Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916

Excerpt

June 7, 1916.

A correspondent writes to tell us of a painful experience which he has had in consequence of his efforts to practise war-time economy in the matter of dress. The other evening, after going to bed at dusk in order to save artificial light, he was rung up by the police at 1 A.M. and charged with showing a light. It appears that he had gone to bed with his blind up, after throwing his well-worn trousers over the back of a chair, and that the rays of a street lamp had caught the glossy sheen of this garment and been reflected into the eagle eye of the constable.

According to a Reuter's message the Greeks are "much preoccupied" at the seizure of strategic positions on Greek territory by Bulgarian troops. The preoccupation, it is thought, should have been done by the Allies.

While he was on his way to make a Memorial Day speech at Kansas City, Mo., an open knife was thrown at Ex-President Roosevelt. Some of his bitterest friends in the journalistic world allege that it was just a paper knife.

Last week a number of professional fortune-tellers were fined at Southend for having predicted Zeppelins. The fraudulent nature of their pretensions was sufficiently manifest, since even the authorities had been unable to foresee the coming of the Zeppelins until some time after they had arrived.

The export of sardines in oil from Sweden is prohibited. Some resentment is felt at the order by the Germans, who with their customary ingenuity have for some time been importing india-rubber sardines in petrol without detection.

A soldier at Salonika has sent a live tortoise home to his relatives at Streatham. The tortoise, it is understood, was too fidgety to bear up against its surroundings and was sent home for a little excitement.

If, on the other hand, the tortoise was just sent as a souvenir we should discourage the practice. The tendency on the part of our soldiers in India and Egypt to send home elephants and camels as mementos of the localities in which they are serving is already putting something of a strain upon the postal authorities.

From "The World of Letters" in The Observer: "Some day there will be a cheap edition of Captain Ian Hay's war book, The First Four Hundred, and the sale will be immense.... The Blackwoods are old-fashioned modest people, who do not parade figures...." In the present case, however, we do not think they would have objected to the reviewer parading a further 99,600 in the title of Ian Hay's book.

"The question of alien waiters in London hotels rests with those who patronise the hotels," says a contemporary. In other words, the pernicious practice which had grown up before the War of ordering German waiters with one's dinner must be abandoned before the hotel managers will remove them permanently from their menus.

Sir Frederick Bridge has come out with a strong denunciation of "devilry" in German music. How little we suspected, before the War opened our deluded eyes, that it was no mere lack of skill but the fierce promptings of a demoniac hate that marred our evenings on the esplanade.