the records of their friends. prizes were beyond his reach. A life out short prevented Patrick Shaw - Stewart and many another of his kind from proving to the world the force and talent that were in them, and it is a pious duty to rescue them from oblivion. We would not, if we could, turn away from what Mr Knox calls "the imperfect monuments of a generation that died before its time." The more monuments, perfect or imperfect, the better shall we understand what we have lost in the great generation which has been taken from us. And what we value most highly in these plain records, in these collections of familiar letters, is the detachment of mind which they suggest. The men who became soldiers, not because soldiering was their business, but because they were were discharging the duty they owed to their country, were no specialists. They needed no maps to explain their movements, Ав Mr Knox says, "their letters do not speak of advances or of hand-to-hand fighting, but of books, of quiet hours, of welcome rest-camps; they appeal, not for credit or sympathy, but for trivial daily needs, pathetic because trivial-bootpolish and pipe-cleaners and shaving-soap.' Of those who died quietly and without parade none is better worth a record than Patrick Shaw - Stewart. He was, above all, a competent man. If he felt that he had no definite vocation in life, he knew also that few of life's He had that serviceable and efficient sort of brain which could be turned to any account. He passed through Eton and Balliol with an air of easy triumph. He won the Newcastle, the Ireland, the Hertford, and capped his career at Oxford by winning a fellowship at All Souls. Truly, as his kindly biographer says, he 66 was not one of the passengers of his generation,' And it is his very distinction which makes the work of portraiture difficult. He was too busy in converting life into a success to express himself in literature. He left no lasting memory of himself in words, as did his friend Julian Grenfell. Whatever lay before him, he took in his stride without fuss and without emphasis. "He had a genius," says Mr Knox, "for relating means to ends, for doing just so much work as was required to gain this scholarship, for making just so much impression as was required to consolidate this acquaintanceship; and his whole life (I think) was mapped out on a plan which involved the acquisition of an assured position in the world before he began to toy with literature, with Movements, with serious politics." In other words, there was a kind of worldliness in Patrick ShawStewart which he shared with very few of his contemporaries. He meant to get on, and not to sacrifice the hope of solid happiness to any forlorn hope of art or letters. His system of life, if rarely applied, is clearly intelligible. certainties: an enthymeme, for The danger is that, when men him, should never do duty for have attained an assured po- a syllogism. He could not bear sition, the impetus "to toy that any action of his should with literature" is weak in- be ascribed to a good motive deed. Literature is a jealous if there were any unworthy mistress, apt to punish severely motive that had put a grain the slights that are put upon on the balance of decision." It her in youth. Alas! it is too was consonant with his charlate to speculate about what acter, then, that he should Patrick Shaw-Stewart might take the work that he did in have done. It is enough to the war lightly and gaily. He record that in many fields he never complains or repines. accomplished as much as or The ready jest is on his more than the most of his tongue; a literary allusion or friends and colleagues. reminiscence is always at the point of his pen. He found his way about the East with Homer and Herodotus for his guides. He recognised Eumæus when he met him on a Greek island, and belies at every turn the half-contempt which he poured upon his own scholarship as a means of deceiving the examiners. But that, of course, was only a part of his inverted pride. He died in France, fighting with the highest gallantry, and refusing, though wounded, to go back to Battalion H.Q. to be dressed. His life, so far as it went, was rounded and complete; and fortunate in many things, Patrick Shaw-Stewart was fortunate also in finding so profoundly sympathetic and 80 wisely understanding a biographer as Mr Knox. Moreover, as all those who knew Shaw-Stewart will remember, he purposely put stumbling-blocks in the path of those who would understand him. Mr Knox points out that he had acquired at Eton a habit of writing in a sort of parody of journalese. He did not think he was writing good English when he dealt in long words and stock phrases. He wanted you to know that what he said upon paper he put into inverted commas. And, as Mr Knox adds in a passage of clairvoyance, he was in inverted commas himself. He had a "fierce candour both about himself and about other people which sometimes left his friends aghast. He hated false enthusiasms and sham Printed by William Blackwood and Sons. BROADWAY, from 30th Street to Columbus Circle, changes its electric signs, idols, and habits with whirligig frequency according to the behaviour of its box-office receipts, its Press agents, and the officials who try their ineffeotive hardest to enforce the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits the manufacture and sale of liquor vitalised by more than one-half of 1 per cent alcohol. Its traditions, however, remain unchangeable as fate. Among these are, that good fellowship is beyond humility, that the big drum is more effective than the lyre any day, and that Englishmen have no sense of humour. The last-named belief is so deeply rooted in Broadway lore as to have become an idée fixe of international misunderstanding, with the rigidity of an unassailable axiom; so that a black-faced comedian can always be sure of a laugh if he retails an anecdote wherein an Englishman misses the ohso-subtle point of an oh-sofunny joke, and unmovedly inquires, "An' did she do ut?" I once made an analytical inquiry into the reasons ancestral, elimatie, historical? why my race, the race of Chaucer and Charles Chaplin, Shakespeare and Chevalier, Fielding and Phil May, Max Beerbohm and Marie Lloyd, should be deficient in humour, whereas our cousins, descend Copyright in the United States of America. VOL. CCVIII.—NO, MCCLVIII. K Be ants of our great-great-great- its origin in a people so grand uncles, who sailed to unwinking as the English America as high-hearted Puri- should be proof enough of tans, pioneers, and merchant absurdity. Nevertheless, your adventurers, should have de- average American, like your veloped that divine quality average Englishman, may until they possessed a higher chuckle at the delicious fandegree of it than any of the tasy of a Barrie play, cheat older nations. At least, that sleep by laughing in bed over is what I had been told by an 'The Lunatic at Large,' and American named Steifelhagen; next day tell the office Caleand who should know better? donian that a steam-driven After much mental wrestling orane is needed to hoist a joke with comparative values, I into a Scotsman's head. was forced to admit that my that as it may, if one wants to training in logic and my under- cover a ribald intention with standing of psycho - analysis solemn plausibility, the most were insufficient to conquer effective cloaks for the purpose the problem. They could not are lined with tartan plaid. carry me beyond a humiliating Which brings me to the tale admission that the humour of of Shylook, Macbeth, and 'Punch' was not in the same Captain Ian MacTavish of the class 88 the Mutt and Jordan Highlanders. Jeff cartoons; that William Schwenk Gilbert invented no lines or lyrios comparable to those heard on Broadway in such leg-song-and-bedroom shows as "Good Gracious, Annabelle!" and "Nightie- uary, had not been so very Night!" and that the British Parliament never enlivened the public with anything so richly comic as the American Senate's resolutions on Sinn Fein Ireland; but hush! the propagandists deprecate irresponsible discussion of AngloAmerican relations in terms of high politics-politics high as a very dead pheasant. Now, many Englishmen, for their part, allow themselves to be convinced by hearsay that Sootsmen are inhumorously inclined. This rumour spread long ago to America, although one would imagine that, to the mind of Broadway, New York was was entering upon the second stage of its career as the City of Dreadful Drought. The first stage, from 30th June to 16th Jan dreadful, "After the 1st of July, Good-bye, Wine, Women, Good-bye!" was sung no more in the cabarets, but the saloonkeepers refused to be downhearted. The ice continued to rattle in their glasses, for many old-timers were willing to pay 40 cents for a small portion of oily diluted whisky. In some saloons, a teetotal drink was difficult to obtain, for a man who demanded ginger-ale would be given a rye-highball and a wink. A protest that he wanted real ginger-ale would bring more winks and the reply, "I gotcha foist time you said it, bo. That's the reallest ginger-ale Man with the Crooked Brain there ever wasn't." In the smaller restaurants, cocktails were served in consommé oups. For the rest, it was permissible to bring one's own liquor when dining in public, so that Manhattan Dollardom trooped into the Ritz-Carlton carrying flasks, and even medicinebottles. But after the Supreme Court had upheld the Enforcement Aot, the leash tightened and the second stage arrived. There were fearsome pronunciamentos, which precluded the carriage of a likely-looking bottle from one street to another without danger of a hold-up. There were raids and rumours of raids, prosecutions and hush - money avoidances of prosecutions; and the wealthy laboured under the hardship of having to make inroads on each other's private stocks in each other's private houses, while those who were both improvident and unable to leap from excessive indulgence to excessive abstinence, made shift with bay-rum, eau-de-Cologne, methylated spirits, and strange harmful drinks brewed secretly. Six months later we had merged imperceptibly into the third stage, which was semi-realisation that the machinery designed to maintain extreme teetotalism was both costly and unworkable. New York, I repeat, was entering upon the second stage of its career as the City of Dreadful Drought. My excuse for mentioning the fact is, that it was the sole reason why the trudged through the snow to my Madison Avenue flat in quest of a drink, and became godfather to Ian MacTavish. The transient in New York will often travel far for a late evening stimulant; and an hour earlier Crookbrain had seen me leave a mutual friend's cellar with a cylindrical bulge on my pocket. Before his arrival I had been cogitating over a conversation at the house in which I had left him. Did we know, asked my table neighbour, a highspirited and voluble actress, "that nice young man named Smith, who is now the Lord Mayor of London, I believe"? She had met him, it appeared, at a distinctly unofficial gathering; but she understood he came to America during the war on an official mission for the British Government. Arrived home, I searched the booklet in which members of the British Mission told each other who was who amongst themselves, but failed to find a Smith important enough for office approximating to the Lord Mayoralty of London. But a recapitulation of the appearance and attributes of the Smith described by the actress led me to the awesome truth. The nice young man named Smith was none other than the very venerable Lord Chancellor ! And then, displaying a thirst and an evening newspaper, there entered the Man with the Crooked Brain. Having dealt suitably with the thirst, he unfolded the newspaper and |