At the close of his now customary catalogue of the defects he has discovered in our air-service, he offered personally to organize raids upon the enemy's aircraft headquarters, and ventured to believe that he could bag as many Zeppelins in a day as the Government could bring down in a year by their present methods of misplaced guns and misplaced confidence.

Mr. Tennant did not think our confidence was misplaced. But he would certainly accept Mr. Billing's offer, and would confer with him as to how to make the best use of his services. It seems probable, therefore, that for some little time the House will have to do without its weekly lecture from the Member for East Herts. Under the shadow of this impending bereavement Mr. Tennant is bearing up as well as can be expected.

Thursday, April 6th.—Everyone was delighted to see the Prime Minister back in his place to-day after his three weeks' absence. Members on both sides cheered loudly and long as he entered the House. They also displayed a gratifying curiosity regarding his views on various subjects, and to that end had put down no fewer than thirty-two questions for his consideration. The amount of information they received was hardly commensurate with the industry displayed in framing them. Mr. Asquith made, however, one announcement of great moment. The Government are now considering how many recruits they have got, and how many they still want. They will then announce their decision as to the method to be adopted for obtaining more, and will give a day for its discussion. This is to be done before Easter. Asked how long the House would adjourn for, Mr. Asquith replied, with obvious sincerity, "I hope for some time."

The great crisis of which we have heard so much in the newspapers is thus postponed. But a little crisis, not altogether unconnected with the other, had still to be resolved. The Government had a motion down to stop the payment of double salaries to Members on service, and to this Sir Frederick Banbury had tabled an amendment providing that Parliamentary salaries should be dropped altogether. Mr. Duke and other Unionists subsequently put down another amendment, designed to stop the discussion of the larger question on the ground that it was a breach of the party truce.

The Speaker however decided that Sir Frederick was entitled to first cut at the Banbury cake. He made, as I thought, a very fair and not unduly partisan use of his opportunity, arguing that the conditions of Parliamentary life had changed since the War, and that as Members were no longer called upon to work hard they should save the country a quarter-of-a-million by dropping their salaries.

No one, I think, was prepared for the tremendous blast of invective which came from Mr. Duke. In language which seemed to cause some trepidation even to the Ministers he was supporting he denounced his right hon. friend for introducing "this stale and stinking bone of contention," and plainly hinted that it was part of a plot to get rid of the Prime Minister. If that eminent temperance advocate, Sir Thomas Whittaker, had not poured water into Mr. Duke's wine, and emptied the House in the process, there might have been a painful scene.

AT THE PLAY.

"Disraeli."

Our early-Victorian oligarchs disdained their Disraeli as a mountebank because he wore the wrong waistcoats and had genius instead of common-sense. If he had grown to be the least like Mr. Louis Napoleon Parker's Disraeli, if he had taken to standing over Governors of the Bank of England and forcing them to sign documents under threat of smashing up their silly old bank, if he had been such a judge of men as to have made that prize ass, Lord Deeford, his secretary, or conducted his menage at Downing Street in the highly diverting manner exhibited in Mr. Parker's second Act, one trembles to think what they would have called him—and done to him. And whether, if the Bank had ever had such a Governor as Sir Michael Probert, England would have ever been in a position to buy a single share in the Suez Canal or any other venture, is a question for the curious to consider.

No wonder the Americans enjoyed Disraeli! Reinhardt should pirate it for Berlin, as it would lend some colour to the imaginative Dr. Hellferich's airy dissertations on English finance. Can it be that our author is a hyphenated patriot in disguise and that this is merely a ramification of the so thorough German Press Bureau's activities? Perish the thought!

At the opening of the play, with Mr. Disraeli and his wife as guests at Glastonbury Towers, all went well. The almost uncanny lifelikeness of Mr. Dennis Eadie's make-up, the steady flow of the great man's good things, which had been discerningly culled and quite skilfully put together, his swift parries and kindly thrusts, his charming tenderness towards that best of wives, the shining heroine of the crushed thumb, all this was admirable, was eminently believable—that is if you except the exaggerated futility and insolence of the aristocratic background. It was when the adventuress got going; when casements began to be mysteriously unlocked by fair hands, and pretty ears applied to key-holes at vital moments of quite improbable disclosures to more than improbable young men; when important despatches and secret codes began to be left about in conspicuous places, in rooms conveniently vacated for notoriously suspect plotters; when the Prime Minister began to bounce and prance and to lay booby traps, into which not his enemies but his incomparable secretary promptly blundered—it was then that things went crooked.

It is perhaps not to be regretted. Nothing is more diverting to the perceptive playgoer than these little dramatic-simplicities; as when, the great Suez deal having been completed—a fact that it was enormously important to conceal from the Press and the country (and the adventuress)—a telegram with full details in the plainest of plain English is despatched from the local post-office to the great financier who had made the deal possible. The charming naïveté of the family gathering at the Foreign Office (it might have been Mme. Tussaud's) and the adorable ingenuousness of the idea of bringing down a great international financier by holding up his cargo of bullion in a foreign port, should lead no one to complain that high politics are dull.

I wouldn't have missed Mr. Dennis Eadie's Disraeli for a good deal. Where it was at all possible—which it was in general; Mr. Parker only sprinkled his extravagances—the ease and plausibility of it were quite admirable. This adroit player gave us the tact, the wit, the gallantry, the generosity, the romantic exuberance. It was a fine performance, and it will be finer as its firm outline is filled in. The play, for all its vagaries, may even serve to remind a careless age of its too lightly forgotten spacious dead. Miss Mary Jerrold's Lady Beaconsfield was, I suppose, more in the nature of an imaginary portrait. It was beautiful and convincing. As a stage adventuress Mme. Dorziat was most attractive, if only she had been credible. She had no business to be in any of the situations in which she found herself, and must have needed all her skill to conceal the fact from herself. Miss Mary Glynne as The Lady Clarissa, the portentous Duchess of Glastonbury's pretty daughter and the doomed bride of the egregious Deeford, was quite charming to watch and hear. Mr. Cyril Raymond should, I am sure, mitigate the asinine priggishness of the young viscount's bearing in the First Act. His conversion from this to the merely crass stupidity of the second was too much for us to bear. Mr. Vincent Sternroyd as Mr. Hugh Meyers looked quite as if he might have been able to put his hand on two million; Mr. Harben as Sir Michael Probert just as if he would sign any document which was put before him under threat or suggestion. Mr. Campbell Gullan, as the adventuress's husband, made himself the kind of clerk that no one would have trusted for a moment with even the petty cash. These things I know are necessary and I acquit him of any artistic impropriety. But you will go to see this piece chiefly for the sake of Mr. Eadie's tour de force, for the thrill of the rather pleasant sensation (mingled with a slightly horrified suspicion of sacrilege) of seeing a queer resurrection, and for the fragrance of a touching little idyll of married friendship—one of the most enduring of Disraeliana. T.

A Special Matinée, at which the Queen will be present, is to be given at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, at 2.30, on Friday, April 14th, in aid of of the Y. W. C. A.'s fund for providing Hostels, Canteens and Rest Rooms for women engaged in munition and other war-work. Among the artists who have promised to appear are Madame Sarah Bernhardt, Miss Gladys Cooper, Mr. Joseph Coyne, Mr. Gerald du Maurier, Mr. Dennis Eadie, Miss Lily Elsie, Madame Genée, Mr. Robert Hale, Mr. Charles Hawtrey, Madame Kirkby Lunn, Mr. George Robey and Miss Irene Vanbrugh. The Matinée has been organised by Miss Olga Nethersole, and the stage will be under the direction of Mr. Dion Boucicault.

Applications for seats should be addressed to the Manager, Box Office, Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Cheques to be made payable to Lady Sydenham.

THEATRICAL ECONOMY.

We learn that at a recent matinée performance of a play by Mr. W. B. Yeats, "instead of scenery a Chorus of singers was introduced, who described the scene as well as commenting upon the action." In these times that call for frugality other managements would do well to copy. One might mount an entire West-End Society comedy, and bring as it were the scent of Hay Hill across the footlights, at no greater expense than the cost of a back-curtain and a Chorus. The latter might go something as follows:—

This is the morning-room of the heroine's house in Half Moon Street;
Noble and large is the room, with three windows, two doors and a fireplace
(Goodness knows how many more in the wall through which we are looking).
Nobly and well is it furnished, with chairs and with tables and couches,
Couches beyond computation, and all of them soon to be sat on;
So may you see that the play will be dialogue rather than action.
Pleasant and fresh in the footlights the chintzes with which they are covered,
Giving a summer effect, helped out by the plants in the fireplace.
Curtains at each of the windows are flooded with limelight of amber,
Whence you may learn that the time is a fine afternoon in the season.
Centre of back a piano, whose makers are told on the programme,
Promises snatches of song, or it may be a heartbroken solo.
Carpets and rugs and the like you can fill in without any prompting;
Pictures and china and books, and photographs circled in silver.
Yes, you may take it from us that the piece has been mounted regardless.

[Enter the leading lady. She just pushes the back-curtains apart and emerges on to the stage, dressed in any old thing (what a saving!). The Chorus continues ecstatically.]

See where the heroine comes, flinging open the door from the staircase
(Marked you the head of the stairs and the artist-proof on the landing?
That's what I call realistic). She's threaded her way through the couches,
Sinks upon one for an instant, then rises and walks to the window,
Showing the back of her gown to be fully as chic as the front part.
So to the door (in the curtain) and slams it with signs of emotion,
Slams it so hard and so fierce that the walls of the room are a-quiver;
Even the opposite side of the roadway, as seen through the windows,
Shares in the general movement, as though it were struck by an earthquake.

And so on. You catch the idea? Bare boards, a passion and a Chorus; and the management would save enough to make the amusement-tax a matter of indifference.

NURSERY RHYMES OF LONDON TOWN.

V.—Swiss Cottage.

I heard a Jodeller
In a Swiss cottage
Eating a crust
And a bowlful of pottage.

He jodelled and jodelled
'Twixt every bite;
He jodelled until
Not a crumb was in sight.

He jodelled and jodelled
'Twixt every sup;
He jodelled until
He had drunk it all up.

He put down his bowl
And he came to the door,
And jodelled and jodelled
And jodelled for more!

"The exportation of the following goods is prohibited to all destinations:—

Acetic acid, cinematograph films, ferro-molybdenum, ferro-silicon, ferro-tungsten, gramophone and other sound records, photographic sensitive firms, &c., &c." Liverpool Daily Post.

"Two photographers from Devonport, who had been already deferred ten groups, asked that their claims should be heard in camera." Western Morning News.

No doubt they belonged to one of the sensitive firms above mentioned.

ROOSEVELT IN THE RING.

Every Englishman who has taken even a very humble part in the consideration and discussion of public affairs is or ought to be aware that the most gratuitous error he can commit is to take a side in American politics and to criticise American public men from the British point of view. From that error I propose to abstain most rigorously. It is the right of Americans to criticise their own Government and the public acts of their statesmen, and on that right I shall not infringe. It cannot, however, be improper for an Englishman to set out before his fellow-countrymen the utterances of a great American on matters which vitally affect not only America but the whole civilised world. Mr. Roosevelt—for Mr. Roosevelt is the great American of whom I speak—has done more than give utterance to his opinions; he has deliberately collected them into a book, Fear God and Take Your Own Part (Hodder and Stoughton), and has thus invited us to read and consider his views. I accept his invitation and trust I shall not abuse the privilege.

It is a refreshment to go about with Mr. Roosevelt through the pages of this book. Here are no doubts and no hesitations, no timidity and no blurred outlines. Everything is clear cut and well defined. Where Mr. Roosevelt blames he blames with a vigour which is overwhelming; where he approves he approves with a resonant zeal and enjoyment. He has no drop of English blood in his veins—he himself has said it more than once—yet he is strong in his praise of our conduct and even stronger in his denunciation of the faithlessness and inhumanity of Germany. The contemplation of German atrocities and of what he considers to be America's weak compliance with them fills him with a rage which is fortunately articulate. His indictment of Germany is as vigorous as the most ardent pro-Ally can desire. It would be agreeable to watch the Kaiser's face if he should happen to take up this book in an idle moment between one front and another.

Mr. Roosevelt's position can be best defined in his own words. "We Americans," he says, "must pay to the great truths set forth by Lincoln a loyalty of the heart and not of the lips only. In this crisis I hold that we have signally failed in our duty to Belgium and Armenia, and in our duty to ourselves. In this crisis I hold that the Allies are standing for the principles to which Abraham Lincoln said this country was dedicated; and the rulers of Germany have, in practical fashion, shown this to be the case by conducting a campaign against Americans on the ocean, which has resulted in the wholesale murder of American men, women and children, and by conducting within our own borders a campaign of the bomb and the torch against American industries. They have carried on war against our people; for wholesale and repeated killing is war, even though the killing takes the shape of assassination of non-combatants, instead of battle against armed men."

Here again is a passage which is not lacking in emphasis: "Of course, incidentally, we have earned contempt and derision by our conduct in connection with the hundreds of Americans thus killed in time of peace without action on our part. The United States Senator or Governor of a State or other public representative who takes the position that our citizens should not, in accordance with their lawful rights, travel on such ships, and that we need not take action about their deaths, occupies a position precisely and exactly as base and as cowardly (and I use those words with scientific precision) as if his wife's face were slapped on the public streets and the only action he took was to tell her to stay in the house."

This, too, on the hyphenated is good: "As regards the German-Americans who assail me in this contest because they are really mere transported Germans, hostile to this country and to human rights, I feel, not sorrow, but stern disapproval. I am not interested in their attitude toward me, but I am greatly interested in their attitude toward this nation. I am standing for the larger Americanism, for true Americanism; and as regards my attitude in this matter I do not ask as a favour, but challenge as a right, the support of all good American citizens, no matter where born and no matter of what creed or national origin." That puts the matter in a nutshell.

I might continue with pithy extracts until the columns of Punch were filled to overflowing, and even then I should not have exhausted the interest of this virile and timely book. The reading of it can only serve to confirm an Englishman's faith in his country's cause. Thank you, Mr. Roosevelt, for your admirable tonic.

VICTORIA.

He entered the train at St. James' Park—a dark-eyed young Belgian wearing the new khaki uniform of King Albert's heroic Army. I had watched him hobbling along the platform, and my own boots and puttees being coated with mud after a day's trench-digging in Surrey I drew them in as he took the corner seat opposite mine, stretching out rather stiffly before him the leg which had no doubt stopped a Bosch's bullet. Here was the opportunity for an interesting exchange of views. I was mentally rehearsing a few bright opening sentences in French when the train again stopped. Half twisting in his seat he peered uncertainly out of window.

"Victoria," I informed him; but he obviously didn't understand. I raised my voice.

"Victoria Station," I told him again. "Er—er, Victoire."

His stick fell clattering to the floor, his mouth broadened into a fraternal smile and, seizing both my hands, he worked them like pump-handles.

"Ah, bon, bon! À la victoire! Vivent les Alliés!"

"Brazil.—The British Consul at Porto Alegre states that there appears to be a prospect of the work of repaying the town being carried out in the near future. The contract provides for the repaving of an area of 500,000 square miles at a total cost of £223,200." Morning Paper.

If these figures are correct Porto Alegre must have the record for cheap paving, always excepting an even warmer place where good intentions are the material employed.

"CONKY'S" UNCLE.

There are some men whose patronymics are swallowed up in their nicknames, and my friend "Conky" is one of these. He has quite a decorative surname of his own, but it never counted. For the rest he is the possessor of a big booming bass voice, which he uses with more gusto than art. He is, apart from a certain pride in his musical accomplishments, a very good fellow; and so is Mrs. "Conky"—an amiable and agreeable woman, whose only fault is an excessive anxiety for the comfort of her guests, leading her at times to forget, in the words of the Chinese proverb, that "inattention is often the highest form of civility."

They are a devoted couple, and the only cloud on their happiness was caused by Conky's expectations from a mysterious and eccentric uncle. For a long time I was inclined to disbelieve in his existence, as he never "materialised." But I was converted from my scepticism, some three years ago, when, on meeting Conky, I was informed that Uncle Joseph had invited himself on a short visit. My friend betrayed a certain agitation. "You know," he said, "it is twenty years since I saw him last, when he came to look me up at school, and rather frightened me."

"Frightened you! But how?"

"Well, you see, he's got a way of thinking aloud, and it's rather embarrassing. I don't mind being called 'Conky,' as you know, but it was rather trying to hear him say, 'I hope his nose has stopped growing.' However, I couldn't very well put him off now. I'm his only nephew; he's an old man, and said to be very rich." Conky sighed, but added more hopefully, "Anyhow, I'm sure Marjorie will rise to the occasion." Personally I was by no means so sure. I felt that Marjorie might overdo it: also that Conky, who loved the sound of his voice, might be tempted to soothe the old man with intempestive gusts of song.

Unhappily my misgivings were realised. A few weeks later, on my way home from the club, I called in late one afternoon on the Conkys. They greeted me cordially as usual, but I could see something was amiss, and soon it all came out. The visit had been a fiasco. Uncle Joseph had been very friendly and even courteous, but at intervals he thought aloud with devastating frankness. Marjorie had exhausted herself in the labours of hospitality, but all in vain. Conky had sung, but the voice of the charmer had failed. And just as Uncle Joseph was going he observed in a final burst of candour, "Goo-ood people, very goo-ood people; but she's a second-rate Martha, and he sings like a bank-holiday trombone-player on Blackpool sands."

From that day till a week ago I never heard Conky or his wife allude to Uncle Joseph. The memory was too painful. And yet it is impossible to deny that the experience was salutary. Marjorie is certainly less overwhelming in her hospitality, and Conky less prodigal of song. And when Conky told me last week that Uncle Joseph had died and left him £10,000, I felt that the old man had atoned handsomely for his unconscious indulgence in a habit for which, after all, a good deal was to be said.

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

The latest of our novelists to succumb to the temptations of the school story is Mr. E. F. Benson; and I am pleased to add that in David Blaize (Hodder and Stoughton) he seems to have scored a notable success. It is the record of a not specially distinguished, but entirely charming, lad during his career at his private and public schools. Incidentally, as such records must, it becomes the history of certain other boys, two especially, and of David's relations with them. It is this that is the real motive of the book. The friendship between Maddox and David, its dangers and its rewards, seems to me to have been handled with the rarest delicacy and judgment. The hazards of the theme are obvious. There have been books in plenty before now that, essaying to navigate the uncharted seas of schoolboy friendship, have foundered beneath the waves of sloppiness that are so ready to engulph them. The more credit then to Mr. Benson for bringing his barque triumphantly to harbour. To drop metaphor, the captious or the forgetful may call the whole sentimental—as if one could write about boys and leave out what is the greatest common factor of the race. But the sentiment is never mawkish. There is indeed an atmosphere of clean, fresh-smelling youth about the book that is vastly refreshing. Friendship and games make up the matter of it; there is nothing that I could repeat by way of plot; but if you care for a close and sympathetic study of boyhood at its happiest here is the book for your money. Finally I may mention that, though in sympathetic studies of boyhood the pedagogue receives as a rule scant courtesy, Mr. Benson's masters are (with one unimportant exception) such delightful persons that I can only hope that they are actual and not imaginary portraits.

You will get quite a serviceable impression of what the highlands and highlanders of Serbia and Montenegro were like in war, behind the lines when the lines still held, from The Luck of Thirteen (Smith, Elder), by Jan Gordon (colourist) and Cora his wife, if you are not blinded by the perpetual flashes of brightness—such flashes as "somebody had gnawed a piece from one of the wheels" as an explanation of jolting; "the twistiest stream, which seemed as though it had been designed by a lump of mercury on a wobbling plate;" the trees in the mist "seemed to stand about with their hands in their pockets, like vegetable Charlie——" But no! I am hanged if I will write the accurséd name. This plucky pair of souls had put in some stiff months of typhus-fighting with a medical mission in the early months of the war, and these are impressions of the holiday which they took thereafter among those fateful hills, with a little carrying of despatches, retrieving of stores and a good deal of parasite-hunting thrown in, until they were finally caught up in the tragic Serbian retreat; still remaining, of course, incurably "bright." I think I detect a certain amount of the too-British attitude that contemns what is strange and is more than a little scornful of poverty, official and private. And I suppose the artist's wife will scoff if I tell her that I was shocked that she should have taken some shots at the Austrians with a Montenegrin machine gun, as if war was just a cock-shy for tourists. But I was. If Mr. Jan Gordon found a good deal more colour in his subjects than we other fellows would have been able to see, that's what an artist's for.

In Jitny and the Boys (Smith, Elder) there are those elements of patriotism, humour and pathos which I find so desirable in War-time books. Jitny was neither man nor woman, but a motor-car, and without disparaging those who drove her and rode in her I am bound to say that she was as much alive as any one of them. She certainly talked—or was responsible for—a lot of motor-shop, and I took it all in with the greatest ease and comfort. Jitny indeed is a great car, but she is not exactly the heroine of a novel. She is just the sit-point from which a very human family surveys the world at a time when that world is undergoing a vast upheaval. In the father of this family Mr. Bennet Copplestone has scored an unqualified success, but the boys are perhaps a little old for their years. This, however, is no great matter, for the essential fact is that the book is full of the thoughts which make us proud to-day and help us to face to-morrow. Yes, Jitny has my blessing.

Little Willie goes for more Loot.

"In the Woevre the Germans attempted on three occasions to capture from us an earthquake."—Glasgow Evening News.

A schoolgirl's translation:—"La marquise recommanda son âme à Dieu." "The Marquis wished his donkey good-bye."

"A number of officers in the province of Yunnan, China, hatched a plot to behead the Governor-General at Urumtsi, and proclaim the independence of the province of Sinkiang. The Governor, discovering the plot, invited ten of the conspirators to an official dinner, at which he beheaded them in turn."—Reuter.

"Another glass of wine, Mr. Wung Ti?" "No? Very well, then, if you would kindly stand up a moment and place your neck on the back of your chair—— Thank you. After the savoury I shall have the pleasure of calling upon the next on my list, Mr. Ah Sin," and so on. Quite a jolly dinner-party.