THE BYSTANDER

London, England

28 June 1916

(page 564)

BYSTANDER COMMENTS.

AWAKE, ALGERNON ASHTON!

Will criminals, litigants, lordlings and chorus girls, suffragettes, faddists, charlatans and others please begin to get busy? What about a return to the publicity of private life of the Rev. Smyth Piggott? Or Mr. Algernon Ashton on tombstones? Are there no new “proofs” of Bacon’s authorship of Shakespeare to be dug up from the bed of the Wye? Has Sir Oliver Lodge not been meeting any spirits lately? Is the Play Censor dead? Are there no sex problems? What has happened to Mrs. Ormiston Chant? Has Dean Inge exhausted his gloom-supply? Mrs. Besant, the Great Mahatma, Aleister Crowley, Bergson, and—Miss Marie Corelli? Surely not all engaged in winning the war? Could not a special murder mystery, on entirely novel lines, be arranged by Carmelite House for a run through July and August?—a nice clean murder, suitable for homely reading? Surely the papers could, if they liked, wake non-war things up a bit? Something ought really to be done and at once, or the war will end suddenly (according to Lord Derby) and the boys will return to a Blighty that isn’t worth returning to.