CHARIVARIA.

“No amount of War Office approval will make hens lay,” says The Weekly Dispatch.  These continuous efforts to shake our confidence in the men entrusted with the conduct of the War can only be regarded as deplorable.

***

A workman in a Northern shell factory has been fined five pounds for having his trousers fastened on with iron nails.  Why he abandoned the usual North Country method of having them riveted on him was not explained.

***

Charlie Chaplin, says a message from Chicago, has not joined the U.S.  Army.  He excuses himself on the ground that Mr. Pemberton-Billing, who is much funnier, is not in khaki.

***

A woman told the Lambeth magistrate that her husband had not spoken to her for six weeks.  It is a great tribute to the humanity of our magistrates that the poorer people should go to them with their joys as well as their sorrows.

***

Cruises on the Thames and Medway estuaries will only be permitted on condition that the owners of pleasure craft agree to increase the nation’s food supply by catching fish.  Merely feeding them will not do.

***

A man who was seen carrying a grandfather clock through the streets of Willesden has been arrested.  It seems to be safer, as well as more convenient, to carry a wrist-watch.

***

Newhaven, it is stated, is suffering from a plague of butterflies.  All attempts to persuade them to move on to the Metropole at Brighton have so far been successfully resisted.

***

Table-napkins have been forbidden in Berlin and special ear-protectors for use at meal-times are said to be enjoying a brisk sale.

***

When the fourteen-year-old son of German parents was charged in a London Court with striking his mother with a boot, the mother admitted that she had cut the boy’s face because he had called her by an opprobrious German name.  On the advice of the magistrate the family have decided to discontinue their subscription to the half-penny press.

***

“I should like to give you a good licking, but the law won’t allow me,” said Mr. Bankes, K.C., the new magistrate for West London, in fining a lad for cruelty to a horse.  The discovery that even magistrates have to forgo their simple pleasures in these times made a profound impression upon the boy.

***

Herr Erzberger has expressed a desire for “half an hour with Mr. Lloyd George” to settle the War.  In view of the heavy demands upon the Premier’s time it is suggested in Parliamentary circles that Major Archer-Shee should consent to act as his substitute.

***

The idea of giving raid warnings by the discharge of a couple of Generals has been unfavourably received by the Defence authorities.

***

A German shell which passed through a Church Army Hut was found to have been stamped with the initials “C.A.” in its passage through the building.  The clerk, whose duty it is to attend to matters of this kind, has been reprimanded for not adding the date.