To sign or not to sign?

As Count BROCKDORFF-RANTZAU puts it, quoting from his German translation of Hamlet:  “Sein oder nicht sein, dass ist hier die Frage.”

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“The recommendations of the Jerram Committee came before a conference between a representative body of lower deck ratings and members of Parliament who sit for naval constituencies.  The veterinary chief petty officer presided.”—­Sunday Paper.

The rank is new to us; but he must be just the man to look after the interests of our sea-dogs.

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From the “Transactions” of a photographic society:—­

“Mr. ——­ stated that as Architectural Photography covered a large and varied field he purposed to confine his remarks to the line of work most familiar to him, namely, The Interiors of some of the great English Ministers.”

Now at last we shall know if the Government’s heart is in the right place.

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To Robert of the force.

  Since first you loomed upon my infant ken
    My firm belief has ever been, and still it is,
  That you are fashioned not as other men
    (Subject, at best, to mortal disabilities),
  But come of more than human kin,
  Immune, or practically so, from sin.

  Godlike the poise that to your bearing lends
    The aspect of a tower that never totters;
  There’s a divinity hath shaped your ends
    (Rough-hewn, perhaps—­especially your trotters);
  Your ample chest, your generous girth
  Have no precise similitude on earth.

  I cannot picture you (though I have tried)
    Wearing a bowler hat and tweed apparel,
  Or craving sustenance for your inside
    Drawn either from the oven or the barrel;
  Scarcely you figure in my eye
  As liable, in Nature’s course, to die.

  And it was you who almost fell from grace,
    Striking, like Lucifer, against authority,
  Leaving your Heaven for another place
    Not mentioned by your ten-to-one majority,
  And doomed, to your surprise and pain,
  Never, like Lucifer, to rise again.

  But you were wise, my Robert, wise in time;
    And I, who set you far above humanity,
  High-pedestalled upon my lofty rhyme,
    Rejoice with you in your recovered sanity;
  To me I feel it would have mattered
  Enormously to see my idol shattered.

  But ’ware the Bolsh, who fain would lure your feet
    To conduct unbecoming in a copper;
  Once you betrayed us, going off your beat,
    And now you’ve nearly come another cropper;
  If, tempted thrice, you break your trust,
  You’ll have no halo left to readjust.

  O.S.

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