Tag: 1940 Page 1 of 4

Out-Manoeuvred

On April 11, 2026

***The major pointed his stick at us. “You!” he said. “You! You did it! It was you!”***

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, April 13, 1940.

“The crows,” stated Jimmie Frise, “are nesting.”

“What of it?” I retorted dismally.

“I know a bush,” declared Jim, “where there will be seven or eight nests right now. That means 14 excited and noisy crows. Those 14, if disturbed, will set up a hue and cry that will attract 200 crows from the surrounding township.”

“So what?” I insisted.

“Let’s take an afternoon off,” said Jimmie, “and blast a few crows off the face of the map.”

“It isn’t crows we should be interested in blowing off the map,” I pointed out. “Jimmie, you should have better taste than to suggest crow shooting at a time like this.”

“It would cheer us up,” submitted Jim. “Here you sit, all day, all week, full of mental depression.”

“I am not depressed,” I informed him. “I am merely conforming to the nation-wide sense of the gravity of the times.”

“If everybody gets gloomy,” said Jim, “there is no telling what may happen to us. Gloomy people are always easily defeated. It’s the high heart that can’t be beat.”

“Do you think crow shooting would give me the high heart?” I scorned.

“I don’t care what you do,” informed Jim, “so long as you do something. Something usual, something normal. It is this sitting about glooming that is bad for all of us. The whole country.”

“The only war work I have done so far,” I said bitterly, “is hold wool while my wife winds it into balls.”

“The women are lucky,” sighed Jim. “In wartime the young ones can join organizations to work and drive cars and collect stuff and make stuff. And when they get old, they can still knit socks. There is no war age limit on women. A woman can sit quietly knitting, in her own home, putting patriotism and love and devotion into every stitch. She can sit there, in peace and quiet, making a pair of socks that she knows some day will be faring far over the bloody earth. She can feel she is in touch with the great reality. Who knows what man, what hero, will wear these very socks? Who can say what historic battle, what Waterloo or Thermopylae these very socks growing in her hands will one day share in? Even a very old lady, with knitting is needles in her hands, can feel in tunes with the ages.”

“Old soldiers never die,” I commented. “They just grouse away. We’re too old to enlist. Our collars are too white for us to make shells. And if we join any of these clubs for the entertainment of the troops and other patriotic purposes, we end up in a fight with the committee inside of a week.”

“Come crow shooting,” pleaded Jimmie. “Don’t you see? If there is nothing you can do, by way of helping, then at least take steps to keep cheerful. The worst thing those of us can do, who are unable to find any real war work, is to grow crabby and gloomy and sour. In the old war, don’t you remember, there was a slogan – ‘Business as usual’? There was another one – ‘Keep the home fires burning.” In that old war we all understood the importance of keeping cheerful and busy. The best way to give aid and comfort to the enemy is by being depressed and gloomy.”

“We should all go around shouting hurraw,” I sneered.

“Much better,” declared Jim, “than if we all went around groaning.”

“That is Sheer Hypocrisy”

“Who’s groaning?” I demanded.

“You don’t realize you’re groaning,” said Jim. “That’s the heck of it. The worst thing about people suffering from depression is that they don’t even hear their own groans.”

“Do you mean to say…” I gritted.

“Look,” said Jim. “This bush I speak of is only 15 miles from where we sit in this office. In it are, I bet you, seven or maybe 10 crows’ nests. Each nest has four or five eggs in it. That means, next summer, probably 60 or 70 crows set loose upon the harmless wild world. That means hundreds of baby songbirds killed in their nests by the parent crows to feed those black brats.”

“Blackshirts,” I hissed.

“Exactly,” said Jim, encouraged. “Crows are the cruel Nazis of the wild world. They go about the innocent world of the woods, silently, listening, peering, prying. They are killers. Nothing counts but them. They have no mercy, no heart. As far as they are concerned, the whole world could belong to the crows.”

“I once saw a crow struggling in a low bush,” I related. “When I got there and drove it off, I found it had pecked and killed the five nestlings of a beautiful rose-breasted grosbeak. One of the most colorful and one of the loveliest singing birds in the world.”

“Yet,” said Jim, “you decline to come crow shooting because you think it is unbecoming?”

“I wouldn’t want any of my sarcastic friends to find out I had been out amusing myself,” I assured, “while Rome burns.”

“Then,” cried Jimmie, “don’t go to amuse yourself. Go for some fine, honest purpose. Just sit down and think and think, for a little while. Convince yourself that some high, holy purpose is to be served by going crow shooting. You are going crow shooting in order to save the farmer’s crops. You are going crow shooting because, in time of war, all the young men who ordinarily keep the crows down are away, and somebody must do their job or else the country is going to be overrun and ruined by crows.”

“Jim,” I said, shocked, “that is sheer hypocrisy!”

“Hypocrisy?” retorted Jim. “Do you call it hypocrisy when a professional politician, whose real job is to keep in the limelight and get himself power, persuades himself that he should attack the government in wartime? My dear boy, it is human nature. Not hypocrisy. A man can persuade himself that the best course for him is the right course. All men do. All over the world, in every nation, in every village, in every lonely shack in prairie and forest, men are persuading themselves that the course they want to take or must take is the right course.”

“How horrible, Jim,” I protested.

“Please use your head,” pleaded Jim. “You know it is true as well as I do. Those men who happen to choose a course that is good are reputed to be good men. Those who happen to choose the bad course are said to be hypocrites. But no man knows, until it is too late, which is the good or the bad. Because if he did, the world would have been heaven 2,000 years ago.”

“We must struggle,” I cried, “against the evil course. That is the whole of morality.”

“Do you mean to say,” accused Jim, leaning forward, “that no good purpose would be served by shooting 20 crows?”

“Of course some good purpose would be served,” I agreed, “but would it be as good a purpose as refraining from idle amusements in a time of national peril?”

“Ah,” sighed Jim, “who are we to decide between the greater or the lesser good? When we see good to be done, however small, let us be up and doing.”

“You’ve got a queer kind of morality,” I declared.

“How’s yours?” retorted Jimmie.

When Sky Rains Crows

So of course we went crow shooting. There is a time of year, just about now, that belongs to the crows. If we were people of any imagination about our own much beloved land, we would long ago have adopted into everyday speech some phrase such as “crow time” or “crow fortnight” or something of the kind to indicate those few days in April when the woods and the moving skies are loud with crows. Crows pairing, nesting, mating, with all the tumult and the stealth that go with such activities. The road was very good out to this bush Jimmie had in mind. Even the sideroad was a good one, well beaten, as though much traffic had recently gone along it. We parked the car quietly at the corner of the bushlot.

“See,” said Jim in a low voice. “There’s two nests abuilding right within sight. And look at the country round about. A dozen large woodlots. All of them full of crows.”

We took our shotguns and boxes of No. 7½ shells and the crow-call and entered the bush very stealthily, so as not to advertise our purpose any more than necessary. Crows are wary beasts. Even as we walked, warning caws were sounding and suspicious birds were winging out over the dark fields, expressing their suspicions to the wide-flung world.

We hunted about until we found a little gully in the woods and there, amidst some bushes already standing, we built a hide with boughs and brush, cedar and pine to give it a thicketty and harmless air

Room for the two of us we built, so that back to back, Jim and I could scan the open space amidst the bare tree tops, where the crows would come crying and wheeling and darting madly in response to Jim’s crow-call.

Jim is an artist in two dimensions. He can cartoon mankind. But he can also cartoon a crow. He uses a little wooden tube with a horn-like vibrator in it. From this small instrument he can coax such sounds as drive a sentimental crow mad with excitement. He can imitate a young lady crow caught by the foot in barbwire. He can shout like a brave gentleman crow who has suddenly found a great horned owl in a cedar tree. He can emit the harsh wails and yelps of a baby crow. And even though all crows, both male and female, should know that no eggs are hatched yet, still the love-distracted creatures will respond to those anguished cries of a baby crow.

When you call crows, you do not shoot at the very first ones that come. The ones from your immediate surrounding woodlot are likely to arrive first. Jimmie always uses the loud excited “wolf, wolf” cry of the male crow to start with. This excited shouting sound means that a crow has found an owl. It brings the nearby crows in a few seconds. Silently they come, circling suspiciously but excitedly. They alight on tree tops unsteadily and, carried by their fears, soon join in the racket. This starts the crows in the adjoining woodlots to setting up the alarm, too. As they start for the scene of action, they let out the war-whoop. And that travels from woodlot to woodlot, far and wide across the township, until, if you are an artist with the call, you can have 100 or 200 crows all furiously heading for you. The sky will fairly rain crows. And then you start shooting.

The Bush Explodes

When we got our hide well and snugly built and our field of fire clearly defined, we set our shell boxes open and ready and crouched down and Jimmie started to call.

A sudden sharp caw. As though a startled crow had almost stepped on an owl hidden deep in a cedar tree.

Another sharp caw or two; and a startled, rattled cry, as though emitted by a crow leaping suddenly in flight. Then, a series of frenzied caws, as though the crow was perched on a nearby elm, almost falling off in his excitement.

Hardly had the first of these started before we heard the welcome sound of an answering caw at the far end of the woodlot we were in.

“Keep down,” hissed Jimmie.

From the distance we heard sudden series of caws, as other birds took up the alarm. Jim let go challenging barks on the crow-call and in the open space overhead a crow wheeled and landed all flustered on a tree top. It sat there only an instant before it began cawing madly, teetering on the bough.

Suddenly the whole woods and across the fields around became loud with crow-calls, as they shouted encouragement to the clever scout who had found the enemy. And presently, wheeling and diving excitedly all about us overhead, were a dozen, two dozen, crows.

Motionless in our blind, we crouched, while Jim continued his inciting tunes, more frantic every minute. And a regular din grew in the woods all about.

“Now,” hissed Jim.

We grasped our guns. We braced our backs against each other and rose. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Our four shots, deliberate and aimed, smashed out in the noisy wood.

Silent as death, the startled crows vanished as though melted. All save two which fell to Jimmie’s gun. I am always too excited to get my first crows. I get a few later.

But hardly had the two toppled crows touched the earth before we heard an incredible sound. The whole woodlot was thrashing and crashing as though a herd of buffalo were loose. We stood petrified.

The bush exploded with a mortal smashing and banging. Shots rang out. Three, ten. Then 40, 70. And into our staggered view, in the little clearing in which we stood, 100 soldiers leaped, bayonets fixed, eyes glaring, faces flushed and triumphant, firing their rifles as they ran.

“You Bet You’ll Be Sorry”

Behind them another 100, all through the bush. The whole place seethed with soldiers, who charged in all directions, some passing us close by and not giving us even a sideways look. All leaping and chasing madly onward, as though the devil were after them or they were after the devil.

And while Jimmie and I stood dazed and unable even to speak to each other, there came at the tail end of this whirlwind of soldiers a major on a horse, plunging it furiously through the underbrush. He drove straight at us and reared his horse back and pointed his little stick speechlessly at us.

“You!” he strangled. “You! You did it! It was you!”

“Sir,” said Jimmie, “what is this…”

“You’ve ruined the manoeuvres,” roared the major. “Ruined them! The enemy has got us. We’re given away. They’ll surround us now. Oh, oh, oh.”

He whirled himself down out of the saddle and stood glaring speechlessly at us.

“But, sir,” I said. “We are a couple of innocent crow shooters…”

“Bah!” said the major, jerking his horse’s bridle in sheer rage.

“We’re extremely sorry,” said Jim.

“Sorry?” said the major. “You bet you’ll be sorry. My whole regiment wiped out. By a Western battalion at that. I’ll never hear the end of it.”

He stopped and stared at us shrewdly.

“Just a minute,” he said softly. “Maybe you’re members of that battalion, dressed up as civilians. How did you know four shots was the signal to advance?”

“We fired at crows,” I said.

“I’ll have my revenge,” said the major. “I’ll have you shot as spies. In civilian clothes. Firing the signal so my regiment would charge and give away our position to the enemy!”

Jim looked at me so bewildered I had to explain.

“It’s a sham battle, Jim,” I said. “Tactical manoeuvres. Two regiments out stalking each other. It’s quite all right. Don’t be alarmed.”

“You’ll hear about this,” gritted the major. “Stay right here, you two, until I come back. If I had any men left I’d put a guard on you. But don’t you leave here, at peril of your life. I want to get to the bottom of this.”

In the distance we could hear cheers.

“That’s the Westerners,” groaned the major. “They’ve surrounded the bush.”

He whirled up on his horse and dashed off into the thickets.

“Okay, let’s go, Jim,” I said, gathering my shell boxes.

“He said to wait,” protested Jim.

“We’ve got live ammunition, Jim,” I said pushing out of the blind. “They’ve only got blanks.”

So we crouched Indian fashion and got into our car and gave her the gas and went out the sideroad lickety split.

Jack the Ripper!

by admin

On February 10, 2026

In Birdseye Center, Comic

Hard Stuff

by admin

On December 6, 2025

In Greg-Jim Story

***Squatting down on the kitchen floor like the men of old must have done along the tidal shores, Jim and I proceeded to open oysters***

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, December 9, 1933.

“How,” asked Jimmie Frise over the telephone the other evening, “do you like oysters?”

“Love them,” I replied.

“Come on over!” cried Jimmie. “Some- body has sent me a whole barrel of oysters from the maritimes.”

“In their shells?” I asked, excitedly.

“How else would they send them?” retorted Jimmie.

“Well,” I explained, “you see those jugs of naked oysters out in front of the grocery stores.”

“These are in the shells,” said Jimmie. “Come on over. I’ve selected about forty of the best ones and I’ve got them in the sink.”

“It’s only an hour since dinner,” I said, “but I’ll come over.”

There was Jim in his kitchen. His shirt sleeves were rolled up. And with a small brush he was scrubbing the shells of a sink full of the loveliest great big oysters you ever saw. Through the open back kitchen door I could see a huge barrel, foretelling feasts for nights, to come.

“Grab that other nail brush,” cried Jim, “take off your coat and lend a hand here. We’ve got to scrub them nice and clean under the tap first. And then we’ll open them up and we’ll each have a platter of twenty oysters in the ice box. How’s that?”

“Twenty is my lucky number in oysters,” I said, removing my coat.

With the cold tap running merrily and Jim and I scrubbing the coarse, rugged shells of the oysters, our appetites began to stir, even though it was only a little after eight o’clock.

“I wonder,” said Jim, “who the intrepid hero was who first ate an oyster?”

“It was likely one of our cave-men ancestors,” I said, “because eating oysters is as old as the hills. They find heaps of oyster shells in the ruins of ancient cities, and even in the caves in which primitive man dwelt.”

“Maybe,” said Jimmie, holding up and polishing a particularly huge oyster, “it was eating oysters that started man on the upward climb from the half gorilla to what we are to-day.”

“Perhaps we ought to feed oysters to those of us that are still gorillas,” I suggested.

Oysters Not Prepossessing

“Still,” said Jim, speculatively, “I’d like to know how the very first man came to eat an oyster, because, until you get to know an oyster, it isn’t a very prepossessing creature. You don’t feel drawn toward an oyster at first sight as you do toward a roast partridge.”

“I reckon,” I said, as I scrubbed a nice fat-shelled one, “that some poor starving cave man, or maybe it was a poor starved cave girl, was walking along the sea shore one day and she saw the sea birds digging the oysters out of the mud, when the tide was down, and dropping them from a height on to the rocks and then gobbling the cold, salty oysters when the shell broke. Probably, if it was a poor starved cave girl, she shuddered and closed her eyes as she gulped down the first one. Then, opening her eyes in astonishment and joy, she dashed down to the beach and grabbed huge armfuls of oysters, and rushed back to the rocky shore and cracked them open and guzzled them down. I bet one thing, and that is that the first person ever to eat an oyster probably holds the world’s record for the number eaten at one sitting.”

“I bet she was a nice girl,” mused Jimmie.

And when she returned to the cave,” I went on, “all swollen up with oysters, and beginning to look more beautiful already, everybody, caveman and cavewoman, began wondering at the marvellous improvement in her. Day by day, as she continued to eat her new-found food, she grew lovelier, her chin got bigger, the coarse hair all over her began to moult off, and inside of a year, she was walking upright all the time. Hardly ever walking on all fours.”

“The beginning,” said Jim, scrubbing away.

“And then the secret was out, and the whole cave colony started eating oysters, crying ‘oy, oy,’ hence the name oysters,” I recounted. “And this tribe became so strong and powerful that they conquered all the surrounding tribes. Of course, this is ages ago, Jimmie. Long before history began. But each tribe they conquered, they introduced to oysters, and so began the rise of man from a mere meat-eating beast to an oyster-eating epicure.”

“Let’s,” said Jimmie, “scrub up a few more. You could eat thirty, couldn’t you?”

“Make it the even three dozen,” I suggested.

So Jimmie went out to the barrel and dug out another heap of oysters for the sink.

“It’s a long cry,” said Jim, as we started in scrubbing the new lot, “from the cave-men sitting in the tidal mud guzzling oysters to shipping a barrel of oysters a thousand miles, in a refrigerator car, to the descendants of the cave-men standing beside fresh running water out of a tap, in a modern kitchen.”

“Lit with electricity,” I said.

“And with a mechanical ice box to chill them,” said Jim. “But isn’t it funny how few new things to eat we have discovered? I guess our ancestors were great explorers in the realm of food, even if they didn’t discover North America until just lately.”

“With my delicate stomach,” I said, “I shudder to think of some of the things my ancestors must have eaten.”

“Or tried to eat,” added Jim.

It was now nine o’clock.

“Well,” said Jim, gazing fondly at the huge pile of beautifully scoured oysters heaped on the drain board beside the sink, “let’s open them.”

“Where’s your oyster knife?” I asked.

“I’ve no oyster knife,” said Jim. “I got a couple of screw drivers. They’ll do.”

He produced two screw drivers, a short one and a long one, from the pantry drawer. And he laid out two large platters on the kitchen table.

“No cheating now,” said Jim. “Take them as they come, large and small. And we’ll each fill our own platter.”

I picked up a chubby one. I looked for a good place to insert the screw driver. But an oyster is a very deceitful creature. Instead of having one clear-cut crack down its side, it has itself concealed with a half a dozen or more cracks, each one of which looks like the right one.

I shoved. Scraped. Tried here. Tried there.

“H’m,” said Jimmie. I looked at him, and he was standing over under the kitchen. light, narrowly examining his oyster.

“They’re awfully tight, aren’t they?” he said.

“It’s a trick,” I explained. “Once you find the hinge, it’s nothing to open them. I’ve seen a good oyster bartender open a dozen in two minutes. Just like that.”

“Have you ever opened any yourself?” asked Jimmie.

“I seem to have,” I said, “but I can’t recall.”

“Your unconscious memory, from your cave men ancestors,” said Jim, laying his oyster down and coming over to watch me. I laid the oyster down on the drain board, pressed with all my weight on one hand, while I gouged with the screw driver.

“Try the other side,” suggested Jim.

I turned it over and tried the other side.

The screw driver slipped and I gave myself a nasty gouge on the hand I was pressing with.

“Ouch!”

Jim got the iodine and some gauze upstairs and bandaged my left hand.

“I’ll get the hang of it,” said Jimmie, taking my place at the drain board.

He took a fresh oyster. It had a more innocent look than the first one. Jim studied it. He placed the screw driver against the most vulnerable point. He shoved. He twisted. He wiggled and jabbed.

“Ouch,” said Jimmie. He had cut himself. So I bandaged him.

“What we need,” I said, “is an oyster knife.”

So Jim went to the hall and telephoned half a dozen neighbors, but none of them had an oyster knife.

Jim came back and with the screw driver, he chipped off the edge of a new oyster, a still more childish and smooth-faced one. And then he peered along the chipped edges. But there was no sign of any relaxation.

It was now nine-twenty o’clock.

“If we are going to have an oyster supper,” said Jimmie, “we ought to get busy and open some of these.”

“It was your suggestion,” I reminded him.

Bending down and jamming the oyster firmly against the corner of the wall and the drain board, Jim inserted the screw driver, and slowly, relentlessly, he shoved and twisted the blade of the tool at the place in the oyster shell where there is a kind of hollow.

“Nnnhhh!” he grunted.

The screw driver slipped. Jim’s hand slammed up against the corner, with the oyster and screw driver hopelessly mixed up in the collision. And there was another hunk of skin off his one good hand.

“Bandage me,” said Jim. “Now I’m out of action!”

So while Jim stood by with two bandaged hands, I, with my remaining hand, decided to approach the problem with intellect rather than with physical force.

I sorted through the pile of oysters, seventy-two of them, all scrubbed and ready for the feast, until I found one that seemed the silliest, goofiest, Oliver Hardy¹ sort of an oyster in the whole heap.

Placing it in the corner of the drain board, with its back to the wall, I crept the screw driver into its hinge, and with a slow, prying pressure, I suddenly got a slight squirt of juice out of the edge.

“Hurray!” I shouted.

Another pry and twist.

And there, in its pearly glory, lay the, oyster, open and above board.

We beamed on it. We held it under the light. We smelled it. Boy, how cool and lovely it smelt!

“Let’s eat it right now,” said Jim, “to give us courage!”

“How could we both eat one oyster?” I exclaimed, scornfully.

“You take that round fat bit,” said Jim, “and I’ll take the ears, or whatever that crinkly part is.”

“Nothing doing,” I stated. “I eat an oyster whole. You won’t catch me dissecting any oyster. I’ve got the hang of it now, and in no time I’ll have the platters filled.”

But I was sanguine. I had to pass up three more before I got another one open. And after I got it laid bare, five more defied me before the accident happened.

It was very brief and simple. My hand slipped. And there was I with my right hand cut, too. And Jimmie was bandaging it, after a dash of iodine.

“Now,” said Jim, “where do we go? We’re both out of action.”

Because, really, you can’t open oysters with your hands wrapped up like a hobo’s feet in winter. “Let’s eat these two to start with, anyway.”

So Jim ate one and I the other, with careful and delicate applications of lemon juice, salt, pepper and ketchup.

“Mmmmm,” we said. Glurp. Plop. The oysters were ours.

We both tried to continue the opening, with our bandaged hands, but somehow we were too clumsy.

The Original Way

“I tell you,” cried Jimmie. “Let us resort to the ancient and original way of opening them. The way our cavemen ancestors, the discoverers of oysters, did!”

“How’s that?” “With a hammer!” said Jim. “They used rocks. But we’ve got hammers. Don’t tell me there isn’t some advance in civilization.”

So Jim got a hammer and a big heavy monkey wrench.

We laid the oysters on the drain board. But that only made big ugly nicks in the wood, and he was afraid his wife might complain.

“In the cave days,” explained Jim, “what a wife thought didn’t matter.”

He went outside and brought in two bricks, which we washed thoroughly, and then, squatting down on the kitchen floor, like the men of old must have done along the tidal shores, Jim and I proceeded to open oysters. It is not, I might say, the correct way. After hitting the oyster eight or ten times too lightly, you hit it one awful smash too hard, and there you have oyster squashed all over the brick, with broken shell imbedded in it.

After half an hour’s pounding, which caused neighbor’s dogs to howl and no doubt a lot of the neighbors to come and peer out their back windows, Jim had five oysters that were recognizable as such, and I had four. Of course, they weren’t on the half shell. We had to pick up the remains as best we could and carry them to the tap and wash off the brick dust and pick out the shell fragments. And then we put them in a tumbler. So to all intents. and purposes, we had those naked oysters such as you see in front of the grocery stores.

Anyway, such as it was, we held our oyster supper, after putting the rest of the seventy-two back in the barrel.

They went pretty good, too, although there was a mild flavor of iodine, and some slight trouble with shell splinters, and if there is any trick trickier than holding an oyster in your mouth while you feel around for a shell splinter with a bandaged hand, I don’t know it.

“This proves one thing,” said Jimmie, as we sat back from the feast. “And that is, we aren’t the men our ancestors were.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Every man to his trade. All we’ve got to do is go and take a few lessons from some chef.”

“From what I’ve seen of the art of opening oysters,” said Jim, “I imagine it is a life’s work. Maybe they have high-paid officials in the restaurants. Oyster openers. With fancy costumes. Maybe oyster opening is one of those family secrets, handed down from father to son.”

“It’s quite an art,” I said, imagining I felt a sharp stab inside of me from a splinter I had not detected.

“The problem is,” said Jim, “what am I going to do with all that barrel full of oysters?”

“You’ve got a lot of friends,” I reminded him. “They would just love a couple of dozen oysters, fresh from the sea.”

“I guess that’s the solution²,” said Jimmie.

Editor’s Notes: This story was repeated on February 17, 1940 as “Sea Shells”.

Of the famous Laurel and Hardy duo. ↩︎
Or just buy an oyster knife… ↩︎

The Little Busy B-2

by admin

On July 24, 2025

In Illustration, Miscellaneous

This illustration accompanied a story by Weare Holbrook, a columnist and cartoonist. It was a humourist take on the number of vitamins available at the time and the affects it could have on someone.

Great Britain Can Grin!

by admin

On June 19, 2025

In Miscellaneous, News Article, Other Story

The “Nasties” may be near but gloom is still many smiles away from Britain

By Gregory Clark, June 22, 1940.

LONDON

In the past few weeks there have been, without question, darker hours for Britain than ever in her long and often hazardous life, and there is no question either that the people of Britain have fully and deeply realized it. Yet I have never seen such examples of that assurance and good humor and that aplomb for which British people have been famous amongst their friends and notorious amongst their enemies since Shakespeare first made fun of it in Falstaff and all the lads centuries ago.

The most completely amusing example of this imperturbable characteristic has to come from the troops, but it serves for dukes and earls and busmen and charladies. I talked to 40 soldiers who witnessed the incident. One of the trawlers taking troops off Dunkirk was about three miles off shore the last day of the evacuation when in the early morning light they saw from their crowded deck a man swimming. He was three miles off shore and headed toward England 40 miles away. The English papers had it eight miles but my witnesses say three. The trawler, jam-packed with troops so thick they had to stand up, swung starboard to pick up this phenomenon. He was a British tar whose ship had been sunk in Dunkirk roadstead. As they threw him a line he took hold, shook water out of his eyes and hailed the deck. “I say,” he yelled, “you’re pretty crowded, up there. Have you enough room for me?”

Astounded shouts assured him that of course they had.

“I’m still going strong,” shouted up the tar, “if you haven’t.”

And they hauled the wholly nude tar aboard. Now this was not bravado, nor was it conscious humor. It was the unconscious humor of the English which is completely indescribable in terms of any other humor we know.

In one of the factories where they have increased production 100 per cent. in two weeks we were being shown through and I got in conversation with a lanky, eagle-eyed superintendent to whom I mentioned the fact that there were no signs of weariness. or strain anywhere amongst both women and men workers toiling long hours without rest days.

“The hell of it is,” said the superintendent, “I have spent 40 years of my life fighting for shorter hours and freer working conditions, and here I am now trying to catch one person slacking. I haven’t got one yet. I’m not earning my keep. Here, come along with me a minute and I’ll show you something.”

He led me aside through raving machines and unwearied workers who barely glanced up from their tasks, to a room labelled rest room, where in shifts workers relaxed for 20 minutes and had a cup of tea. As the door opened, above the roar of machinery, music sounded. At the far end of the room two men, one with a banjo and the other with a concertina, were banging out those ribald music hall songs which the English love. The room was filled with workers, sitting relaxing and drinking tea and singing.

“The bloke with the banjo had his sight injured in this factory seven years ago and is on pension. The other bloke usually hangs around music hall doors,” said the superintendent. “Try giving them a couple of pennies and you’d get your head knocked off.”

This did not strike me as humorous, but the superintendent assured me it was. “Comic, that’s what it is,” he said and we withdrew from the recreation room back into the roar of the factory with sundry rude remarks hurled between boss and workers.

And as we talked with dozens of workers through the factory, humor was the principal thought in their minds. “Look at Bill there,” said one driller. “Working like a ruddy horse after swinging the lead for 30 years.”

Through the darkest hours of the past weeks, amidst the universal mass of all Britain this jibing ironic jesting humor of the British has never left them, though they have gone through not merely revolution of their own ways and manners, but a mental and spiritual crisis unparalleled in their history. An English lady, whose daughter married a Canadian officer in the last war and whose grandchildren are grown Canadians, lives within less than a mile of a great airdrome near London. Naturally her children feel anxiety and have tried to persuade her by letter to move to a safer zone. I called on her and found her deep amidst her flowers in a huge garden filled with bloom, much of it planted since the great blow fell, all of it tended hour by hour throughout the falling skies. She reassured me. “Tell Katie I have put the china all away. I have taken every precaution. Look, let me show you.”

And from the garden table where we sat at tea, she led me into her living room and pointed to empty china cabinets and racks and then pointed under the piano.

“See, there is the china all safe under the piano.”

And as I looked in mute astonishment into the eyes of this English lady I saw there dancing glints of that incredible, that obliging and oblique quality of humor which will in the end be the victory.

Editor’s Note: This story was written while Greg was covering the war as a correspondent. The comics that accompanied it were from Britain. It was written just after the defeat of France, the evacuation from Dunkirk, and only a few days after Greg sent this story to the Toronto Star, when things looked pretty grim for Britain:

GREG CLARK TELLS OF 48TH’S EPIC 14 HOURS’ JOURNEY INTO FRANCE DASHED BY SUDDEN TURNING BACK

Troops Who Crossed Singing Return in Gloom – Only Shots at Enemy Come When Plane Tries to Bottle Them in Harbor

TORONTO HIGHLAND REGIMENT BOMBED FOR ALMOST ALL 28-HOUR TRAIN TRIP

London, June 18.- One brigade of the Canadian first division landed in France, went 14 hours by train towards the crumbling battleline and then were turned about and rode 14 hours back to the French seaport and were evacuated. Thus has Canada shared in miniature the tragedy of the British expeditionary force.

The remainder of the division were actually embarked in England, and were at anchor awaiting the long expected signal to proceed when the news of France’s government collapse brought their ship to the quays and disembarked them, actually in tears of fury.

It was my unhappy privilege to accompany the first ship with Canadian infantry aboard – one of the regiments was the 48th Highlanders – and to land in France with them. I was not permitted to accompany their train, but through a series of fated mishaps was there to greet them on their return 28 hours later.

FIRE AT ENEMY PLANES

To say that they made their extraordinary in and out expedition without firing a shot is not true, because as we lay awaiting a convoy back to England, in ships as crowded as any I saw coming home from Dunkirk, enemy planes came and tried to stop up our harbor.

Every Bren gun the Canadians had blazed through the night from the decks, and it is claimed that one machine was brought down, perhaps by our fire, amidst the anti-aircraft blaze of the port. It was pitifully little, but it was something. At least the Canadians have seen an enemy.

The whole division was on the move for France, and the one brigade was lucky enough – seeing what comes of luck to us these days – to get about 75 miles inland.

CROSS UNDER FRENCH CONVOY

On densely packed French ships, with French warships convoying us, we set forth at dusk Thursday and at dawn were entering a French port.

It was a glorious sunny morning, the harbor was alive with traffic and the little white city up the hills seemed vital with promise. Without delay we were run alongside and the Highlanders threw their bonnets ashore to claim the glory of the first landing.

Off the regiments swarmed and were marched a short distance to the trains that were to carry them to a point near the fighting zone, where their transport waited for them, having come the day before. The first Canadians in France were the Army Service Corps, transport and artillery units, and the gun carriers of the infantry regiments. It was the front line troops I came with. That meeting never took place.

GOT SUDDEN CALL TO TURN BACK

With never a thought but one of pride and confidence I saw the battalions vanish into the blue. That night I was the sole Canadian aboard one of the three French transports, with our French convoy, returning to England for the next load of the division.

In mid-sea we received a radio message to return to the French port. It was incomprehensible until we arrived back and found that no more Canadians were coming, that the second load had actually got out at anchor in the roadstead of the British port and had been tugged back ashore to disembark in tragic distress.

I went ashore at the French port and witnessed the return of two of the battalions I had such a little while ago seen depart inland. Of their mood of anger and despair I need not write. They who had sung and shouted and laughed their way across two nights before, with card games raging and all guns mounted and that Achilles air of high adventure beginning, went aboard British ships this time.

HIGHLANDERS COME BACK UNDER FIRE

The Highland battalion, having been in the first train, was the last to come and when our ships left there were thoughts of them having been cut off, but we are happy to know that they got back safely, after meeting enemy bombers for many miles of the railway journey both ways.

Of the brigade it is the Highlanders who got nearest to the war, with the exception of the artillery of the brigade and the transport units who were harder to turn about by the authorities than the two following trains.

New Car Jitters

by admin

On May 17, 2025

In Greg-Jim Story

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, May 19, 1934.

“How’s the new car coming?” asked Jimmie Frise.

“Not so good,” I replied. “I can’t make up my mind.”

“I suppose you’ve got the new car jitters?” said Jimmie.

“The what?”

“The new car jitters,” said Jim. “You get it from listening to car salesmen.”

“I guess that’s what I’ve got,” I admitted. “I thought buying a new car was as simple as falling off a log. But, dear me!”

“You must just shut your mind,” said Jim, “and trust your eyes and the feel of the car under you. That’s the only way. If you listen to the salesmen, especially these 1934 model salesmen, you will never buy a car.”

“I suppose,” I said, “I could stuff cotton in my ears and start all over again.”

“That’s a fair substitute for strength of character,” admitted Jim. “Which car were you leaning toward?”

“Well,” I said, “it narrowed down pretty well to three. An Eight, a Six, and one of these Slither-s¹lips or whatever you call them.”

“What were the points for and against these final three?” asked Jim.

“The Eight,” I said, “we liked best because it was a color we have always been wanting, it had a nice wide door for my mother-in-law and it had no do-funny business about changing gears. It was just the same old safe and sound gear shift we have always had since our last foot-shifter.”

“Why didn’t you take it?” asked Jimmie.

“Well, for example,” I explained, “the salesman of the Six pointed out that this Eight hadn’t the right streamlining, that it didn’t have safety glass all around, like his. And if you are to believe these boys, the speed on the highways this coming season is going to be so great you are going to be lucky to escape several head-on collisions and safety glass all around is imperative.”

“M’mm,” said Jim. “Anything else the matter with the Eight?”

“It has knuckle-knees,” I said, “and the Six salesman said this makes it an experimental car.”

“Why didn’t you buy the Six?” asked Jim.

“Ah,” I said, “it was not only $400 less than the Eight, but it was semi-streamline and it had hydraulic brakes. You might just as well go and drive over a cliff as venture out on the highway this season without hydraulic brakes.”

Why Not a Referee?

“What color was the Six?” asked Jim.

“Oh, various colors, but not like the Eight,” I said. “But as the Eight pointed out to me, this Six has not got an all-steel body. And did you know that if you got caught between two street cars in anything but an all-steel body you were as good as dead?”

“I don’t often get caught between two street cars,” said Jimmie.

“But you see the point of his argument?” I said, “Then, too, this Six didn’t have torque, or syncro-starting, nor did it have air-resisto windows.”

“Dear me,” breathed Jim. “What was the other car you were thinking of?”

“The Slither-slip,” I said, “or whatever it is. Now, Jimmie, until you have been in one of those Slither-slips you have never really been motoring. You just ought to bathe your body in those seats! Boy, how they glide!”

“And why didn’t you choose it?” asked Jimmie.

“It had no knee-knuckles,” I said. “And it was really so advanced. Think of the resale value!”

“I thought you were buying a car, not selling one,” Jim remarked

“You don’t understand, Jimmie,” I cried. “When you are buying a car you are doing a whole lot more than merely buying a car to ride in. You are engaging in an investment. You must consider the financial aspect. Now, while all the cars are headed a little bit in the direction of stream-lining they all agree that about the time I would want to turn in my Slither-slip it would be hopelessly old-fashioned. In three years everything will be ultra-streamline.”

“That’s a funny argument,” said Jim.

“All their arguments are funny,” I agreed. “They have got me weak in the knees, frightened and confused.”

“You’ve got the new car jitters,” said Jim.

“What there ought to be,” I stated, “is a government referee who could attend all car sales to censor any remarks that might enjitter the customer.”

“Or,” said Jim, “car sales ought to be forbidden in private, but should be conducted in a place downtown, like the stock market, where all the salesmen could get at you at once. It would be a riot, but they would all have an even chance at the public. And the only jitters you would get would be that mild sort of stock market jitters.”

“I went through the stock market crash far easier than I am going through this job of buying a new car,” I admitted.

“I tell you what we could do,” said Jimmie. “Why not invite the three salesmen up to your house tonight, all at the same time, and discuss their cars in a sort of committee?”

I was amazed at the idea.

“How perfectly simple!” I cried. “Of course. Why didn’t anybody ever think of that before?”

“There you are,” said Jim, rather proudly. Just tell each one to be at your house at 8 p.m. Tell him to bring a demonstrator car with him. And then you can sit there and let them sell their cars. They wouldn’t dare knock each other’s cars to their faces.”

“Of course!” I said, “You be there, too, in case I need support.”

“Sure,” said Jim.

I telephoned the three dealers, the Eight, the Six and the Slither-slip, and they all agreed with alacrity to come up to the house and bring the papers with them.

Jim strolled along about a quarter to eight. My family was out to the pictures and I arranged the living-room nicely to accommodate the boys when they arrived.

The Eight arrived first. He started right to work, but I said I was expecting some others in and would he wait a few minutes.

The Slither-slip arrived next.

It was like roosters in the barnyard. They just stopped and stared at each other for a minute. I introduced them, but they didn’t shake hands. They just thinned their lips and looked at each other.

The Six arrived last. He was a boundy sort of young man; he bounded up the walk and bounded in the door and bounded into the room. He took one glare at the other two chaps and then bounded back to the door.

“Some other time,” he said thickly when I detained him.

“But I wanted to hear all three of you at the same time,” I cried. “I have narrowed it down to you three cars, and now I want it threshed out.”

The Six bounded back into the room. The other two got to their feet smartly.

“This was YOUR bright idea!” hissed the Six with a look like death takes a holiday on his face. He was baring his teeth at the Eight.

“Is zat so!” said the Eight, just like Mae West.

“I think,” said the Slither-slip softly, “that if you two birds will just beat each other up. Mr. Clark and I can get down to business with these papers.”

It all happened very suddenly. All three, at the sight of the papers, dashed together. There was a wild mix-up. Jim and I stepped in to touch them on the arm, and remind them of the business aspect of our meeting.

“Maybe,” said the Eight man, seizing me by the collar, “it was his own idea!”

There was a moment of great confusion and whirling about the bumping and thudding. And when it was over Jimmie was sitting on the chesterfield and I was out on the small chair beside the telephone. Mussed up.

And the three salesmen were racing their engines out in the dark, angrily, super-chargedly.

“High pressure,” said Jimmie, rising and straightening his garments. “Those boys are suffering from high pressure.”

Anyway They’re All Good

“Aren’t you supposed to introduce car salesmen to one another?” I demanded indignantly, flattening my hair and retying my tie.

“Not in the presence of a customer,” said Jimmie. “Like feeding lions, you are supposed to feed them in different parts of the cage.”

“They have the jitters,” I snorted angrily. “Flying off like that.”

“Which car do you fancy?” inquired Jim.

“If those birds had waited a minute instead of turning on us,” I said, “I was going to suggest that they stage a three-way fight and the best man get my order.”

“I know a chap,” said Jimmie, “he is by profession an architect, but he has lately tried selling cars.”

“What about him?”

“Well, he has been in business now three months and hasn’t sold a car. He’s sort of shy,” said Jimmie. “Why don’t you let me send for him, and he’ll sell you a car in five minutes, without a single word being spoken.”

“What car is he selling?” I asked.

“I forget,” said Jimmie. “But what difference does it make? They are all good cars. You can’t have several billion dollar manufacturing concerns making cars without them turning out a hundred per cent product. About the only real difference in them is the name.”

“But synchro-suspension and high-compression ventilation!” I cried.

“Different names for the same thing,” said Jim. “Let me telephone my friend. He just lives a few blocks from here.”

“Go ahead,” I said.

Jim phoned. In about ten minutes a shy, gentlemanly chap arrived. He had nothing to say. He didn’t have a demonstrator with him, but he had a few dog-eared sales agreements in his pocket.

He went out with Jim and me into the lane and looked at my car and guessed how much it was worth on the trade-in. Then we figured out the price.

“What color, Mr. Clark?” he asked.

“Dark, lustrous green,” I said.

“If we haven’t a green we’ll make it a nice dark blue,” said he gently.

I signed.

We chatted about the return of good times, the Centennial program² and listened to Fred Waring³ on the radio.

Then Jimmie and the salesman left. I happened to watch them down the front walk. And when they got out to the street they did a funny thing.

Jim and his friend the salesman joined hands and danced gleefully all over my sidewalk.

Editor’s Notes: This story was repeated on June 15, 1940 as No Knee Knuckles. I posted it on the site back before I realized there were repeats. Now I prefer to print the originals. There were some minor changes in the story to remove outdated references in 1940.

Six and Eight refer to a six cylinder car and an eight cylinder car. All of the other types of technologies are made up. ↩︎
There were various events in 1934 celebrating the centennial of Toronto. ↩︎
Fred Waring was a popular band leader. ↩︎

It’s a Turn-in!

by admin

On April 29, 2025

In Birdseye Center, Comic

Hot and Buttered

by admin

On September 10, 2024

In Birdseye Center, Comic

Women and Children First

by admin

On June 6, 2024

In Miscellaneous, News Article

“EVERY STEP ON THE WAY in this awful flight was blazing with terror. The path before these refugees was filled with menace… They fled from one in the full knowledge that they were heading into unremitting horror…”

Writing from London after returning there from France and Belgium, Gregory Clark tells the tragic story of the millions of refugees who have been forced to flee from their native lands, from their homes-into an unknown filled with ever-present horror and peril

By Gregory Clark, June 8, 1940.

LONDON

Neither Attila the Hun nor Genghis Khan, who mercilessly exterminated all humanity they met in their paths for the same reason that we might exterminate grasshoppers in the west, ever had pleasure of seeing more human tragedy and disaster than we have seen in Belgium and France in the past few weeks.

The tragedy of the refugees was not fully told at its full tide because of the staggering character of other news. The speed of the German mechanized attack and unexpected twists of events stole the spotlight from what was after all a far greater tragedy–the bloody pilgrimage of several millions of people from their native lands, from their kind homes, into an unknown filled with ever present horror and peril. In what used to be called the Great War there also was tragic pilgrimage of Belgians, but at least they fled with the path fairly open before them.

In this awful flight every step of the way was blazing with terror. The path before them was filled with menace. They fled from the one horror in the full knowledge that they were heading into unremitting horror of the millions who took part, and are still taking part in that awful pilgrimage I feel sure I saw nearly 200,000 of them in the seven days I toiled my way from Brussels to the coast ahead of the rapidly advancing enemy. And this article will detail with such detachment as possible to an emotional man the main features of the picture that now must hang on the walls of humanity’s grand gallery along with the tragic murals of Caesar, Attila, Genghis Khan, Napoleon and all the great names of pride.

Like a Forest Fire

But do not console yourselves as you read this in thinking all this is over. It goes on. Where could these rivers of humanity go? Could they just sink into the ground? At the time of writing, the estimate is that 150,000 of them have perished and so sunk into the ground. But poor splendid France has taken them in their millions and is spreading them somehow all over her already crowded campagne. In my time I have heard my fellow countrymen speak critically of the French, saying they were too canny, too parsimonious, too greedy for money. Never again can I be silent before so vicious an opinion. For I have seen France with absolutely wide arms welcoming to her soil these tortured, laboring, penniless millions. Not with canniness, but with generosity sublime from the highest to the lowest, France has to her great military peril welcomed and made safe the path of these refugees. If France is canny about money it is because so many times each century France has to mother another million of the earth’s forsaken. To be so great a mother France must indeed be thrifty.

Many years ago when I was a boy camping on the Muskosh river in the Georgian bay, I saw a great forest fire. I witnessed that never-to-be-forgotten spectacle of the forest’s secret people, the deer, the birds, the squirrels, the fox, the slow, struggling porcupine fleeing before the crackling horror of fire.

When I stood on the road between Tournai and Brussels and watched the full tide of refugee columns I saw the gentle creatures of the wilds once more.

Here before me on the wide highway was an endless throng, in cars, in huge farm wagons, on bicycles, but far the greatest number just on foot, toiling, not fast but with exhaustion already two or three days old in terrible forward-bending agony. In a forest fire creatures do not race, they flee in little exhausted, bewildered spurts. So with these women and children and men in a never ending flood to the number of millions on all roads.

Allies Show Humanity

I first contacted the tragedy at Arras, where I arrived in the war area by train. The advance guard of the refugees were there–the fairly well off, who had good cars and experience of travel to enable them to make time. These were citizens of Holland and Belgium who had already experience of bombing in the larger cities of their native lands. The night I arrived Arras was bombed for the first time. It was set on fire, and hardly had flames started to leap, before out from hotels, private homes, sheds and shelters where they had taken refuge, emerged the tide of refugees to continue their tragic way.

“We cannot remain,” they told me. “We have already been bombed every place we have stopped since we left our homes. We must be on our way.”

“Where to?” I always asked and without one exception to that question the answer was ever the same. They did not know.

From the moment of my arrival until, along with all the rest of the war correspondents, I was marched by the officers in charge of us aboard a ship at Boulogne, already under intense bomb fire, there was no yard of road, no village however tiny, no field that was not filled with this awful tide of humble humanity. You must realize now, of course, that this refugee flood was a German weapon as coldly calculated and as viciously employed as any fifth column. In despatches to The Daily Star I called it the sixth column, and that describes it. The reason for the random bombing of cities and towns was merely to drive out of those places onto the roads again the pilgrim hordes to block and embarrass the roads for French and British armies. With heart in mouth, I watched from day to day for any sign that our armies might face the problem with an almost lawful necessity and drive the refugees from the roads. God be praised, whatever the net results of this first battle may be, both French and British treated these hopeless people with humanity that never lapsed.

Look at Your Canada

So much for argument of the case. Now for the evidence. If these be too cruel throw the paper aside, get to your feet and look out the window at your beloved Canada, and dedicate yourself to it anew. For there are no non-military objectives any more. Your sweetest child is today a military objective of first rank. For if that tender child be blasted before your eyes so rendering you and all who see it helpless, then surely is not that a military objective of greatest importance?

Near Enghien while watching Junker dive bombers methodically and very technically blasting that little town to radiant hell, I stood on the roadside while the refugee throng, hurried by this fury, went bending by. Two children, possibly three and four years old, hand in hand, their heads wobbling on necks so weary were they, struggled along behind their parents. The father pushed a barrow, the mother carried a great sheet bag of treasures. They got ahead of the toddlers following, when one Junker, having dropped its bombs on Enghien, banked around and followed the road, emptying machine-guns into the crowds. Three great Belgian horses drawing a heavy cart stampeded. Nobody had time to reach the children. They were trampled as little moths and crushed under foot.

I carne through Tournai in the morning and saw in the sunlit old Belgian town dense mobs of refugees trying to buy bread massed in the park and all along the curbs in family and village groups, while old men went foraging in vain. It was like a fair day. But on every face were terror and exhaustion. Eyes were glazed in the fight with sleep, for sleep was too deadly for a mother with their children lying in attitudes of endless weariness across their laps or clasped in their arms. There could be no sleep in this funeral march of a nation for at any minute out of blue summer sky might come howling death.

Seeing a City Die

On my way back through Tournai five hours later, after witnessing the death and destruction of cities and towns, I found that 29 bombers in precise formation had come over at 4.30 in the afternoon and dropped 200 high-explosive bombs at random into the fair-day-thronged town. No place of military importance had been hit; not the station, not the main road junctions in or around the town, no barracks, no defences. Just the streets, the parks, two churches, a convent. And how many died in that carnage of a summer afternoon has not been known.

With heart shut tight and eyes half closed against the horror, we went through Tournai, its flames rising in four great pillars of smoke for the spectacled professors on high in their planes to note and check. In the streets and alleys and doorways the dead had been already laid aside by the doggedly toiling Belgian police, firemen and emergency crews. In one convent four nuns at prayer were killed and 20 wounded and their mother superior, a princess of Belgium 67 years of age, was marshalling what was left of her Benedictine daughters to flee and join the sleepless army on the road.

In Amiens we arrived to find a city with street cars and traffic and busy shops not unlike a decent residential area of Paris. The following morning bombs were falling, and the city was dying under our eyes, with shops and homes deserted. Amiens, crammed with refugees at nightfall, was by morning light a city of the dead, with all its people and all its refugees joined in that strange, slow toiling flood, that slow stampede if such a thing is imaginable. Near Amiens I saw a car laden on the roof with mattresses packed with family and bags and with a dead child tied on a running board seeking a burial place and an hour’s respite for the last rites. Hundreds of young people had bandaged heads and bodies. Older people injured simply gave up and quit the flight.

I saw a company of Belgian boy scouts on bicycles in scout uniform, three of them with bandaged wounds pull up where a bomb had fallen near the road to render first aid to 10 or 15 people laid out in fields. A scoutmaster about 20, who was superintending work of his refugee scouts, said rather hopelessly to me, “The trouble is these poor souls want to die. We haven’t been able to do much good this past week because the minute they get hit they take it for an excuse to go and die under a hedge. Maybe I will be the same when my turn comes.”

I saw this same scoutmaster in Boulogne later and three of his boys were killed in bombing at Arras while working in the inferno there, rescuing wounded. Three boys I had seen stacking bicycles on the roadside to leap to the help of others.

Use Refugees as Screen

The thing to remember amidst all this of which I only give most terribly sketchy glimpses of what I, one man, was able to see at any tiny given instant at one tiny spot in wide France, is that amidst it all, the British and French armies had to try to organize defence against the on-rushing enemy. All savage tribes shove a screen of prisoners ahead of them in attacking. Nobody who witnessed that first terrible week in Belgium and Northern France can ever be persuaded that the Germans did not use with complete heartlessness the screen of millions of refugees behind which to make their attack.

But do not think of the refugees as having found rest now at last. Millions of them are in France and a haven has to be found for them. Millions with only what they could carry of their earthly goods. Few of them without some member of their little flock lost.

They are members now of that ancient and noble brotherhood embracing all races and all ages of the martyrs of innocent and trampled humanity.

Editor’s Note: Greg arrived as a war correspondent just in time to see the early retreats and fall of France during World War 2.

In the Swim

by admin

On June 1, 2024

In Greg-Jim Story

***Slowly Jim lifted one foot and then the other off bottom and started to make excited and frantic motions with his arms and legs.***

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, June 3, 1933.

“I’ve decided,” said Jim Frise, “not to go with you on your Quebec trip.”

“Aw,” said I.

“Those birch bark canoes you tell about,” went on Jim; “I don’t like the idea of fishing from a bark canoe.”

“They’re as steady as any other canoe,” I protested.

“Sure,” said Jim. “Since no canoe is steady.”

“Well, you can swim, can’t you?” I exclaimed. This was to have been a good trip.

“No, I can’t swim,” stated Jim coolly.

“Can’t swim!” I cried. “Can’t swim! Good heavens, man, every Canadian ought to know how to swim almost as soon as he knows how to walk. Don’t you know that one-half the area of Ontario is water?”

“Is it?” asked Jim.

“Take a look at any map,” I went on. “Especially in the newer parts of the province. The map is half blue. I tell you your life is not safe in Ontario unless you can swim.”

“I’ve got along all right so far,” said Jim. “I’ve never even been dumped out of a canoe. Let’s put it this way, every Canadian ought to know how to swim or else he ought to keep out of boats. I keep out of boats, especially birch bark canoes.”

“Swimming is as easy and natural,” I said, “as walking. How is it you never learned to swim?”

“I don’t know,” said Jim. “I guess I just never had the opportunity to learn.”

“Well, it’s never too late,” said I. “Swimming comes as natural to man as it does to a duck. If I could teach you to swim in the next few weeks would you come to Quebec with me?”

“I’m pretty sure I can never learn to swim,” put in Jim. “I just have that feeling.”

“I bet you felt that way about driving a car,” said I. “It is just the same. You think you will never, by any stretch of the imagination, be able to drive a car in traffic. And the next thing you know you are driving down Yonge St. It’s the same with swimming.”

“How would you teach me?” asked Jim.

“Well, the best way is simply to throw a man in, and he’ll swim. But the most humane way is to get a long pole, like a clothes-prop, and tie a six-foot length of clothes-line on it. Then you tie a belt around the pupil, tie the rope to the belt, have him get into the water, and then with the teacher on the bank or wharf the swimmer strokes along, with the pole holding him up, and as he goes through the motions of swimming the first thing you know he IS swimming, and the teacher quietly relaxes the support of the pole and rope. Presto! The pupil is swimming. That pole is just a moral support. It gives confidence and gets the pupil over that feeling of doubt that, by the motion of his arms and legs, he can keep himself on the surface.”

“It sounds simple,” said Jim. “Have you ever taught anybody before?”

“Scores and scores of people,” I said. “All my family. In fact up on the Georgian bay I am recognized as one of the most skillful teachers.”

“Well, well,” said Jim, gazing about uncertainly. “Well, maybe, some day I might try it. It would be good to know how to swim.”

“Listen as soon as the Humber gets warm,” I said, “let’s go out and get a quiet swimming hole and I’ll teach you, and then will you come to Quebec with me?”

“If I learn to swim,” said Jim, “so that I feel confident I could look after myself in a bark canoe I’ll go with you.”

“Sold!” I shouted.

The last warm spell I got a clothes-prop from my house and tied a stout piece of clothes-line to it and stood it ready in the garage. Jimmie had got to the place in his cartoon where he has to write the words in the balloons, as they call them in art circles, and I knew he always liked to run away from that. He hates spelling. So I walked over to him, staring at those empty spaces in Birdseye Center, and suggested that we take our first swimming lesson. At such a time Jim would accept almost any suggestion.

“Great!” he said. So we drove out and got our swimming suits and the long pole with rope.

“Where will we change into our swimming suits?” asked Jim.

“In the bushes,” said I. “Let’s be old fashioned.”

We drove out to the Humber and upstream a few miles looking for a good deep hole where Jim’s long legs wouldn’t touch bottom.

“I’m a little nervous,” confessed Jim. “I’ve started to learn to swim a dozen times in my life, but I always lost my nerve at the last minute. It’s funny how a thing like that gets into your very bones, isn’t it? I just feel I’ll never learn to swim.”

“Listen,” I assured him, “I’ll have you swimming inside of an hour.”

“It sure will make me feel good,” admitted Jim. “Whenever I’m fishing I always have that fear lurking in my mind.”

“Boy,” I cried, “to be able to sit in a canoe, even a birch bark canoe, without any sense of fear is one of the most lovely sensations in the world. Fearless! It’s a great way to be.”

We came to a nice broad place in the river, and except for a few cows in the pasture beside the stream the place was deserted.

We parked the car and got into some bushes and changed into our swim suits. Jim’s was one of those limp kind that dangled off him, while mine was just the least little bit shrunk to my form. I got the long pole, an old belt, and we strolled down to the water.

“I feel pretty funny,” said Jim, his arms wrapped around himself.

“Stage fright,” I said.

“The water looks cold,” said Jim, “and muddy.”

“I thought you were a country fellow?” I sneered.

“Suppose I just practise the motions today,” said Jim, “and then next day I’ll have the rope tied to me?”

“Suppose my neck,” I said. “The way to learn to swim is just to jump in. The perfect way is to be pushed in and have to swim. I’m going to all this trouble with pole and rope just to make it easy for you. For Pete’s sake!”

“All right,” said Jimmie, submitting to the belt being strapped around him. We were down on the bank of the pool and I fastened the rope into the belt.

“Make it good and tight,” said Jim. “Water makes knots slippery.”

“Listen, I’ve taught scores.”

I could feel Jim shivering, although the day was perfect and the water was almost lukewarm.

“Now,” said I, “wade in.”

“You go in first and give me a few lessons by demonstration,” said Jim.

“And then stand out here and shiver while holding you on the pole?” I cried. “Go ahead, I’ve got you. Wade In.”

Jim put one toe in the water and snatched it out.

“Gee,” he said, “I hate this.”

“What’s the matter?” I cried. “Haven’t I got you on a rope big enough to hold a steamboat?”

Jim stood with his arms around himself, staring at the water, and then, slowly, like a man in a trance, he stepped in and with a kind of pallid determination he waded to his waist. He looked back at me with imploring eyes.

“Don’t let go that pole,” he chattered.

“Duck,” I commanded.

Jim ducked.

“Now,” I began, lie forward in the water and take slow easy strokes with your arms and kick out behind with your legs.”

Jim squatted a couple of times and stood up.

“Are you holding me?” he quavered.

I hoisted the pole and Jim could feel the rope and bet tighten on him.

“All, right, go ahead,” I commanded.

Jim eased himself down into the water. I held up on the pole and he gave two or three rapid kicks and splashes, and stood up again, gasping and coughing.

“How’s that?” he exclaimed proudly.

“Wait till we get you over here into deeper water,” I said.

I walked along the bank and towed Jim along.

“Now swim,” I ordered.

Slowly Jim lifted one foot and then the other off bottom and started to make excited and frantic motions with his arms and legs. Puffing and sputtering and splashing.

I pulled along the bank, to get him into the deepest part of the hole.

Now, nobody is sorrier than I am for what happened. In theory, the idea is to get your pupil in deep so that he has to trust the pole. Then, when he is actually swimming, ease off on the pole and he sees he is swimming unaided.

In pulling Jim along I put too much strain on the knot which tied the rope to the pole. It simply slipped off the end of the pole, and there, to my horror, was Jim vanishing in the muddy pool.

“Jim!” I screamed.

I did a very foolish thing. I threw the pole in to him. His head popped up and he thrashed about and got hold of the pole. But it was too light to support him. He sank again, the pole slowly sticking upright out of the water as Jim clamped himself around it.

“Jimmie!” I screamed again.

As if in reply, his head rose out of the water again and spouting a mouthful of water he croaked at me:

“Come in and save me!”

“I can’t SWIM!” I confessed wildly.

Jim sank sadly out of sight again, the pole waving drunkenly out of the pool.

I was dancing along the bank, shouting, when I saw the pole go rigid, and I knew Jim had stuck the lower end of it into the mud bottom of the swimming hole. To my joy, I saw Jim slowly emerge again, clinging to the pole like a monkey on a stick. He hung tenderly to it, as it swayed, barely holding.

“Did you say you can’t swim?” croaked Jim, spouting more water.

“Not a stroke,” I said brokenly. “Jim, I’m so sorry! Wait there until I get help.”

“No,” said Jim, coughing. “I’m going to learn to swim right now. You stay there and watch me.”

His eyes glared with a mountainous effort of the will. He took a look at the bank, six feet away. He took a deep breath. And then he let go the pole, and with strong, wide strokes, he fairly lifted himself through the water and grabbed the bank. Along the bank he pulled himself, and I was there at the beach to hold out rescuing arms to him. I dragged him on to the beach, where he sagged exhausted. He clung to me desperately.

“Jimmie!” I exulted. “You can swim!” He coughed. And he still clung tight to me.

“You can swim!” I shouted again.

Jim rose to his feet, holding desperately to my arm.

“The best way to learn,” he said, looking at me out of bloodshot eyes which glittered, “is to just be thrown in.”

“That’s what the best teachers say,” I admitted a little nervously.

“To think of you,” said Jim, “my dear friend, risking your life in birch bark canoes in Quebec, away off there, and not being able to swim!”

“I’ll learn some day,” I said brightly, “sooner or later.”

“Sooner,” said Jim.

He whirled me around. He took me by both elbows from behind, he hoisted me six feet in the air and threw me, in cold blood, right out into the middle of that deep, terrible pool.

I don’t recall much. I came up once and saw Jim in the act of sitting down on the bank.

I came up twice, and saw Jim resting his chin on his elbows, watching me. I let out a yell, but water got in it.

I saw my past life passing before me. Not all my life, but mostly the last few minutes. I wished I had told Jimmie I was only a theorist. But I felt sad for myself, because, after all, most of us are theorists, anyway. We know a lot of things, but we don’t have to be able to do them ourselves in order to tell others, do we? Politics for example. Or the gold standard.

I was just thinking about the gold standard, when I felt myself seized from behind in a terrific vise-like grip. I was hauled to the surface, and I took a vast breath of air, when suddenly I felt a terrific blow on the chin. I went away, away.

The next thing I knew I was lying on the hard beach, and Jim was jouncing me up and down around the stomach.

“Ah, back again?” he asked, turning me face up.

“Ooooooh,” I said.

“Sorry to have to sock you on the jaw,” said Jim. “But the great danger in saving a drowning man is that he is likely to struggle and drown you too. So the best thing to do is sock him on the jaw, knock him out and then you can save him in peace.”

“I see.” I said, weakly.

“As soon as you feel well enough,” said Jim, “I’ll teach you to swim.”

“Not to-day!” I cried.

“No time like the present.”

“Jimmie, in my weakened condition, you wouldn’t throw me in again!”

“It’s the best way,” said Jim. “Get it over with. After this experience, you are likely to be so afraid you will never learn. I don’t want you sitting all cringed up with fright in that birch bark canoe in Quebec.”

“I feel faint,” said I.

“Water will revive you,” said Jim.

“If I wade in myself.” I said, “and swim once across that pool, will that be enough?”

Jim considered carefully.

“All right,” he said.

“Get that pole in case I get into difficulty,” I begged.

Jim took the pole and tied the rope back on it.

“The knot may hold,” he said.

He stood by while I waded into the pool.

I felt the muddy, stoney bottom under my feet.

“Swim,” commanded Jim. “Lay forward and swim.”

I lay forward and with great splashes and coughing. I swam across the pool. But what Jimmie does not know is that I had my feet on bottom all the way across. At the far side, I turned and swam back, then turned and swam grandly – but cautiously – out toward the middle of the pool where Jim had so nearly drowned, and I touched bottom all the way.

There wasn’t a foot of that pond over my head. If Jim had not had his knees bent up in horror, as he plunged and splashed, he would not have been over his armpits.

“Good boy!” cried Jim admiringly, as I stroked grandly around the pool.

When I got tired, I crawled ashore and Jim assisted me.

“Good for you!” he shouted. “Isn’t it great to know how to swim!”

So we dried and dressed, like old friends again, and we drove back to town.

And it is nice to know not only that I am a good teacher but, what is more to the point, that from now on, one of us can swim.

Editor’s Note: This story appeared in Greg Clark & Jimmie Frise Outdoors (1979). It was also repeated on June 8, 1940, as “The Hard Way”.