New Methods of Fighting

1917

Modern Warfare Is Carried On Under Water, Under Ground and in the Clouds

"Digging in" has a new and important significance and the fantastic legend of Darius Green is long forgotten in the light of practical achievement by the bird-man of today. The cavalry of the earth has been supplanted by the cavalry of the air. The actual fighting of modern warfare is conducted under water, under ground and far up among the clouds.

Yes, there have been drastic changes in military tactics and military equipment since the old days when we used to drill in the armory over the grocery store in the little old home town. What we tried so hard to learn of military lore in those days would be classed as low comedy by a recruiting officer of this changeful period. But all the same, one can't help wishing that one were somewhere in France at this minute with good old Company C regiment of the National Guard, and we'd make a reasonable wager that of the survivors of that organization, if given an opportunity to go, there wouldn't be a slacker in the bunch. — Exchange.

"Silk Hats For Hire"

1910

Sign In Old Dickens' Quarters, London, Forced to Go Under Modern Pressure

London. — Among the landmarks of London that have disappeared of late are some old shops in Houghton street, Kingsway, the district that Dickens loved. The irruption of the house-breaker into this little thoroughfare has done more to disturb old buildings to make way for modern office blocks — it has displaced an old world little man, Christopher Clark, whose business for years has been one of the queerest in all London.

Till the London county council laid reforming hands on the dim little shop it bore in the window the notice:

Gentlemen's Silk Hats
Lent on Hire for Weddings
and Funerals.

The old man seemed strangely out of place in the daylight that had been let into that hitherto dingy bypath of the metropolis as he stood by the door a day or two before closing the shop for the last time and retiring as an old age pensioner. A big white apron enveloped his bent form and he peered suspiciously at the questioner who asked him how he fared.

Gradually, however, he thawed and admitted that he was eighty-four years old. "Certainly, I have had a good business. This used to be a good street for trade. Lawyers used to use it as a route to the courts, but all those changes are taking the life out of London. Folks now get underground like moles when they want to move about the city. And every messenger boy who wants to, sports a cheap tall hat.

"What sort of customers? Most respectable customers I have always had. If a silk hat was wanted for some special occasion I would supply a good one for a shilling a day — a hat no man could fail to be proud to go out in.

"A shilling a day, mark you" (the old man lovingly polished a shining specimen of his head gear with his sleeve), "and the hat to be returned to me in the condition in which it left the shop. Should a client require a hat for more than a day a reduction would be made. There was no fixed charge. There were times when a man positively had to have a silk hat, and — well, I was not too hard on the man whose fortune was small."

"No, trade latterly has not been always brisk. It has sometimes happened that more than a month has passed before a client has come in here to hire a hat, though sometimes I might have as many as four in a day. It used to be very different. Not even a funeral is conducted decently nowadays Everything is rush and tear."

And the old man sighed as he thought of the former days, when times were good and Londoners jogged comfortably along, with the silk hat as their badge of respectability on special occasions.

Changes in Weddings — Fewer Vows Made "To Obey"

1910

OMISSIONS AT THE ALTAR

Many Brides Who Now Refuse Make the Verbal Promise of Obedience

This year, as usual, some of the June brides got into the newspapers by refusing to make the verbal promise of obedience "till death us do part," as required by "The Form of Solemnization of Matrimony," specified in the Book of Common Prayer.

The full ceremony includes the exaction of a vow to "serve him," likewise, "so long as ye both shall live;" and it furthermore comprises several admonitions quoted from St. Paul and St. Peter, all to the one effect, wifely subjection. Any other point of view could hardly have been expected from spokesmen of the first century oriental community, particularly not from St. Peter, who himself was married, and who would, therefore, probably not have wished to upset an ancient, popular tradition no less convenient for his sex — than venerable.

Despite the eastern origin of its faith, the Christian world has managed to de-orientalize itself a good deal in nineteen hundred years, and the flavor of orientalism, which, quite naturally, attaches to the "Solemnization of Matrimony," is not now entirely to the taste of all western women — or men. But aren't the fair modern occidental Protestants rather illogical? They refuse to promise "to obey" a man for a single minute, although obedience is purely an act of volition, not requiring the smallest regard or respect for the person obeyed, or even acquaintance with him. On the other hand, the brides find it easy to swear "to love" a man forever, although love is a thing completely beyond control of the will!

Deign, if you please, Mesdames les Divorcees and others, to acknowledge that the great fundamental reason of marital discord, infelicity and wreck is the cessation of that feeling "to love," whose perpetual continuance it appears so very easy to pledge. Moreover, nobody ever alleges post-nuptial disinclination or even refusal "to obey" as a sufficient provocation for divorce. Of those two covenants, why object to the lightest? — Collier's.