THE OLDEST JOKE OF HE WAR.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 160, 14 July 1916, Page 3

THE OLDEST JOKE OF HE WAR.

It was a balmy evening in the year 54 B.C. The groat Julius Caesar was seated in his tent penning hie celebrated memoirs. A pleased smile passed over his well-chiselled features, a happy pnrase had occurred to him, he glanced round for his well-known satellites that he might inflict it upon them; they were gone. Mark Anthony preferred to coin his own phrases, and Brutus —well, Brutus, as that coarse young gentleman afterwards admitted —Brutus was “fed up.” At tnis propitious moment the sentry appeared. “An old man craves admittance, Mighty Caesar. Shall 1 hand him over to the torturers to inquire Iris business?” “Nay! nay! my gentle Caligula!” replied the Warrior-Histor-ian. “ Perchance ho may have some literary talent; let him enter.” An old man enters, nis hair is white, his body is feeble, but the dauntless spirit or the old Roman soldier leaps forth from his flashing eye. “ A boon ! Great Caesar, a boon!’’ he cries. “Hearken to this,” interrupts the great man. “Having pacified the Aedui and the tribes of Northern Gaul, I determined to teach these haughty islanders a. lesson. Is that not a happy note? ‘Pacified?’ I swept their land with fire-sword, and gave them peace —the peace of death.” “It is indeed happy,” echoed the Aged One. “That phrase will long outlive the kuJtur of the savage tribes beyond the Rnine. But I crave a boon. Take mo with thee.across the seas to fight those Islanders.” “Nay, old man, that cannot he,” said Julius, " only hate and hearty men are wanted. No toothless old dotard can go with me.” The old man came nearer and whispered. It was the great war joke! Its effect was instantaneous.- The groat conqueror shook with merriment, his peals of laughter alarmed the camp, ills face turned purple, and even his bald bead glowed with a ruddy glow. “Old man,” he gasped, “never have I heard a happier jest Never since I pacified the Belgac, have 1 enjoyed ■myself more. True, my word is passed, and thou canst not accompany me to Britain. But thy jest shall go. and planted in that fertile soil it will five for ever.” And so it came to pass; centurloi elapsed, but the jest could not die. In times of peace it might sleep and o« forgotten, hut with the sound of tin* war trumpet it woke with renewed strength and vigour. Old grey-haired men mumbled it as they girt on their armour and reached down their tru«ti spears. Babes lisped it at their mother’s knee. Stern-faced Puritans heark ened to it with a grim smile. Gm Cavaliers made merry with it over theii wine. Marlborough’s troops, when m i “swearing horribly in fold it to one another as a new and happy 'e«t. Kvpii the stern features of tin Iron Duke are said to have relaxed

when first he heard the merry quip. The Crimea knew it, and so did ihe Boer War. When this great war broke out it was heard again. In hundreds of recruiting offices and by thousands of recruits were these words spoken. Words that might well have figured on recruiting posters. "Words that ought to be engraved in letters of gold and preserved amongst the antiquities in the. British Museum. The plea of the toothless patriot:— “I want to fight the Germans —not to eat them.” —W. J. R.