May 29, 1915 
LAND AND WATER 
IN the usual order of things and in the accepted phrase, 
the London Season would now have been at its height. 
Debutante daughters would have been first presented, 
or going in the near future to make their curtsey at 
Court. The Opera House would have opened its 
great doors, Ascot house parties have been arranged, Hurling- 
ham attracting its gay throng, and showing good polo. As 
it is, most of the old landmarks of the Season have disappeared, 
and even those which exist have a very different countenance 
from that of years past. There is an influence underl5^ng 
them all, breathing aloud the fact that we are chin-deep 
in the greatest of all wars. Things that are the same are yet 
not the same, indeed one doubts if they can ever be the same 
again, with the war's steady influence finding its way into 
every home, and always leaving its indeUble mark. 
The Academy is a case in point. It is amongst the land- 
marks that remain, and we, being a conservative race, grate- 
fully recognize it as such. It is nothing short of a relief to 
turn aside out of the traffic, away from sensational newspaper 
bills into the quiet courtyard of Burlington House, and mount 
the short flight of stairs into the Central Hall. For it is the 
same Academy, to all intents and purposes, that we used 
to visit in the days gone by, before destruction raged loose 
in the world. The same, and yet is it the same ? Apart 
from the war pictures with their obviously topical interest, 
in other respects it is not. There are numbers of visitors 
in black, there are many with that strained look of anxiety 
on their faces to which we have grown sadly accustomed. 
There is the picture of two great white oxen, called " Plough- 
ing." It is by F. E. F. Crisp, the Academy student of great 
promise, who will never use palette or brush again. There is 
La very 's fine London Hospital picture with its sense of 
broken men, yet its wonderful atmosphere of cheer. Old 
landmark though the Academy is, and one of the last left to 
us, it is yet a landmark with a difference. 
The World at Large 
London is full, quite as full as it ever is at this time of 
year. The superficial observer with no knowledge that social 
engagements in the ordinary sense of the word have ceased 
to exist might be excused for thinking that things are going 
much as usual. Any morning in Bond Street, the all too- 
narrow thoroughfare is full of people driving and people 
on foot. The Park has lost its deserted look, the restaurants 
are full, and so are the theatres whose productions have 
caught the public taste. And yet, though outwardly things 
may appear the same, everybody's inner fife is changed as 
by an avalanche. Everybody's field of activity has changed. 
People are just as busy as ever they were, but it is for vastly 
different reasons they are remaining in town. The fixtures 
of the social calendar have been replaced by those deaUng 
with helpful works of every kind and description. Many 
people must regard themselves with amazement, as they 
contrast their hfe this year with that of those preceding. 
For it is as opposed as the poles, the habits of years have been 
rooted up, and an entirely new programme substituted. 
No longer are invitation cards sent out with formal 
biddings to dinner or bcdl many weeks ahead. Now a few 
words on a card, or a ring of the telephone bell, and a verbal 
invitation are all that are ever expected or desired. And there 
is no question of notice at all. There is no such thing as 
entertaining on anything like a dignified scale. The social 
. horizon has narrowed until it has become the smallest of 
dots, in fact one is puzzled to discover it at all. 
Present- Day Hospitality 
While entertaining, however, has died a violent death, 
hospitality in the truest sense of the word has never been more 
flourishing. No matter how much we may each practise 
household economy it has not yet prompted us to close our 
doors against our neighbours. And it can only be hoped that 
the necessity for such a day wiU be slow in dawning. People 
have never felt more strongly than at the present time that it is 
not good for man to five alone. There is a strong feeling 
of human companionship bound up with every stage of the 
great tragedy. It is among the most human signs of the 
times. Since the days of wholesale parties have passed, 
when so many hundred of cards were dispatched, and friends 
and mere acquaintances met in one heterogeneous throng, 
we have made more effort to meet each other. Much more 
care is being taken over the minor entertaining which has 
replaced the " crush." A luncheon party of six or eight women, 
for example, takes a certain amount of careful planning if it is to 
fulfil a hostess's expectations. In these days, when everybody's 
nerves are strained to breaking point, it is no manner of use 
asking people who are Ukely to be uncongenial to meet 
each other. Indeed, for that matter, nobody is incUned to 
meet uncongenial spirits at lunch or any other times. We 
see the people we like, avoid those we do not, and everybody 
is infinitely better in consequence. 
Dinner parties as social functions have ceased to exist. 
There will be no regimental dinners this year, no great dinners 
of forty or fifty people as a prelude to some monster ball. 
We still dine out, it is true, but we do so in a spirit of 
informality, and more often than not arrangements are 
disturbed at the last moment on acccount of guests being 
called away on public duties elsewhere. Nothing is fixed, 
nothing definitely settled under the existing scheme of things. 
We live from day to day, many of us indeed not daring to 
look forward as far as that, lest it be too long a stretch of 
time to treat with impunity. 
The Change in Things 
With everything else that in the days long ago made 
up the sum total of the Season, it is the same. How can things 
in all possibility be as in days of yore ? It is not only im- 
possible, it is unthinkable at present at any rate, whatever 
the future may hold. Too many familiar figures will never 
be seen again at Lord's, too many well-known faces have 
vanished from the river. Lovers of tennis, who followed 
the game at the Wimbledon Tournament, or at Nice or Cannes, 
during the Riviera season, must remember with sorrow one 
of the great lights of the tennis-world, whose steady clean 
play was a joy to behold. Regrets will lurk wherever the 
polo ponies are to be found, memories find a place in many 
a comer. Such a catastrophe as a war of this magnitude 
was bound to mean the complete upheaval of things in 
general, and of the Season in particular, with its regular 
schedule of circumscribed events. 
"STRAIGHT TIPS FOR 'SUBS'." 
Many newly-gazetted subalterns will welcome Captain A. H. Trap- 
mann's little book, " Straight Tips for ' Subs.' " In a few simple words 
it explains what he must do in His Majesty's Army, and how he 
must behave as a commissioned officer. 
The chapter describing " Who's Who in the Regiment " is calculated 
to save many a subaltern from a snubbing and worse, for, as Captain 
Trapmann says, " the junior subaltern (yourself) is a blot on the earth 
until he justifies his existence." As for the other officers, the author 
sagely remarks to the subaltern, " You will feel awkward if you find 
yourself saluting the bandmaster or treating the colonel as a long- 
lost brother." 
Messrs, Samuel Brothers, Ltd., the well-known outfitters of 
Ludgate Hill and Oxford Circus, will supply free of charge a copy of 
this useful little booklet on receipt of a postcard. 
143 
