* * * * *

[Illustration:  Orderly Officer.  “WHY DON’T YOU CHALLENGE ME?”

Latest called-up Recruit.  “I DIDN’T KNOW YOU WERE COMING.”

Orderly Officer.  “WHAT DID THE CORPORAL SAY WHEN HE POSTED YOU?”

Recruit.  “I WOULDN’T LIKE TO REPEAT IT TO AN OFFICER, SIR.”]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(By Mr. Punch’s Staff of Learned Clerks.)

To those who would learn what soldiering is like in the armies of democratic France I would heartily commend two books recently published by Messrs. ALLEN AND UNWIN, Battles and Bivouacs, by JACQUES ROUJON, and The Diary of a French Private, by GASTON RIOU.  M. ROUJON, infantryman of the line, was in private life a journalist on Le Figaro; M. RIOU, Red Cross orderly, a liberal lay-theologian and writer of European reputation.  The former’s transliterator ("Munitions are distributed around,” writes he undismayed; and has also discovered a territory known as “Oriental Prussia”) obtrudes a little between author and reader.  M. RIOU fares better; but both contrive to give a really vivid impression of the horrors and anxieties of the early days of the War before the tide turned at the Marne, of the flying rumours so far from the actual truth, of the fine spirit of camaraderie in common danger, of the intimate relations between officers and men, details, terrible or trivial, of campaigning, and, because our spirited brothers-in-arms are not ashamed to express their innermost feelings, of the deeper emotions at work under the surface gaieties.  M. RIOU’S narrative is mainly the record of his year’s captivity in a Bavarian fort.  On his way he faced the fanatical hatred and cruelty of the German civilians, of the women especially, with a cynical fortitude.  The commandant of his prison, Baron von STENGEL, was, however, a gentleman and a brick, and did everything in his power to make the difficult life bearable.  An episode pleasant to recall is the reception of the Russian prisoners (intended by their captors to cause dissensions) by their French comrades in misfortune.  The whole record gives an impression of fine courage and resourcefulness.

* * * * *

Very probably you are already acquainted with that restful and admirable book, Father Payne (SMITH, ELDER), of which a new edition has just now been published.  The point of this new edition is that, in its special Preface, the genesis and authorship of the book are assigned, for the first time on this side the Atlantic, to Mr. A.C.  BENSON.  And the point of the new preface is that it entirely gives away the original edition (also printed here), in which the secret was elaborately concealed.  My wonder is, reading the book with this added knowledge, that anyone can have at any time failed to detect in it the gently persuasive hand of the Master of Magdalene, Cambridge.