"What the Chief Scout means," said Scout-master Wagstaff, "is no
rotting about and all that sort of rot. Jolly well keep yourselves fit,
and then, when the time comes, we'll give these Russian and German
blighters about the biggest hiding they've ever heard of. Follow the
idea? Very well, then. Mind you don't go mucking the show up."

"Een gonyama-gonyama!" shouted the new thoroughly roused troops.
"Invooboo! Yah bo! Yah bo! Invooboo!"

The voice of Young England--of Young England alert and at its post!




Chapter 2

AN IMPORTANT ENGAGEMENT


Historians, when they come to deal with the opening years of the
twentieth century, will probably call this the Music-Hall Age. At the
time of the great invasion the music-halls dominated England. Every
town and every suburb had its Hall, most of them more than one. The
public appetite for sight-seeing had to be satisfied somehow, and the
music-hall provided the easiest way of doing it. The Halls formed a
common place on which the celebrity and the ordinary man could meet. If
an impulsive gentleman slew his grandmother with a coal-hammer, only a
small portion of the public could gaze upon his pleasing features at
the Old Bailey. To enable the rest to enjoy the intellectual treat, it