CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT




HOW SIR ROGER BLOXAM BETHOUGHT HIM OF CHOOSING A CAREER.




A sapper, in sinking a well-shaft,

Was stricken by death with his fell-shaft

   But Hindenburg said:

   ``He's much better dead -- 

   ``Kadaververwertungsgesellschaft!''





   This is a very important passage, dear children, in the life of any man, when he decides to what he shall devote his life. For all courses are just equally vain and idle. This world is so obviously a rotten practical joke that a wise man is disgusted with it by the time he is twenty-five or so. The everlasting guffaw of God at his horseplay irritates the nerves. Only the artist who eschews the Learned Professions, and sticks to Beauty, is likely to enjoy life. But -- Usefulness -- that is not to be had. The Pragmatists define Truth as Usefulness -- and one can see the ghost of Pilate decorously concealing mouth with toga!


   Sir Roger did not enter the School of Journalism, although they promised to teach him to write like this following:




HUNS CHEW PALS




EXTRA. VIA Amsterdam. June 19. The Kadaververwertungsgesellschaft have added a kitchen department by direct Imperial Order. Brochette d'Enfant Belge a` la von Bissing is now a regular feature of the goulash-cannon, the children being spitted on bayonets, and toasted over burning cathedrals, libraries, Rembrandts, and other combustibles. The officers usually prefer the broiled breasts of violated nuns; sometimes, however, these are seethed in their own milk. But on those parts of the front where the supply of nuns and babies has given out, owing to the rigour of the British blockade, the German soldier subsists almost entirely on the bodies of his comrades. The men actually in the trenches are said to be lamentably tough, but the Landsturmers afford excellent tripe. Men who have served in the German colonies and so ruined their livers furnish an admirable pate' de foie gras for the tables of the higher officials. Bones not only supply glue for the Kaiser to paste his press-cuttings, and gelatine, of which motion-picture films are made, but commands a high price in Catholic Germany and Austria as authentic relics of the Saviour. The tough guts of the mountain regiments are used for violin-strings. The blood is invariably drained off and used as a substitute for red wine; this is the favourite drink of the Kaiser himself, Admiral Tirpitz, and Count von Reventlow. Hindenburg, on the contrary, eats British prisoners, raw.





(Pad this to four columns, double-leaded, and add confirmatory `statements of eye-witnesses', `what my wife's brother's wife's aunt's best friend heard from the chauffeur of somebody who once saw the Crown Prince at a review', `affidavit of an American professional divorce court witness', etc. etc.


   Newspapers bribed by German gold may not accept this article; then, try them with this other.




FRENCH BOOZE STUNT




The French are openly boasting that the failures of the vines, ravaged by raiding Uhlans who have laid waste the country from the Belfort to Bayonne -- the censorship has suppressed this important news hitherto, but Truth will out -- has not diminished their supply of alcohol. It is well known that Frenchmen will not fight unless intoxicated. they have therefore replaced wine by `esprit de corps' (Translation `spirit from the body'). This beverage, a thousand times more pernicious even then absinthe, is distilled in immense retorts (etc., pile in with the scientific stuff). Frenzied by this demoniacal liquor, the wretches, although starved, diseased, crippled, -- not one per cent is between the ages of 8 and 80 -- beat off the gallant, well-ordered, determined attacks of the noble German soldiers, who are, besides, too kind-hearted to advance against such miserable cowards.





(If this goes, try to derive `poilu' from `pois-e'lu', i.e. `selected pea' and prove that they make their soldiers into Erbsuppe. And write up Potage Bonne Femme.)


   However, they tried to make Sir Roger reconsider his decision, as will be explained, by trying to rouse his indignation about the white slave traffic. Here is their little paper of statistics, from which a clever journalist can earn a fine income any day of the week, especially Sunday.