by A. A. Milne
The Captain tried to understand,
And (more or less) succeeded;
“Correct me if you don’t agree,
But one of you wants what?” said he,
And George Augustus Chadd said, “Me!”
Meaning of course that he did.
The Captain took him by the ear
And gradually brought him near
The Colonel, who was far from clear,
But heard it all politely,
And asked him twice, “You want a what?”
The Captain said that he did not,
And Chadd saluted quite a lot
And put the matter rightly.
The Colonel took him by the hair
And furtively conveyed him where
The General inhaled the air,
Immaculately booted;
Then said, “Unless I greatly err
This Private wishes to prefer
A small petition to you, Sir,”
And so again saluted.
The General inclined his head
Towards the two of them and said,
“Speak slowly, please, or shout instead;
I’m hard of hearing, rather.”
So Chadd, that promising recruit,
Stood to attention, clicked his boot,
And bellowed, with his best salute,
“A happy birthday, Father!”
One Star
Occasionally I receive letters from friends, whom I have not seen lately, addressed to Lieutenant M——and apologizing prettily inside in case I am by now a colonel; in drawing-rooms I am sometimes called “Captain-er”; and up at the Fort the other day a sentry of the Royal Defence Corps, wearing the Cr y medal, mistook me for a Major, and presented crossbows to me. This is all wrong. As Mr. Garvin well points out, it is important that we should not have a false perspective of the War. Let me, then, make it perfectly plain—I am a Second Lieutenant.
When I first became a Second Lieutenant I was rather proud. I was a Second Lieutenant “on probation.” On my right sleeve I wore a single star. So:
(on probation, of course). On my left sleeve I wore another star. So:
(also on probation).
They were good stars, none better in the service; and as we didn’t like the sound of “on probation” Celia put a few stitches in them to make them more permanent. This proved effective. Six months later I had a very pleasant note from the King telling me that the days of probation were now over, and making it clear that he and I were friends.
I was now a real Second Lieutenant. On my right sleeve I had a single star. Thus:
(not on probation).
On my left sleeve I also had a single star. In this manner:
This star also was now a fixed one.
From that time forward my thoughts dwelt naturally on promotion. There were exalted persons in the regiment called Lieutenants. They had two stars on each sleeve. So:
I decided to become a Lieutenant.
Promotion in our regiment was difficult. After giving the matter every consideration I came to the conclusion that the only way to win my second star was to save the Colonel’s life. I used to follow him about affectionately in the hope that he would fall into the sea. He was a big strong man and a powerful swimmer, but once in the water it would not be difficult to cling round his neck and give an impression that I was rescuing him. However, he refused to fall in. I fancy that he wore somebody’s Military Soles which prevent slipping.
Years rolled on. I used to look at my stars sometimes, one on each sleeve; they seemed very lonely. At times they came close together; but at other times as, for instance, when I was semaphoring, they were very far apart. To prevent these occasional separations Celia took them off my sleeves and put them on my shoulders. One on each shoulder. So:
And so:
There they stayed.
And more years rolled on.
One day Celia came to me in great excitement.
“Have you seen this in the paper about promotion?” she said eagerly.
“No; what is it?” I asked. “Are they making more generals?”
“I don’t know about generals; it’s Second Lieutenants being Lieutenants.”
“You’re joking on a very grave subject,” I said seriously. “You can’t expect to win the War if you go on like that.”
“Well, you read it,” she said, handing me the paper.
I took the paper with a trembling hand, and read. She was right! If the paper was to be believed, all Second Lieutenants were to become Lieutenants after eighteen years’ service. At last my chance had come.
“My dear, this is wonderful,” I said. “In another fifteen years we shall be there. You might buy two more stars this afternoon and practise sewing them on, in order to be ready. You mustn’t be taken by surprise when the actual moment comes.”
“But you’re a Lieutenant now,” she said, “if that’s true. It says that ‘after eighteen months—’”
I snatched up the paper again. Good Heavens! it was eighteen months—not years.
“Then I am a Lieutenant,” I said.
We had a bottle of champagne for dinner that night, and Celia got the paper and read it aloud to my tunic. And just for practice she took the two stars off my other tunic and sewed them on this one—thus:
And we had a very happy evening.
“I suppose it will be a few days before it’s officially announced,” I said.
“Bother, I suppose it will,” said Celia, and very reluctantly she took one star off each shoulder, leaving the matter—so:
And the years rolled on…
And I am still a Second Lieutenant…
I do not complain; indeed I am even rather proud of it. If I am not gaining on my original one star, at least I am keeping pace with it. I might so easily have been a corporal by now.
But I should like to have seen a little more notice taken of me in the “Gazette.” I scan it every day, hoping for some such announcement as this:
“Second Lieutenant M——to remain a Second Lieutenant.”
Or this:
“Second Lieutenant M——to be seconded and to retain his present rank of Second Lieutenant.”
Or even this:
“Second Lieutenant M——relinquishes the rank of Acting Second Lieutenant on ceasing to command a Battalion, and reverts to the rank of Second Lieutenant.”
Failing this, I have thought sometimes of making an announcement in the Personal Column of “The Times”:
“Second Lieutenant M——regrets that his duties as a Second Lieutenant prevent him from replying personally to the many kind inquiries he has received, and begs to take this opportunity of announcing that he still retains a star on each shoulder. Both doing well.”
But perhaps that is unnecessary now. I think that by this time I have made it clear just how many stars I possess.
One on the right shoulder. So:
And one on the left shoulder. So:
That is all.
O.B.E.
I know a Captain of Industry,
Who made big bombs for the R.F.C.,
And collared a lot of £ s. d.—
And he—thank God!—has the O.B.E.
I know a Lady of Pedigree,
Who asked some soldiers out to tea,
And said “Dear me!” and “Yes, I see”—
And she—thank God!—has the O.B.E.
I know a fellow of twenty-three,
Who got a job with a fat M.P.—
(Not caring much for the Infantry.)
And he—thank God!—has the O.B.E.
I had a friend; a friend, and he
Just held the line for you and me,
And kept the Germans from the sea, And died—without the O.B.E.
Thank God!
He died without the O.B.E.
The Joke: A Tragedy
CHAPTER I
The Joke was born one October day in the trench called Mechanics, not so far from Loos. We
had just come back into the line after six days in reserve, and, the afternoon being quiet, I was writing my daily letter to Celia. I was telling her about our cat, imported into our dug-out in the hope that it would keep the rats down, when suddenly the Joke came. I was so surprised by it that I added in brackets, “This is quite my own. I’ve only just thought of it.” Later on the Post-Corporal came, and the Joke started on its way to England.
CHAPTER II
Chapter II finds me some months later at home again.
“Do you remember that joke about the rats in one of your letters?” said Celia one evening.
“Yes. You never told me if you liked it.”
“I simply loved it. You aren’t going to waste it, are you?”
“If you simply loved it, it wasn’t wasted.”
“But I want everybody else—Couldn’t you use it in the Revue?”
I was supposed to be writing a Revue at this time for a certain impresario. I wasn’t getting on very fast, because whenever I suggested a scene to him, he either said, “Oh, that’s been done,” which killed it, or else he said, “Oh, but that’s never been done,” which killed it even more completely.
“Good idea,” I said to Celia. “We’ll have a Trench Scene.”
I suggested it to the impresario when next I saw him.
“Oh, that’s been done,” he said.
“Mine will be quite different from anybody else’s,” I said firmly.
He brightened up a little.
“All right, try it,” he said.
I seemed to have discovered the secret of successful revue-writing.
The Trench Scene was written. It was written round the Joke, whose bright beams, like a perfect jewel in a perfect setting—However, I said all that to Celia at the time. She was just going to have said it herself, she told me.
So far, so good. But a month later the Revue collapsed. The impresario and I agreed upon many things—as, for instance, that the War would be a long one, and that Hindenburg was no fool—but there were two points upon which we could never quite agree: (1) What was funny, and (2) which of us was writing the Revue. So, with mutual expressions of goodwill, and hopes that one day we might write a tragedy together, we parted.
That ended the Revue; it ended the Trench Scene; and, for the moment, it ended the Joke.
CHAPTER III
Chapter III finds the war over and Celia still at it.
“You haven’t got that Joke in yet.”
She had just read an article of mine called “Autumn in a Country Vicarage.”
“It wouldn’t go in there very well,” I said.
“It would go in anywhere where there were rats. There might easily be rats in a vicarage.”
“Not in this one.”
“You talk about ‘poor as a church mouse.’”
“I am an artist,” I said, thumping my heart and forehead and other seats of the emotions. “I don’t happen to see rats there, and if I don’t see them I can’t write about them. Anyhow, they wouldn’t be secular rats, like the ones I made my joke about.”
“I don’t mind whether the rats are secular or circular,” said Celia, “but do get them in soon.”
Well, I tried. I really did try, but for months I couldn’t get those rats in. It was a near thing sometimes, and I would think that I had them, but at the last moment they would whisk off and back into their holes again. I even wrote an article about “Cooking in the Great War,” feeling that that would surely tempt them, but they were not to be drawn…
CHAPTER IV
But at last the perfect opportunity came. I received a letter from a botanical paper asking for an article on the Flora of Trench Life.
“Hooray!” said Celia. “There you are.”
I sat down and wrote the article. Working up gradually to the subject of rats, and even more gradually intertwining it, so to speak, with the subject of cats, I brought off in one perfect climax the great Joke.
“Lovely!” said Celia excitedly.
“There is one small point which has occurred to me. Rats are fauna, not flora; I’ve just remembered.”
“Oh, does it matter?”
“For a botanical paper, yes.”
And then Celia had a brilliant inspiration.
“Send it to another paper,” she said.
I did. Two days later it appeared. Considering that I hadn’t had a proof, it came out extraordinarily well. There was only one misprint. It was at the critical word of the Joke
CHAPTER V
“That’s torn it,” I said to Celia.
“I suppose it has,” she said sadly.
“The world will never hear the Joke now. It’s had it wrong, but still it’s had it, and I can’t repeat it.”
Celia began to smile.
“It’s sickening,” she said; “but it’s really rather funny, you know.”
And then she had another brilliant inspiration.
“In fact you might write an article about it.”
And, as you see, I have.
EPILOGUE
Having read thus far, Celia says, “But you still haven’t got the Joke in.”
Oh, well, here goes.
Extract from letter: “We came back to the line to-day to find that the cat had kittened. However, as all the rats seem to have rottened we are much as we were.”
“Rottened” was misprinted “rattened,” which seems to me to spoil the Joke…
Yet I must confess that there are times now when I feel that perhaps after all I may have overrated it…
But it was a pleasant joke in its day.
Home Notes
The Way Down
Sydney Smith, or Napoleon or Marcus Aurelius (somebody about that time) said that after ten days any letter would answer itself. You see what he meant. Left to itself your invitation from the Duchess to lunch next Tuesday is no longer a matter to worry about by Wednesday morning. You were either there or not there; it is unnecessary to write now and say that a previous invitation from the Prime Minister—and so on. It was Napoleon’s idea (or Dr. Johnson’s or Mark Antony’s—one of that circle) that all correspondence can be treated in this manner.
I have followed these early Masters (or whichever one it was) to the best of my ability. At any given moment in the last few years there have been ten letters that I absolutely must write, thirty which I ought to write, and fifty which any other person in my position would have written. Probably I have written two. After all, when your profession is writing, you have some excuse for demanding a change of occupation in your leisure hours. No doubt if I were a coal-heaver by day, my wife would see to the fire after dinner while I wrote letters. As it is, she does the correspondence, while I gaze into the fire and think about things.
You will say, no doubt, that this was all very well before the War, but that in the Army a little writing would be a pleasant change after the day’s duties. Allow me to disillusion you. If, years ago, I had ever conceived a glorious future in which my autograph might be of value to the more promiscuous collectors, that conception has now been shattered. Four years in the Army has absolutely spoilt the market. Even were I revered in the year 2000 A.D. as Shakespeare is revered now, my half-million autographs, scattered so lavishly on charge-sheets, passes, chits, requisitions, indents and applications would keep the price at a dead level of about ten a penny. No, I have had enough of writing in the Army and I never want to sign my own name again. “Yours sincerely, Herbert Asquith,” “Faithfully yours, J. Jellicoe”—these by all means; but not my own.
However, I wrote a letter in the third year of the war; it was to the bank. It informed the Manager that I had arrived in London from France and should be troubling them again shortly, London being to all appearances an expensive place. It also called attention to my new address—a small furnished flat in which Celia and I could just turn round if we did it separately. When it was written, then came the question of posting it. I was all for waiting till the next morning, but Celia explained that
there was actually a letterbox on our own floor, twenty yards down the passage. I took the letter along and dropped it into the slit.
Then a wonderful thing happened. It went
Flipperty—flipperty—flipperty—flipperty—flipperty—flipperty—flipperty—flipperty—flipperty—flipperty—FLOP.
I listened intently, hoping for more…but that was all. Deeply disappointed that it was over, but absolutely thrilled with my discovery, I hurried back to Celia.
“Any letters you want posted?” I said in an offhand way.
“No, thank you,” she said.
“Have you written any while we’ve been here?”
“I don’t think I’ve had anything to write.”
“I think,” I said reproachfully, “it’s quite time you wrote to your—your bank or your mother or somebody.”
She looked at me and seemed to be struggling for words.
“I know exactly what you’re going to say,” I said, “but don’t say it; write a little letter instead.”
“Well, as a matter of fact I must just write a note to the laundress.”
“To the laundress,” I said. “Of course, just a note.”
When it was written I insisted on her coming with me to post it. With great generosity I allowed her to place it in the slit. A delightful thing happened. It went Flipperty—flipperty—flipperty—flipperty—flipperty—flipperty—flipperty—flipperty—flipperty—flipperty—FLOP.
Right down to the letter-box in the hall. Two flipperties a floor. (A simple calculation shows that we are perched on the fifth floor. I am glad now that we live so high. It must be very dull to be on the fourth floor with only eight flipperties, unbearable to be on the first with only two.)
“O-oh! How fas-cinating!” said Celia.
“Now don’t you think you ought to write to your mother?”
“Oh, I must.”
She wrote. We posted it. It went.
Flipperty—flipperty—However, you know all about that now.
Since this great discovery of mine, life has been a more pleasurable business. We feel now that there are romantic possibilities about Letters setting forth on their journey from our floor. To start life with so many flipperties might lead to anything. Each time that we send a letter off we listen in a tremble of excitement for the final FLOP, and when it comes I think we both feel vaguely that we are still waiting for something. We are waiting to hear some magic letter go flipperty—flipperty—flipperty—flipperty…and behold! there is no FLOP…and still it goes on—flipperty—flipperty—flipperty—flipperty—growing fainter in the distance…until it arrives at some wonderland of its own. One day it must happen so. For we cannot listen always for that FLOP, and hear it always; nothing in this world is as inevitable as that. One day we shall look at each other with awe in our faces and say, “But it’s still flipperting!” and from that time forward the Hill of Campden will be a place holy and enchanted. Perhaps on Midsummer Eve—
