The Swoop! by PG Wodehouse (1909)

 An early jeu d'esprit. It's quite skeletal, but what there is is packed full of colour. A Boy Scout, a relatively new phenomenon when this was written, is the central character, who somehow also works at one of the London papers! I'm wondering if this journalistic element echoes Wodehouse's life at this time - know nothing of his biography. A lot of the jokes are based around the world of newspaper journalism and the music halls. The plot is a crazed one about an invasion of Britain, which reflects the sense that will already have been building about the European powers and their hunger for conflict. The author delights in the cracked notion of several different foreign armies deciding to invade Britain at the same time, their manner of doing so showing how their nationalities were perceived currently. Of course these invasions are more of a fictional device than a forceful reality, and life goes on much as usual, with armies camped in various parts of the country - very much a feeling of a boy's play-idea. He then seems to have lost steam with the original scheme and sends most of them off home for one reason or another. But Germany and Russia remain, and it is up to Boy Scout-hero Clarence Chugwater to devise a cunning plan based around their generals' rival turns at the most popular music halls! Competition over salary is Clarence's activating factor, and he succeeds in engendering such a conflict between these two boors on Hampstead Heath and its surrounds that the battle ends up decimating both armies almost to oblivion. And so pugnacious Clarence becomes "The Boy of Destiny". It's slim, occasionally mildly funny, shows what the author may become capable of in the way of conceptual hijinks. It's also occasionally xenophobic and racist, which is par for the time.