Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914

Excerpt

May 13, 1914.

Some idea of the amount of distress there is among Stock Exchange men, owing to the continued depression, may be gathered from the fact that a number of members, anxious to get to Brighton on their recent holiday on the 1st inst., walked all the way.

While there would seem to be no "Picture of the Year," the canvas which appears to attract anyhow most feminine attention is the Hon. John Collier's "Clytemnestra," with its guess at the fashion of to-morrow—the low-neck blouse carried a little bit further.

A publication entitled Pictures and the Picturegoer has made its appearance, and, please, we want to know what a Picturegoer is. Suffragettes, it is true, are apt to go for pictures, but we have never known anyone merely go pictures.

Sculptors submitting designs for a statue of Peter the Great, to be set up at the Winter Palace, St. Petersburg, are required by the conditions not only to produce a statue which will be recognized by the man in the street as that of the monarch, but it must also convey the idea that he spent his last days in the Palace. Possibly this might be effected by his wearing his linen collar inside out, plainly showing the marking, "Peter the Gt. Winter Palace."

In the duel which took place last week between M. Caillaux and M. d'Allières the ex-Finance Minister fired in the air. As a result, we hear, aviation societies all over France are protesting against what they consider may develop into an exceedingly dangerous practice.

As regards the result of the duel, M. d'Allières was certainly the more successful of the two. He fired at the ground and hit it. M. Caillaux aimed at the sky and missed it.

The House of Commons has passed the second reading of a Bill to enable Health Resorts and Watering Places to spend a portion of their rates on advertising. The urgent necessity for such a measure would appear to be proved by the fact that newspapers of every shade of political opinion approve it.

"Democracy," says Lord Haldane, "is rapidly finding its feet." But it will not gain much if at the same time it loses its head.

"A rector," we read, "has written to his bishop and to his wife announcing his elopement with the wife of one of his parishioners." This is a little act of courtesy which some men would not have thought of.

The London County Council proposes to allow on the Aldwych site a circular experimental railway on the Kearney high-speed mono-rail system. It seems strange that what is undoubtedly the most rugged and wildest tract of forest land in London should for so long have been without railway facilities. To nature-lovers, however, the proposal is as distasteful as the idea of a railway up Borrowdale.

We had thought that races between omnibuses had, owing to an entire lack of encouragement on the part of the police, died out, but we see that the L.C.O.C. is now advertising "Another Motor-Bus Derby."

The police are said to be viewing with some apprehension the spread of habits of cleanliness among our house-breakers....