_Tuesday, June 5th_.--In listless and dejected mood the House
of Commons reassembled after its all-too-brief recess. Members
collectively missed their MARK, for Colonel LOCKWOOD, the only popular
Food Controller in history, had been summoned upstairs and left the
Kitchen Committee to its fate. The shower of Privy Councillorships,
baronetcies and knighthoods which had simultaneously descended upon
the faithful Commons afforded little compensation for this irreparable
loss; and even the sight of the ATTORNEY-GENERAL'S immaculate spats
appearing over the edge of the Table was insufficient to dispel the
prevailing gloom.
Mr. PEMBERTON-BILLING made a gallant effort to galvanize his
colleagues into life. Remembering that it was an air-raid that got
him into the House--some people will never forgive the Germans for
this--he seldom allows a similar incident to pass without endeavouring
to improve the occasion. As his policy of "two bombs to one" failed to
intrigue Mr. BONAR LAW he sought to move the adjournment, but when the
Question was put only five Members, instead of the necessary forty,
rose in its support.
If Sir H. DALZIEL has his way, and the consumer is allowed to purchase
his sugar unrefined, the British breakfast will become a most exciting
meal. Lice, beetles and, on one occasion, a live lizard have been
found in the bags arriving from Cuba. Even with meat at its present
price, Captain BATHURST doubts whether such additions to our dietary
would be really welcome.
In the pre-historic times before August, 1914, the POSTMASTER-GENERAL
was wont to give on the Vote for his department a long and discursive
account of its multifarious activities, and to enliven the figures
with anecdotes and even with jokes. Mr. ILLINGWORTH knows a better
way. With deliberate monotony he reeled off his statistics to a
steadily diminishing audience. Only once did he evoke a sign of
animation. He has abolished the absurd rule that the person presenting
a five-pound note at a post-office should be required to endorse it;
and, in defending this momentous change, he remarked that he himself
had endorsed many such notes, "but never with my own name." For a
moment Members were startled by this cynical admission of something
which seemed to their half-awakened intelligence very like a
confession of forgery. But the POSTMASTER-GENERAL soon put them to
sleep again, and by nine o'clock had got his vote safely through.
[Illustration: COLONEL LOCKWOOD'S FAREWELL TO THE KITCHEN ON HIS
ELEVATION TO THE UPPER HOUSE.]
_Wednesday, June 6th_.--Nothing short of a revolution, it was
supposed, would cause Whitehall to empty its precious pigeon-holes,
in which so many millions of pious aspirations and abortive complaints
sleep their last sleep. But the War has penetrated even here, and Mr.
BALDWIN was able to announce, with a cheerfulness that some of the
older officials probably regard as almost indecent, that already a
vast quantity of material has gone to the pulping-mill.
[Illustration: _Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL_ (_with eye on the Air Board_).
"ANY UNIFORM SUITS ME, THANK YOU."]
In the course of the debate on the Representation of the People Bill,
Sir FREDERICK BANBURY explained that he resigned his membership of
the SPEAKER'S Conference because he found that he and his party were
expected to give up everything and to get nothing in return. If so
the Liberals on the Conference were very short-sighted, for a little
concession then would have saved them a lot of trouble now. What Sir
FREDERICK does not know about the art of Parliamentary obstruction is
not worth knowing, and he evidently means to use his knowledge for
all it is worth. He even succeeded--a rare triumph--in drafting an
instruction to the Committee which passed the SPEAKER'S scrutiny
and took a good hour to debate. In vain Sir GEORGE CAVE and Mr. LONG
reminded the House that it had already approved the main principles of
the Bill. You can't ride a cock-horse when BANBURY'S cross.
Another old hand at the game is Lord HUGH CECIL. His particular
grievance against the Bill is, I fancy, that it alters the character
of his constituency, and, should it pass, will oblige him to appeal
for the votes of callow young Bachelors with horrid Radical notions
instead of being able to repose in confidence upon the support of
a solid phalanx of clerical M.A.'s. He possesses also an hereditary
antipathy to extensions of the franchise. Lord CLAUD HAMILTON must
have thought himself back in 1867, listening to Lord CRANBORNE
attacking the Reform Bill wherewith DIZZY dished the Whigs. Lord HUGH,
like his father, is a master of gibes and flouts and jeers, and used
most of the weapons from a well-stocked armoury in an endeavour to
drill a fatal hole in the Bill.
At one moment he chaffed the HOME SECRETARY for seeking to turn the
House into a Trappist monastery, where Ministers alone might talk
and Members must obey; at the next he was reminding the House, on a
proposal to raise the age of voters, that a great many of the persons
who took part in the massacre of St. Bartholomew were under twenty-two
years of age. But though Members listened and laughed they refused,
for the most part, to vote with him. The Bill came almost unscathed
through the first day of its ordeal in Committee.
_Thursday, June 7th_.--If all the hundred and sixty-eight Questions
on the Order Paper had been fully answered the German Government would
have learned quite a number of things that it is most anxious to know,
for the Pacifist group were full of curiosity regarding the war-aims
of the Allies. Several of the most searching inquiries had to be
met by such discouraging _formulæ_ as "I have nothing to add to my
previous reply," or "The matter is still under consideration."
Mr. SNOWDEN, however, learned from the HOME SECRETARY that the
Government, the House and the Country were in full sympathy with
the war-policy laid down by the French Government, and that we were
prepared to go on fighting until it was achieved. Here is something
for his colleagues to tell the Stockholm Conference, if they can get
there.
For some occult reason the word "cheese" always excites Parliamentary
merriment. Mr. GEORGE ROBERTS'S announcement that the Board of Trade
had made arrangements by which a quantity of this commodity would
be available for public use next week was greeted with the customary
laughter. Upon Army requirements, he added, would depend the quantity
to be "released." Colonel YATE was perturbed by this Gorgonzolaesque
phrase, and anxiously inquired to what species of cheese it referred.
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[Illustration: THE COMFORTER.
_Lance-Corporal_ (_in charge of footsore Tommy who has fallen out on
the march_). "YOU'VE NOTHING TO GROUSE ABOUT. YOU'RE GETTIN' YOUR
OWN BACK FROM THE GOVERNMENT. AIN'T YOU WEARIN' OUT THEIR BLINKIN'
BOOTS?"]
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