(_Extract from leading article._)
"... Again we ask, 'What is the Government doing?' For several days now our
columns have been ringing with the world-wide acclamation of this
stupendous discovery, beside the potentialities of which the wildest
efforts of imaginative literature are reduced to pallid and uninspired
commonplaces. Even so cautious a scientist as Sir Potiphar Shucks has
declared that the idea of Saturn being inhabited is one that 'should not
lightly be set aside,' and has announced his conviction that under
favourable conditions communication with that planet should in the near
future become 'an accomplished fact.' Other eminent leaders of thought and
action, including Signor Tromboni, are even more enthusiastic in their
reception of the great theory first given to the world by Mr. Diogenes
Dottle in a letter to _The Daily Mandate_. But the POSTMASTER-GENERAL is
content to treat the question with the airy scepticism and obstructive
complacency that have rendered the London Telephone service a byword of
inefficiency, and refuses even to make a grant in aid of the work of
investigation.
"In these circumstances the proprietors of _The Daily Mandate_ have much
pleasure in announcing that they will pay the sum of ten thousand pounds to
the first man, woman or child in the British Empire who can produce
evidence of having received an intelligible telephonic message from Saturn,
and a further sum of one hundred thousand pounds to the first person to
send a message to that planet and receive a clear reply. The services of a
Board of distinguished experts are being engaged for the purpose of testing
and adjudicating all claims.
"_Meanwhile the POSTMASTER-GENERAL must go._"
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Indignant Egoist._ "BE CAREFUL UP THERE WHAT YOU'RE
DROPPING. THAT PRECIOUS NEARLY HIT ME!"]
* * * * *
"It may safely be said that there are more millionaires to the square
yard in Bradford than in any other city in the country, not even
excepting London or New York."--_Daily Paper._
The news that Britain has annexed the United States will comfort those who
thought it was the other way about.
* * * * *
"The incessant singing of a cricket in a London church compelled the
preacher to shorten his sermon."--_The Children's Newspaper._
We may now expect increased enthusiasm for the "Sunday Cricket" movement.
* * * * *