_Monday, August 13th_.--In a certain political club there used, before
the War, to be a popular pick-me-up compounded of a little whisky, a
little Angostura and a good deal of soda-water, and known after its
inventor as "a Henderson." In one respect the speech explaining his
resignation which the right hon. Member for Barnard Castle delivered
this afternoon resembled this eponymous beverage, for it was decidedly
effervescent. But the other ingredients were wrongly apportioned--too
much of the bitters and not enough of the mellowing spirit.
His initial mistake was not realising in time that, as Mr. ASQUITH put
it, a man cannot permanently divide himself into watertight
compartments. As member of the War Cabinet and Secretary of the Labour
Party, he seems to have resembled one of those twin salad bottles from
which oil and vinegar can be dispensed alternately but not together. The
attempt to combine the two functions could only end, as it began, in a
double fiasco.
[Illustration: THE DOUBLE FIASCO.