_Monday, March 26th._--Major PRETYMAN NEWMAN has a bright sense of humour
much appreciated by his fellow-countrymen from Ireland. His latest notion
is that journals "of a comic and serio-comic nature" should be deprived of
their stocks of paper in order that catalogues and circulars should
continue to appear. Mr. GEORGE ROBERTS expressed his regret at being unable
to discriminate between different classes of publications; but I understand
that several Members have offered to satisfy Major NEWMAN's taste for light
literature by lending him their old Stores catalogues.
Housewives who have been economising in their meagre supply of sugar in
order to have a stock for jam-making have been alarmed by a rumour that
they would be charged with food-hoarding and made to disgorge their
savings. There is not a word of truth in it, and they may rest assured, on
Capt. BATHURST'S authority, that our non-party Government entirely approves
this form of Conservatism.
[Illustration: MR. BRACE.]
Misled by Mr. BRACE's appearance--I have before now noted his likeness to
an amiable cat--Mr. SNOWDEN pressed his advocacy of a certain conscientious
objector called PETT to such lengths as to discover that even this kind of
cat has claws. "These conscientious objectors," said Mr. BRACE at last,
"are not the angels he thinks they are, and it is only with the utmost
difficulty that a large number of them will do anything like reasonable
work." Thus a PETT illusion has been shattered. Mr. SNOWDEN, however, has
plenty more.
_Tuesday, March 27th._--If British artisans, as at Barrow-in-Furness,
prefer to strike for Germany, it seems hardly reasonable to expect German
prisoners to work for England. The nature of the "disciplinary measures"
which caused the Germans promptly to return to work on normal conditions
was not disclosed, but it seems a pity that they are not tried in the other
case.
"We are getting on," as Sir HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN said on a famous
occasion. Formerly it was considered the height of Parliamentary
impropriety to say in so many words that an Hon. Member was not telling the
truth; and all sorts of more or less transparent subterfuges, of which Mr.
CHURCHILL's "terminological inexactitude" is the best remembered, were
employed to evade this breach of good manners. But the present House is
thicker-skinned than its predecessors, and heard without a tremor the
following conversation between the MINISTER OF PENSIONS and Mr. HOGGE:--
_Mr. Barnes:_ "I never said there was a scale." _Mr. Hogge:_ "Yes, you
did." _Mr. Barnes:_ "No, I didn't."
A little later on, Mr. SWIFT MACNEILL always a stickler for constitutional
precedent, attacked the Government for introducing important
Bills--including one for extending once more the life of this immortal
Parliament--without vouchsafing any explanation of them. He appealed to
the SPEAKER to condemn this procedure as being contrary to the spirit of
the standing order. Mr. LOWTHER explained that it was his business to
carry out the rules of the House, not to express opinions about the use
that was made of them. But he ventured to remind the Hon. Member that
under this rule a Home Rule Bill, a Welsh Disestablishment Bill and a
Plural Voting Bill had all been introduced on a single day. And it is not
on record that on that occasion Mr. MACNEILL entered any protest.
_Wednesday, March 28th_--Rumours that Mr. ASQUITH was about to make a
public recantation of his hostility to Women's Suffrage caused a large
attendance of Members, Peers and the general public. The interval of
waiting was beguiled by, among others, Mr. PEMBERTON BILLING, who, having
been told by Mr. MACPHERSON that the number of accidents during the
training of pilots during the last half-year of 1916 was 1.53 per cent.,
proceeded to inquire, "What is the percentage based on? Is it percentage
per hundred?" Mr. BILLING may be comforted by the recollection that a
greater than he, Lord RANDOLPH CHURCHILL, confessed that he "never could
understand what those d--d dots meant."
The Editor of _The Glasgow High School Magazine_ must be a proud man this
day, for he has been mentioned in Parliament. It seems that he has been
refused permission to post his periodical to subscribers in neutral
countries, and Mr. MACPHERSON explained that this was in pursuance of a
general rule, since "school magazines contain much information useful to
the enemy." It is pleasant to picture the German General Staff laboriously
ploughing through reports of football-matches, juvenile poems and letters
to the Editor complaining of the rise in prices at the tuck-shop, in order
to discover that Second-Lieutenant Blank, of the Umptieth Battery, R.F.A.,
is stationed in Mesopotamia, and therefrom to deduce the present
distribution of the British Army.
The SPEAKER occupied the Chair during the discussion of the recommendations
of his Conference on Electoral Reform, and heard nothing but good of
himself. It was, indeed, a notable achievement to have induced so
heterogeneous a collection of Members to present a practically unanimous
report on a bundle of problems acutely controversial.
Only on one point did the Conference fail to agree, and that was in regard
to Women's Suffrage. But, after Mr. ASQUITH'S handsome admission that, by
their splendid services in the War, women had worked out their own
electoral salvation, even that topic seemed to have lost most of its
provocative quality; and there is a general desire to forget what the late
PRIME MINISTER described as a detestable campaign and bury the hatchet and
all the other weapons employed in it.
[Illustration: "CO-ORDINATION."
_Foreign Office._ _Admiralty_
LORD ROBERT CECIL. SIR EDWARD CARSON]
Do you recall the distraught lady in _Ruddigore_, who was always charmed
into silence by the mystic word "Basingstoke"? More than once during Mr.
CLAVELL SALTER'S over-elaborated speech I hoped that he would remember his
constituency and take the hint. But he went on and on, occasionally
dropping into a vein of sentiment and working it so hard that I quite
expected to hear him say, "Gentlemen of the Jury" instead of "Mr. Speaker."
When it came to the division, however, he only carried some three-score
stalwarts into the Lobby, and the House decided by a majority of 279 to
support the Government's intention to give immediate effect to the
recommendations of the Conference.
_Thursday, March 29th._--Employers in want of agricultural labourers should
apply to Lord NEWTON, who has a large selection of interned Austrians,
Hungarians and Turks, and undertakes to supply an alien "almost by return
of post." The Turk is specially recommended, as, even if he fails to give
complete satisfaction, the farmer can relieve the monotony of an arduous
existence by "sitting on the Ottoman."
Brave man as he is, the FOOD CONTROLLER is not prepared to prohibit
entirely the manufacture of cakes and confectionery. But he is preparing to
do something hardly less daring, namely, to standardize the types that may
be sold.
An old spelling-book used to tell us that "It is agreeable to watch the
unparalleled embarrassment of a harassed pedlar when gauging the symmetry
of a peeled pear." Lord DEVONPORT, occupied in deciding on the exact
architecture and decoration of the Bath bun (official sealed pattern),
would make a companion picture.
The unwillingness of some young Scottish Members to volunteer for National
Service is now explained. It seems that by an unpardonable oversight the
appeals of the DIRECTOR-GENERAL, as published in the Scottish newspapers,
were addressed "to the men of England." The wording has now been altered--
not too late, I trust, for the country to obtain the valuable assistance of
Messrs. PRINGLE and HOGGE.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _The New-comer._ "MY VILLAGE, I THINK?"
_The One in Possession._ "BOBBY, OLD THING; I TOOK IT HALF-AN-HOUR AGO."]
* * * * *