ON DELEGATES DISCUSSING ORIGIN OF STREET
ARAB'S EJACULATION, "YAH-YAH-YAH-SHR-R-RUP!"]

* * * * *

KAMENEFF to KRASSIN (on applying for passports): "_Cras ingens
iterabimus aequor._"

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Host._ "HALF A MINUTE! I'LL LIGHT YOU TO THE GATE; IT'S
VERY DARK."

_Cheerful Guest._ "THAT'S ALL RIGHT. I CAN SEE IN THE DARK. WHY, WHEN I WAS
IN FLANDERS--"

_Host._ "YES, YES; BUT YOU'RE NOT IN FLANDERS NOW--YOU'RE IN MY CARNATION
BED."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)

It would certainly have been a thousand pities if the coming of Peace had
deprived us of anything so cheerfully stimulating as the tales of "SAPPER"
(CYRIL MCNEILE). His _Bull-Dog Drummond_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) shows all
the old breathless invention as active as ever, while the pugnacity--to
give it no stronger term--is wholly unrestrained, even by what might seem
the unpromising atmosphere of Godalming in 1919. It would, of course, be
utterly beyond my scope to give in barest outline any list of the wild and
whirling events that begin when _Captain Hugh Drummond_ selects the most
encouraging of the answers to his "Bored ex-soldier" advertisement and
meets the writer, a cryptic but lovely lady, in the Carlton lounge.
(Judging by contemporary fiction, what histories could those walls reveal!)
After that the affair almost instantly develops into one lurid sequence of
battle, murder, bluff and the kind of ten-minutes-here-for-courtship which
proves that there is a gentler side even to the process of tracking crime.
As usual, though less in this business than most, because of the engaging
humour of the hero, I experienced a mild sympathy for the arch-villains;
and indeed they might well feel some bitterness when, after being described
as the master-intellects of the age, the author required them to conduct
their most secret affairs in a lighted ground-floor room with the curtains
undrawn. Most of them turn out to be Bolshevists, or at least in the
receipt of Soviet subsidies--though I see a well-known Labour Daily
reviewed the plot as unconvincing. Odd! Anyhow, a rattling story.

* * * * *

I am aware that, in confessing to an entire ignorance of any one of the
so-called _Books of Artemas_, I place myself in a minority so small as to
be almost beneath notic