100 years ago in

April 29, 1922

MOST healthy men and women have a love of singing, but the curious self-consciousness that, under the name of a sense of humour, has come like a blight upon the nation during the last century, makes them shy of appearing ridiculous, so that they nowadays sing only when they think they will not be heard—in chorus, on a lonely hill, in the bath or on a noisy thoroughfare. That we are, as a nation, as musical as anyone else cannot be denied by any who have heard soldiers singing as they march; perhaps our damp climate, that is not favourable to nocturnal song—the time when the bosom is most stirred to deliver itself so—may be responsible for our silence. The tag ‘I care not who makes a nation’s laws so long as I make its songs’ is now the gist of newspaper correspondence.

1) Diamond 2) Tom, the piper’s son 3) Red 4) King Lear 5) Exmoor Riddle me this: Foxtrot; golf; hotel; India; Juliett (NATO phonetic alphabet)