I asked a week or two ago what the Poet
Laureate himself was doing while Mr. Rudyard Kipling was writing verses about the Naval Review. It may be (though I doubt it) that he was busy writing verses for the Post Office. At any rate the Post Office, immed- iately on the advent of its new chief, has broken irresist- ibly (" I do but sing because I must ") into spontaneous lyrics. I need not quote the lay which has added sweetness and light (and revenue) to the adVertisement columns of so many daily papers, because it is by this time being sung nightly in almost every home. It begins, you remember :
" Send a wire to Daddy ; Send a wire to Ma ; Wire and book a caddie ; Wire and book a car.".
And so forth—with the exhortation " WIRE your good news with a sixpenny telegram" at the end of it all. But there is something wrong with the printed version. The Postmaster-General, I am certain, would never be guilty of the defective rhyme in the second and fourth lines. What has happened is clear. Mar Shimun, the religious leader of the Assyrio-Chaldaeans, is at present in this country, and therefore accessible 'by sixpenny telegram. Moreover (an important point) it is stated in a letter to The Times that His Beatitude is debarred by the traditions of his . office from answering back. But the printer, in doubt, preferred a familiar word to. an unfamiliar. If what the poet styles, later, "the tanner telegram is cheap, advertisements of it may be too much so. It looks like a major try-on. :*. *
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