly intriguing, for by now one is sufficiently familiar with accounts of the removal of wounded under fire and the sort of work at which these four hundred American University men proved themselves so adept at half-a-dozen points between Flanders and Alsace. Americans, long at odds with "ruthlessness" (and at last forced to the inevitable logical conclusion in regard to it), may well be glad to be able to point, amongst other creditable things, to this history of service given without hesitation in acknowledgment of their debt to the civilisation of the Old World; and we also shall be no less glad to remember it.

It is perhaps natural that in Winnowed Memories (CASSELL), by Field-Marshal Sir EVELYN WOOD, V.C., one should look at first to see what references they contain to modern events. On these matters, as on all others covered by this volume, we are told nothing that is not invigorating and to the point, and the tributes here paid to the fighting qualities of our armies of to-day form a fitting conclusion to a book that is full of sound sense and good cheer. Sir EVELYN has had a vast experience and enjoys an evergreen vigour. What is rarer still, he has a kindly nature that admits no trace of the disappointments he must from time to time have suffered. As everyone knows, he was always an advocate of Compulsory Universal Service for Home Defence, but he casts no stone at those who so long and parlously delayed to learn their lesson. Like the true soldier that he is, he seems to have no time or taste for those recriminations which are best left to small political fry. And I rejoice that in a book of such authority the note is largely one of happiness and hope.

"Owing to congestion on the railways there is a food shortage in Petrograd, which has led some of the less irresponsible citizens to demonstrate during the session of the Council of the Empire and the Duma."—Daily Sketch.

Subsequent news shows that "less irresponsible" was not a misprint but a prophecy.

"It is claimed that about thirty Merman firms construct the Diesel motors originally used for submarines."—Daily Telegraph.

We wish these motors a speedy return to the fishy scenes of their origin.

"Several eligible sires for workmen's dwellings, of which some 300 are needed, have been selected by the Southport Town Planning Committee."—Daily Paper.

They must not be confused with "the rude forefathers of the hamlet" mentioned by GRAY.