A situation of extreme international delicacy has recently arisen.
We understand, with regard to the impending strike of Italian
organ-grinders and ice-cream merchants in the Metropolis, that Signori
Rimbombo Furioso and Fagiuolo Antico, representing the Amalgamated
Society of Itinerant Instrumentalists and the National Union of
Refrigerated Tuck Sellers, have lately been invited to a conference
with Dr. MACNAMARA, and their economic grievances are now under
the consideration of the MINISTER OF LABOUR. These, briefly, are as
follows:
(1) The high price of sugar.
(2) Restricted hours and insufficient emoluments.
(3) Undue interference by the police.
(4) Inadequate supplies of monkey nuts.
It now appears that in order to make a bid for the large Italian vote
in the forthcoming Presidential elections in the U.S.A. a violent
anti-British propaganda campaign is raging on the other side of the
Atlantic, and that an enormous amount of spurious sympathy is being
manufactured on behalf of the purveyors of rotary music and frozen
confectionery in Soho. Beautiful Italian girls are daily besieging the
British Embassy at Washington with placards bearing such inscriptions
as--