ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

Monday, February 12th.—Question-time, which towards the end of last Session was extended by a quarter-of-an-hour, to-day reverted to its old limits. Consideration for overworked officials was assigned as the reason, but I think the House as a whole was rather relieved at the disappearance of what was often a triste quart d'heure. One can easily have a surfeit of the piquant humours of Mr. GINNELL, Mr. KING and the rest of the Rosa Dartles of the House.

The new Administration received some useful support from an unexpected quarter. Mr. MCKENNA, a little disturbed, perhaps, by the discovery that he had been a trifle of 350 millions out in his Budget estimate of the cost of the War, was fain to rebuke the Government for proposing two big Votes of Credit on one day. This unprecedented demand, he insisted, must have some dark purpose behind it. Were the Government contemplating a General Election? Mr. BONAR LAW quietly reminded him that exactly the same thing had been done this time last year when Mr. MCKENNA himself was at the Exchequer.

"Luff, boy, luff," whispered Mr. ASQUITH to his discomfited lieutenant, who thereupon went off on another tack and proceeded to express doubts as to the wisdom of over-sea expeditions. But his course was again unfortunate. "Why did you go to Salonika?" interjected a voice from below the Gangway. As Major GODFREY COLLINS afterwards observed, neither the House nor the country will stand much criticism of the new Government by members of the old one.

Tuesday, February 13th.—Lord BERESFORD, in latter days heard with difficulty in the House of Commons, has found his voice again in the ampler air of the Gilded Chamber. His speech this afternoon on the submarine peril and how to defeat it might have wakened the echoes in the Admiralty at the far end of Whitehall. It evoked an admirable reply from Lord LYTTON, who, though not exactly a typical British tar in appearance, has evidently absorbed a full measure of the sea-spirit. Necessarily reticent as to the exact nature of the steps that are being taken to deal with the sea-highwaymen, he made the comforting announcement that already we had achieved very considerable success. This was endorsed by Lord CURZON, who revealed the interesting fact that he too is now a member of the Board of Admiralty, and was able to state that, after two years of "frightfulness," the British mercantile marine was only a small fraction below its tonnage at the commencement.

The British revolution goes on apace. The Game Laws, over which so many Parliamentary battles have been fought, were swept away in a moment this afternoon when Captain BATHURST announced in his usual level tones that British farmers would in future be allowed to destroy pheasants with as little compunction as if they were rabbits, and with no regard to the sacredness of close-time.

After this momentous announcement, which transforms (subject to the opinion of the law-officers) every tenant-farmer into a pheasant-proprietor, Members took a little time to recover their breath. But some of them were soon hard at work again heckling the Government over the multiplication of new departments and secretariats. Mr. SWIFT MACNEILL, whose reverence for the Constitution (save in so far as it applies to Ireland) knows no bounds, could hardly contain his fury at the setting up of a War Cabinet—"a body utterly unknown to the law"—and the inclusion therein of Ministers without portfolios but with salaries.

He received a certain amount of rather gingerly support from Mr. RUNCIMAN and Mr. SAMUEL, who had evidently not forgotten what happened to Mr. MCKENNA yesterday. Mr. SAMUEL was a distinguished Member of a Government under which both the Ministry and the bureaucracy were swollen in peace-time to unprecedented size; but that did not prevent him from complaining that under the present régime the Administration had been further magnified until, if all its members, including Under-Secretaries, were present, they would fill not one but three Treasury Benches. Already it is a much-congested district at Question-time and is the daily scene of a Great Push.

If underlying these criticisms there was a hope that they would draw the PRIME MINISTER from the seclusion of his private room, it was doomed to disappointment. Mr. BONAR LAW, asserting his position as Leader of the House, and not, as some people seemed to imagine, the PRIME MINISTER'S deputy, made a spirited defence of the new Ministerial arrangements as being essential for the conduct of the War, and challenged his opponents, if they wanted to make sure of the PRIME MINISTER'S presence, to move a Vote of Censure.

At Question-time Mr. LAW had instructed the House how to discover the emblems on the new Treasury Note—the rose, the thistle, the shamrock and the daffodil (this last for Wales). On the Treasury Bench the daffodil is rarely to be descried; but the thistle is in full bloom all the time.

Wednesday, February 14th.—To-day the Vice-Chamberlain of the Household bore a message from the KING in reply to the Address. The House on these occasions is apt to be less interested in the message than in the messenger, and watches eagerly to see if he will trip in his backward march from the Chair, or forget one of the customary three bows. The present holder of the office does his work so featly and with such obvious enjoyment as to give a new significance to the phrase ... "With nods and BECKS and wreathèd smiles."

Most of us only remember the late King THEBAW of Burma as a bloodthirsty and dissipated despot. It has been reserved for Sir JOHN REES to find a redeeming feature in his character. Among all his crimes, he never, it seems, prohibited the consumption of drink in his realm, though I fancy that his own efforts in that line considerably reduced the amount available for his subjects. Implored by the hon. Member not to turn Burma into a "dry" State, Mr. CHAMBERLAIN would say nothing more than that he declined (very properly) to take THEBAW as his model.

No Leader of the House, perhaps, since Sir STAFFORD NORTHCOTE'S time has occupied a more difficult position than Mr. BONAR LAW. But he is daily becoming more at home in the saddle, and can even venture upon a joke or two. Mr. PRINGLE opposed the suspension of the Eleven-o'clock Rule on the ground, inter alia, that "he only wanted to get away." "That," said Mr. LAW suavely, "is a result which can easily be attained," and the House, which is getting a little weary of Mr. PRINGLE'S frequent and acidulated interposition, noted his discomfiture with approving cheers.

Thursday, February 15th.—Lord CURZON, in a happy phrase, described the late Duke of NORFOLK as "diffident about powers which were in excess of the ordinary." Is not that true of the British race as a whole? Only now, under the stress of a long-drawn-out conflict, is it discovering the variety and strength of its latent forces.

There are, of course, exceptions to this rule—strong men who are fully conscious of their strength. Lord MIDLETON, for example, who sought a comprehensive return of all the buildings commandeered and staffs employed by the multifarious new Ministries, and was told that to provide it would put too great a strain on officials fully engaged on work essential to winning the War, promptly replied that if the Government would give him access to their books he would draw up a return in a couple of days. Either the evil has been greatly exaggerated or Lord MIDLETON is a super-statistician for whose services another hotel or two ought to be immediately secured.

"Black billy, 11 months, dam good milker; 10s."—The Bazaar.

It's no use swearing; we simply don't believe it.

"This week three crows had landed at Cardiff who had been sunk by submarines twice, and in some cases three times."—Manchester Guardian.

If only they had stayed in the crow's-nest this might not have happened.

"Matrimony.—Gentleman coming into means desires to correspond with Lady having means; this is genuine."—Scotch Paper.

But suppose she won't have him; would he be "coming into means" then?

The Question of the Day.

What are a rational nation's national rations?

"Outwardly, this has been a week devoted both at home and abroad to preparation for the campaign in the spring. Actually, a great deal of water has passed under the Thames."—Liverpool Paper.

Something seems to have gone wrong with the Thames tunnel.

From a report of Mr. BONAR LAW'S speech at Liverpool:—

"When the War was over there would be parties again. (A voice, 'I hope not.') Yes, there would be parties—no free country with free institutions was ever without them—but he did not think they would be quite the sane parties."—The Times.

But were they ever?

"A telegram from Budapest ... announces that the newspaper 'A Nap' has been suppressed by the Hungarian Government for publishing an article the contents of which were considered to be dangerous to the interests of the war campaign."—Westminster Gazette.

We are sorry to hear this. We used to take "A Nap" pretty regularly of an evening, and must now forgo this simple luxury.

THE ART OF DETACHMENT.

(Being a letter from a cloistered lady visiting London to her sister in the Shires.)

My dear Ruth,—Beginning at the beginning, let me tell you that you must at once go to the station to inquire how it is that they forced me to pay thirty shillings for my ticket, instead of one pound. Although the price one pound is printed on the ticket, I couldn't get it until I had paid ten shillings extra. There was no time to get a proper explanation, so I want you to do so. Very likely it is sheer blackmail by that man in the booking-office, whom I never cared for. You had better see the station-master about it.

The next thing I want to tell you is that most of our ideas of London are wrong. You remember how we used to be told about its wonderful lighting at night, and the comfort of its hotels, and the bright shops, and the crowds of taxis, and so on. Well, this isn't true at all. So far from being well-lighted, I assure you that our few little streets and market square are a blaze compared with this city. Some streets here are absolutely dark, and even in the great thoroughfares there is so little light that crossing the road is most perilous. The thing could be put right in a moment if they would only see to it that the lamps were cleaned; I looked closely at several of them and I could see exactly what was wrong—a coat of grimy stuff has accumulated on the glass. Now to get this off would be quite easy, but it does not seem to have occurred to anyone to do it. I suppose that London is very badly managed; and here again I think the advantage lies with us, for I am certain that our District Council would never allow such a state of things. Probably the LORD MAYOR is lazy.

The funny thing is that there is plenty of good light, only they don't know how to apply it. Every night, directly it begins to be dark, great streams of light are turned on from all parts of the city; but would you believe it, they are directed, not downwards so that they could illumine the street, but upwards into the empty sky! If the Chairman of our District Council could see this, how he would laugh! I wish you would tell him.

Then there is coal. I went, as we arranged, first to the Jerusalem Hotel, but it was like ice. When I asked the hotel people why the central heating was not on, they said that there is no coal. At least it seems that there is coal, but no one to deliver it. Just think of our coal-merchant returning such a reply to us when the cellar was getting empty. But in London they seem to be ready to put up with any excuse. Why the men who ought to deliver the coals are not made to, I can't imagine. Anyhow, as I was freezing, I moved into lodgings, where there is coal, although an exorbitant price is asked for each scuttle.

The great topic of conversation everywhere has been some new speculation called the War Loan, and I have to confess that as it is so well spoken of and is to pay the large dividend of 5¼ per cent. I have arranged to invest something for each of us in it. I don't know who the promoter—a Mr. BONAR LAW—is, but it would be awful for us if he turned out to be a JABEZ BALFOUR in disguise. Still, nearly all investment is a gamble, and we can only hope for the best. He must have some peculiar position or the papers would not support his venture as they do; and there is even a campaign of public speakers through the country, I am told, taking his prospectus as their text and literally imploring the people to invest. Quite like the South Sea Bubble we read of in MACAULAY; but please Heaven it won't turn out to be another.

I asked the landlady here about it, but she knew nothing, except that her family could not afford to put anything in. "But your daughters earn very good money," I said. "That's true," she replied, "but all that they have over after their clothes, poor girls, they spend on the theatre or the pictures; and I'm glad to think they can do so. I wouldn't grudge them their pleasures, not I."

Judging by the crowded state of all the myriad places of entertainment in this city there are millions who are like them. But I couldn't help thinking that if so much money seems really to be needed, and this Mr. LAW is really a public benefactor, it might not be a bad idea to try to divert some of the thousands of pounds being paid every day in London alone for sheer amusement. Of course if England had the misfortune to be at war most of these places would naturally be shut up.

By the way, Germans are strangely unpopular in London just now. I have heard numbers of people, all in different places, such as the Tube and omni-buses and tea-shops, using very strong terms about them. It has been quite a series of coincidences.

No more for the present from

Your affectionate

LOUISA.

SONGS OF FOOD PRODUCTION.

III.

"A Berlin telegram says that the Kaiser has created the Austrian Emperor a Field-Marshal.

The material damage done was insignificant."—Glasgow Evening Times.

But the moral effect was tremendous.

"More Food.—Wanted, Partner, either sex, to increase stock open-air pig-farm."—Morning Paper.

An opening for one of the Food Hogs we read so much about.

OXFORD REVISITED.

ALGOL.

THE GREAT INVESTMENT.

I am a fair man, even to Huns. When Germany pays an indemnity of £2,000,000,000 I think we might knock off a tenner or so because the KAISER has done so much to beautify our banks. Once they were cold cheerless places. A suspicion of an overdraft always swept through them. Now I love to go to the bank and see the beautiful blonde and brown and auburn heads bent over the ledgers. If I could be quite certain that they were not looking up the details of my account I should be perfectly happy.

Somebody told me that I could buy War Loan at 5¼ per cent. by borrowing money from my bank at five per cent. This seemed to be the kind of investment I had been looking for. I found that if I took a million on those terms I should draw a net income of £2,500 a year. But I am a patriot. It seemed to me that £2,500 a year was rather more than I was worth to the nation. Was I better value than six M.P.'s? Of course I might be worth six RAMSAY MACDONALDS. However I resolved to avoid greed and ask for a simple hundred thousand.

So I went to my bank and said to a blue-eyed, Watteau type of beauty, "I want to see the manager, please. Concerning an important investment in War Loan," I added hastily, fearing lest the damsel should conclude that I wanted an ordinary overdraft.

I was ushered into the manager's private room.

"About this War Loan," I began. "I understand that you advance money at five per cent. to make the purchase."

"Yes, that is so," said the manager, beaming.

I leapt for joy. I had thought that there must be a catch somewhere.

"Put me down for a hundred thousand," I said.

The manager nearly fell out of his swing-chair. "My dear Sir," he gasped, "have you any prospect of being able to save a hundred thousand during the next year or so?"

"Am I a milk-dealer or a munition-worker?" I replied. "I should be both surprised and gratified if I saved that sum in a year. Still I might do it, you know. I should have to give up tobacco, of course. Or suppose relations hitherto unknown to me died and left me handsome legacies. You are always seeing these things in the papers. 'Baker Inherits Half-Million From Lost Australian Uncle.'"

"A hundred," amended the manager. "Shall we say a hundred? You need not pay a deposit. I'll give you a form."

"Where's your patriotism?" I demanded. "A hundred, you say? Well, I decline your overdraft. Keep your ill-gotten much-grudged gain. I'll pay cash."

I left the bank sadly. I had thought of intimating to the blonde, brown and auburn beauties that I had just put a hundred thousand in War Loan. I had imagined their eyes gleaming at the spectacle of one-tenth of a millionaire.

And now I can't go to the bank again. At least not till I have worked up my balance a little above its present total, namely £2 1s. 9d.

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)

If Wishes were Horses (HURST AND BLACKETT) is one of the most engaging novels that I have met for some time. The matter of it, perhaps, is nothing very new: a story of expanding fortunes and contracting sympathies. But the writer, Countess BARCYNSKA, has, before all else, the inestimable gift of making you believe in her people. All the characters are vigorously alive. The result is that one follows with quite unusual interest the chequered career of her central figure, Martin Leffley, from his introduction as a frankly unpleasant youth, very red about the ears, "which was where he always blushed," to the final glimpse of him, titled, an M.P., and, incidentally, a bowed and better man, purified by the wonderful devotion of Rose, the wife whom throughout the tale he has bullied and undervalued. Nor is Rose herself, with her unwavering belief in her clay idol, a less memorable figure. Of the others, my chief affection went to Aunt Polly, the kindly dealer in old clothes, who imagined the Savile to be a night club. But, as I say, the whole cast is astonishingly real. Only once did I fear for the story, when it seemed as though the machinations of a super-villainous M.P. were about to lead it astray into the paths of melodrama. But the danger proved to be brief, and the unexpected beauty and dignity of the closing chapter would have redeemed a more serious lapse.

Forced to Fight (HEINEMANN) is the record of a Schleswig Dane set forth by ERICH ERICHSEN and very capably translated from the Danish by INGEBORG LUND. It is a book that with a singular skill and with a passion that never gets out of hand so as to convey the impression of hysterical exaggeration lays bare the heart of a youth who was at the storming of Liége, fought in Flanders, then on the Russian Front and again in the Argonne, whence a shattered elbow sent him home broken and aged—that is what his chronicler emphasises—not by the wound, but by the long horror and fatigue of the successive campaigns. The poignancy of his sufferings lay in the fact that as a Dane he went without any of the great hopes and passions that inspired his German comrades, of whom however he speaks with no ill-will. He took part by order in some of the "punishments" of Belgian villages, loathing the savage cruelties of them and deeply convinced that the rape of Belgium was an inexpiable wrong which the world will remember to the lasting dishonour of the German name. You get an impression of the added horror of this War for the imaginative temperamental, and some pathetic pictures of all the suffering among simple innocent machine-driven people on the other side, who had no will to war and no illusions as to the splendour of world-dominion—a vision of desolate homes and countrysides empty of all but very old men.

The first lines of Still Life (CONSTABLE), which begins in "the night train from the German frontier to Paris," gave me much the same impression of impossibility (was there ever such a train?) that I should have felt about a story that opened in the moon. But the shock of this was nothing to some, different in character, that were to follow. Frankly, I confess that Mr. MIDDLETON MURRY'S book has me baffled. Others perhaps may admire the pains lavished by the author in analysing the emotions of a group of characters whose temperaments certainly give him every opportunity for this exercise. An impressionist, and impressionable, youth, whom I have (reluctantly) to call hero, intrigues his unpleasant way through the plot; first in Paris—where you may make a shrewd guess at his pre-occupations—then in an English village, to which he has eloped with the wife of a friend; in France again, and so on. The emotions to which these amorous adventures expose him are handled by the author with a care that suggests rather the naughtiness of the antique nineties than anything belonging to these more vigorous days. I am far from suggesting that, as a study in super-sensibility, the book lacks skill. There are indeed scenes of almost painful cleverness. My complaint is that it is out of date, or (I should perhaps better say) conspicuously out of harmony with the present time. But if you hanker for these pictures of the past that is another matter. I will merely issue a warning that you should preserve this book on some shelf not too accessible by those who are still young enough to overestimate its importance.

It was an odd experience to turn, as I did, directly from the new Haymarket play, of which the late TOM GALLON was part author, to what I suppose was the last story he ever wrote, The Lady in the Black Mask (MILLS AND BOON), which begins in a theatre with the heroine watching a play. It begins, moreover, very well and excitingly; much better, I regret to add, than it goes on. When the heroine arrived home from the theatre, the girl whose companion she was, pleading fatigue, persuaded her to go out again to a masked ball, wearing the dress and indeed assuming the personality of her mistress. The two girls, Ruth, the heroine, and Damia, lived in a gloomy house with old Mr. Verinder, who was Damia's guardian. But when Ruth returned from the ball she found that this arrangement no longer held good, Verinder having been melodramatically stabbed during her absence. And as no one knew, or would ever believe, that it was Damia and not herself who had remained at home you recognise a very pretty gambit of intrigue. Unfortunately, as I said above, the tension is not quite sustained, partly because the characters all behave in an increasingly foolish and improbable fashion (even for tales of this genre); partly because there is never sufficient uncertainty as to who it was (not, of course, Damia) who really killed Verinder. Still, of its kind, as the sort of shocker that used to be valued at a shilling, but appears, like everything else, to have risen in price, The Lady in the Black Mask is fairly up to the average. I fancy her profits might have been greater before the discouragement of railway travelling. That is precisely the environment for which she is best fitted.

In the series of "Chap" books which is emerging from The Bodley Head I have no doubt that Canada Chaps will be welcome. I hope, however, that Mrs. SIME will not mind my saying that the best of her tales are those which have more to do with Canada than its "chaps." Her stories of fighting and of fighters seem to me to have a note in them that does not ring quite true. It is just the difference between the soldier telling his own artless and rugged tale and someone else telling it for him with a touch of artifice. But when the author merely uses the War as her background she writes with real power. The straining for effect vanishes, and so little do the later stories resemble the earlier that I should not have guessed that they were written by the same hand. "Citoyenne Michelle" and "The King's Gift," for instance, are true gems, and they are offered to you at the price of paste. Nowhere will you find a better bargain for your shilling.

HELEN MACKAY, in A Journal of Small Things (MELROSE), sets before us with, it might seem, almost too deliberate simplicity of idiom little scenes and remembered reflections of her days in France since the July of the terrible year. An American to whom France has come to be her adopted and most tenderly loved foster-country, she tells of little things, chiefly sad little things, seen in the hospitals she served or by the wayside or in the houses of the simple and the great, shadowed alike by the all-embracing desolation of the War. The writer has a singular power of selecting the significant details of an incident, and a delicate sensitiveness to beauty and to suffering which gives distinction to this charming book. Less happy perhaps and much less in the picture are the episodes learnt only at second hand and suggesting the technique and unreality of the imagined short story.

Another Impending Apology.

From a paragraph about Mr. JOHN BUCHAN:—

"It is said that he writes his novels as a cure for insomnia."—News of the World.

The Censor Abroad.

"When the High Court is sitting, the Resident Magistrate's Court is held in a room about upteen feet long by about upteen feet wide."—East African Standard.

"CURES STOMACH TROUBLE OR MONEY BACK."—Advt. in South African Paper.

This "Money Back" seems a new disease.

From an article in the Berliner Tageblatt descriptive of life on the Western Front:—

"Perhaps the sun will soon bring warm wind, and how glad one would be of a thaw in the trenches. But then the accursed time will come again when the whole surface of Northern France sticks to the boot of the German soldier."—The Times.

Our brave police must look to their laurels.