Lights and Leading
Fido cannot be expected to catch a spoonful of Demerara from the end of his nose, leaves the grocer cold. A dairyman charged with selling unsatisfactory milk has explained to the Bench that his cows were suffering from shell-shock. He himself is now suffering from shell-out-shock. At Ramsgate a shopkeeper has exhibited a notice in his window announcing that "better days are in store." What most people want is butter days.
Orderly Sergeant: "Lights out, there."
Voice from the Hut: "It's the moon, Sergint."
Orderly Sergeant• "I don't give a d what it is. Put it out!"
The disquieting activities of the "giddy Gotha" involve drastic enforcement of the lighting orders, and the moon is still an object of suspicion. Pessimists and those critics who are never content unless each day brings a spectacular success, seem to have taken for their motto: "It's not what I mean, but what I say, that matters." But the moods of the non-combatant are truly chameleonic. Civilians summoned to the War Office pass from confidence to abasement, and from abasement to megalomania in the space of half an hour.
Turkey, it appears, has sent an urgent appeal to Berlin for funds. The disaster to the Goeben can be endured, since the Sultan can now declare a foreshore claim, and do a little
199
