She’s ubiquitous in theatres, in rail and ’bus and tram,
  She wears her “blouses open down to the diaphragm,”
  And, instead of realising what our men are fighting for,
  She’s an orgiastic nuisance who in fact enjoys the War.

  It’s a strenuous indictment of our petticoated youth
  And contains a large substratum of unpalatable truth;
  Our women have been splendid, but the Sun himself has specks,
  And the flapper can’t be reckoned as a credit to her sex.

  Still it needs to be remembered, to extenuate her crimes,
  That these flappers have not always had the very best of times;
  And the life that now she’s leading, with no Mentors to restrain,
  Is decidedly unhinging to an undeveloped brain.

  Then again we only see her when she’s out for play or meals,
  And distresses the fastidious by her gestures and her squeals,
  But she is not always idle or a decorative drone,
  And if she wastes her wages, well, she wastes what is her own.

  Still to say that she’s heroic, as some scribes of late have said,
  Is unkind as well as foolish, for it only swells her head;
  She oughtn’t to be flattered, she requires to be repressed,
  Or she’ll grow into a portent and a peril and a pest.

  Dr. SHADWELL to the PREMIER makes an eloquent appeal
  In firm and drastic fashion with this element to deal;
  And ’twould be a real feather in our gifted Cambrian’s cap
  If he taught the peccant flapper less flamboyantly to flap.

  But, in Punch’s way of thinking, ’tis for women, kind and wise,
  These neglected scattered units to enrol and mobilize,
  Their vagabond activities to curb and concentrate,
  And turn the skittish hoyden to a servant of the State.

  She’s young; her eyes are dazzled by the glamour of the streets;
  She has to learn that life is not all cinemas and sweets;
  But given wholesome guidance she may rise to self-control
  And earn the right of entry on the Nation’s golden Roll.

* * * * *

THE ONLY STEGGLES.

Steggles is my groom, and my crowning mercy.  But for his deafness I am sure he would long since have left the humble rank of gunner far beneath him, and the Staff might have gained a brilliant strategist.  In addition to dulness of hearing, Steggles is endowed—­I should indeed be ungrateful to use the word afflicted—­with a vacuity of expression which puts rivals or antagonists off their guard, and doubles his value during the vicissitudes of active service.  What would be handicaps to ordinary men Steggles turns to the advantage of himself, Sapphira my mare, and me.