Parliament has reassembled, and Mr. Punch has been moved to ask Why?
Various reasons would no doubt be returned by various members. The
Chancellor of the Exchequer wants to obtain a further Vote of Credit. The
new National Party wish to justify their existence; and those incarnate
notes of interrogation--Messrs. King, Hogge and Pemberton Billing--would
like Parliament to be in permanent session in order that the world might
have the daily benefit of their searching investigations. There has been a
certain liveliness on the Hibernian front, but we hope that Mr. Asquith was
justified in assuming that the Sinn Fein excesses were only an expression
of the "rhetorical and contingent belligerency" always present in Ireland,
and that in spite of them the Convention would make all things right.
Meanwhile, the Sinn Feiners have refused to take part in it. And not a
single Nationalist member has denounced them for their dereliction; indeed,
Mr. T.M. Healy has even given them his blessing, for what it is worth. Of
more immediate importance has been Mr. Bonar Law's announcement of the
Government's intention to set up a new Air Ministry, and "to employ our
machines over German towns so far as military needs render us free to take
such action."
[Illustration: A PLACE IN THE MOON
HANS: "How beautiful a moon, my love, for showing up England to our gallant
airmen!"
GRETCHEN: "Yes, dearest, but may it not show up the Fatherland to the
brutal enemy one of these nights?"]
In the earlier stages of the War we looked on the moon as our friend. Now
that inconstant orb has become our enemy, and the only German opera that we
look forward to seeing is _Die Gothadämmerung_. A circular has been
issued by the Feline Defence League appealing to owners of cats to bring
them inside the house during air-raids. When they are left on the roof it
would seem that their agility causes them to be mistaken for aerial
torpedoes. We note that the practice of giving air-raid warnings by notice
published in the following morning's papers has been abandoned only after
the most exhaustive tests. The advocates of "darkness and composure" have
not been very happy in their arguments, but they are at least preferable to
the members of Parliament deservedly trounced by Mr. Bonar Law, who
declared that if their craven squealings were typical he should despair of
victory. Meanwhile, we have to congratulate our gallant French allies on
their splendid bag of Zepps. But the space which our Press allots to air
raids moves Mr. Punch to wonder and scorn. Our casualties from that source
are never one-tenth so heavy as those in France on days when G.H.Q. reports
"everything quiet on the Western front." Still worse is the temper of some
of our society weeklies, which have set their faces like flint against any
serious reference to the War, and go imperturbably along the old
ante-bellum lines, "snapping" smart people at the races or in the Row, or
reproducing the devastating beauty of a revue chorus, and this at a time
when every day brings the tidings of irreparable loss to hundreds of
families.
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