Less Nonsense. By A. P. Herbert. (Methuen. 4s.)
THE Senior Burgess of Oxford University, Petty Officer Herbert, shows that he is in no danger of losing the common touch when he. dedicates his verses to the Mrs. Mores of the Home Front:
No special correspondent sees you shop Or carry home that heavy little bag.
of to his fellow-sailors, including the Wrens ; or to the bus conductress:
How proud upon your quarter-deck you stand Clippy, the captain of the mighty bus!
But when he takes to borrowing a singing-robe from Kipling's shabbier stock, or uses a corner of it to wipe the rosy-coloured spectacles of those he considers gaze too lovingly on Moscow or on Beveridge, he is surely voicing less the feelings of the man. in the pub—and the Forces—than the prejudices of the Colonel in the Turkish Bath. Or is this to take the rhymes of Less Nonsense too seriously? It must always be remembered in Mr. Herbert's favour, however, that he is the ordinary man's greatest champion against oppression.
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