But it is pleasant to put on record the
description of an officer's servant which has reached Mr. Punch from
France: "Valet, cook, porter, boots, chamber-maid, ostler, carpenter,
upholsterer, mechanic, inventor, needlewoman, coalheaver, diplomat, barber,
linguist (home-made), clerk, universal provider, complete pantechnicon and
infallible bodyguard, he is also a soldier, if a very old soldier, and a
man of the most human kind."
Parliament is not sitting, but there is, unfortunately, no truth in the
report that in order to provide billets for 5,000 new typists and
incidentally to win the War, the Government has commandeered the Houses of
Parliament. The _Times Literary Supplement_ received 335 books of
original verse in 1916, and it is rumoured that Mr. Edward Marsh may very
shortly take up his duties as Minister of Poetry and the Fine Arts. Mr.
Marsh has not yet decided whether he will appoint Mr. Asquith or Mr.
Winston Churchill as his private secretary. Meanwhile, a full list of the
private secretaries of the new private secretaries of the members of the
new Government may at any moment be disclosed to a long suffering public.
On the Home Front the situation shows that a famous literary critic was
also a true prophet:
O Matthew Arnold! You were right:
We need more Sweetness and more Light;
For till we break the brutal foe,
Our sugar's short, our lights are low.
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