There has been a shortage of provisions in the city where _Lady Godiva_
suffered from a shortage of clothes. Mr. CLYNES was prompt with a
remedy. A representative of the FOOD-CONTROLLER has already been sent to
Coventry.
Conscientious Objectors found a doughty champion in Lord HUGH CECIL.
Rarely has an unpopular case been fortified with a greater wealth of
legal, historical and ethical argument. Only once, when he accused Mr.
BONAR LAW of holding the same doctrine as Herr BETHMANN-HOLLWEG, did he
lose, for a moment, the sympathy of his audience. But he soon recovered
himself, and thereafter held the House rapt with Cecilian harmonies.
To such a lofty plane, indeed, had the debate been lifted that Mr.
RONALD MCNEILL, tall as he is, had some difficulty in bringing it down
to earth again; and when the division was called the spell was still
working, and in a very big House the "Conchies" only lost their votes by
thirty-eight.
_Thursday, November 22nd._--Pending the introduction of the promised
censorship of Parliamentary Questions, Mr. JOSEPH KING is working
overtime. No story is too fantastically impossible to find a shelter
under his hospitable hat. To-day it was a secret treaty between the
Russian Government (old style) and the French Republic, by which Belgium
was to be compensated at the expense of Holland. Lord ROBERT CECIL
denounced it as an invention of the enemy. But I don't suppose the
denial had the smallest effect upon Mr. KING, who probably went off and
dined heartily on a magnum of mare's-nest soup.
A tremendous accession to the ranks of the Sinn Feiners has been
narrowly averted. When Members read the menu which, according to Major
NEWMAN, the Irish Government has adopted for political prisoners--three
good square meals a day, including an egg, ten ounces of meat, a pound
and a half of bread, two pints and a half of milk, and real butter--they
were strongly minded to enlist under Mr. DE VALERA'S banner and get
themselves arrested forthwith. But Mr. DUKE'S emphatic denial shattered
their dream of repletion at the taxpayers' expense.
A final attempt to get proportional representation included in the
Franchise Bill was heavily defeated. In a dashing attempt to save it Sir
MARK SYKES declared that the old Eatanswill methods of electioneering
had gone for ever--"no mouth was large enough to kiss thirty thousand
babies." But the majority of the House seemed to be more impressed by
the self-sacrificing argument of that eminent temperance advocate, Sir
THOMAS WHITTAKER, who feared that "P.R." would lead to an increase in
"milk-and-water politicians."
* * * * *