Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916

Excerpt

February 2, 1916.

According to the Correspondent of The Daily Mail who described the festivities at Nish, the King of Bulgaria "has a curious duck-like waddle." This is believed to be the result of his effort to do the Goose-Step while avoiding the Turkey-Trot.

Owing to the extraction of benzol and toluol from gas for the purpose of making high-explosives it is stated that consumers may have to put up with some decrease in illuminating power. It is expected, in view of the good object involved, that the announcement will be received in a spirit of toluoleration.

We cannot agree with the actor who complains that his manager forbids him to wear his armlet on the stage. The sympathies of the audience might be entirely deranged by the discovery that the elderly villain was an attested patriot while the young and beautiful hero was either ineligible or a slacker.

Describing the depressed condition of the laundry trade a witness at the Clerkenwell County Court said, "We are eight million double collars short every week." It is shrewdly conjectured that they are in the neighbourhood of the Front.

Nothing in the course of his Balkan pilgrimage is reported to have pleased the Kaiser so much as a steamer-trip on the Danube. It was looking so sympathetically blue.

The Government is going to close Museums and Picture-galleries to the public. No one shall accuse us of being Apostles of Culture.

It is said that the Australian and New Zealand soldiers now in London are very fond of visiting the British Museum, and take a particular interest in the Egyptian antiquities. But it is not true that they now refer to England as "The Mummy Country."

Austrians and Hungarians are said to be quarrelling as to whether the occupied Serbian territory should eventually belong to the Monarchy or the Kingdom, and the jurists on either side are ransacking the history of the past for arguments to support their respective cases. Here we have another instance of the fondness of learned men for disputing about purely academic questions. Serbia will belong to the Serbians.

An American gentleman, who started out to visit his wife when she was staying with her mother and failed to find her after three days' search, excuses himself on the ground that he had forgotten her maiden name. He puts it down to absence of mind; and his mother-in-law is inclined to agree with him.

Soap is the latest article to be placed on the list of absolute contraband; and it is now more certain than ever that the Germans will not come out of the War with clean hands.

In view of the impending paper-famine a widely-circulated journal announces its readiness to receive back from the public any parcels of old copies marked "waste paper." In the opinion of its trade-rivals the inscription is superfluous.

A suggestion has been made by a Registrar in Bankruptcy that the Tercentenary of Shakspeare's death should be celebrated by the performance in every large town of one of the Bard's plays; and some regret has been expressed that anybody should take advantage of a national celebration to boom his own business.