disappointed, for, owing to the storm, Mr. Birrell had not received the necessary information from Ireland, while Mr. Tennant, no doubt for the same reason, had not even received the Question. Mr. Ginnell is now convinced that the official conspiracy against him has been joined by the Clerk of the Weather.

I shall hardly be surprised if the next time I walk down Whitehall I find sandwichmen out with their boards inscribed—

The new Member for East Herts has displayed unprecedented dexterity in catching the Speaker's eye. In three weeks he has already spoken more columns of Hansard than many Members fill during a long Parliamentary career. His speech to-day consisted almost entirely of a catalogue of fatal accidents to aviators, due, he declared, to the faulty engines and machines supplied to them by the Government—"though within twenty miles of here we have a far better machine than the Fokker."

Previous to this we had listened to a bright and diverting dialogue between Mr. Dudley Ward, representing the Anti-Aircraft Service, and Mr. Joynson-Hicks, briefed by the Municipal authorities, on the question of what happened at Ramsgate during the last raid. As they differed in toto on every detail the House was not much the wiser for the discussion, but it was consoled by Mr. Joynson-Hicks' remark that "if the Mayor and Town Clerk have lied to me no one will be more pleased than myself."

Members were much more impressed by the obvious sincerity and occasional eloquence of the appeal on behalf of the East Coast towns made by Sir A. Gelder. His indignation at the trick played on one place by the Military authorities, who tried to allay public anxiety by mounting a dummy gun, was shared by the House.

Mr. Tennant did not attempt to deny or palliate this imposture, but he made a fairly adequate reply to other counts of the indictment, and promised a judicial inquiry into the casualties enumerated by Mr. Billing. The revelation that he himself has a son in the Flying Corps was perhaps the most effective point in a speech which did not wholly remove the impression that the Government has its head in the air rather than its heart.

Wednesday, March 29th.—There are more ways than one of getting into the House of Commons. Mr. Percy Harris, the new Member for the Market Harborough division, who took his seat to-day, arrived by the old-fashioned route of a contested election. He was just about to shake hands with the Speaker when a khaki-clad stranger took a short cut from the Gallery and reached the floor per saltum. Not only so, but before he could be arrested this Messenger from Mars succeeded in delivering his maiden speech, to the effect that British soldiers' heads should be protected against shrapnel-fire. The Serjeant-at-Arms, who had had a narrow escape, goes further, holding the view that his own head should be protected from acrobatic British soldiers.

To-day Mr. Long had the difficult task of convincing the House that the married men had no grievance, and that the Government were doing their best to remove it. Only a man who has fought with bulls in Ireland could hope to tackle such a paradox. Mr. Long, having enjoyed that experience, was fairly successful.

Sir Edward Carson, who had been expected by some people to initiate a raging "Down-the-Government" agitation, was comparatively mild, and, admitting that his late colleagues had done something, chiefly blamed them for not having done it earlier. Still he made it plain that in his view compulsion all round was inevitable if Prussianism was to be crushed. Mr. Ellis Griffith agreed with him. The Government ought not to bargain with the public; it ought to give them a clear and definite command. Such sentiments, proceeding from one who still claimed to belong to the Liberal Party, shocked Sir William Byles. Maintaining that those who had voted against the Military Service Bill were the truest friends of the Prime Minister, he promised again to give him his invaluable support "if he would only lead us to our accustomed pasture." There is no justification, however, for the theory that the worthy knight is a candidate for the Order of the Thistle.

Thursday, March 30th.—In the Lords to-day Viscount Templetown moved that London should be declared a prohibited area, with a view to removing the eight or nine thousand Germans still carrying on business there. His argument was a little difficult to follow, for it included a complaint that in Eastbourne, which is a prohibited area, a number of aliens are residing in comfort and affluence. The Marquis of Lansdowne, usually so logical, on this occasion answered inconsequence by inconsequence. In one breath he asserted that to declare the whole of the Metropolis a prohibited area would throw too much work on the police; and in the next that it would have the effect of driving away large numbers of aliens to places not so well policed as London is.

Lord Beresford caught the infection. In the course of a long question designed to clear General Townshend of the responsibility for the advance upon Bagdad, he remarked with startling irrelevance that if his (Lord Beresford's) advice had been taken by the Prime Minister the Lusitania would still be afloat and we should have lost no battleships in the Dardanelles. He did not appear to attach undue importance to this claim, and Lord Islington, who replied for the Government, did not think it necessary to make any reference to it, but contented himself with stating that the Bagdad advance was authorised on the advice of General Nixon and the Indian Government, and professing official ignorance of any representations on the part of General Townshend.

In the Commons the trouble on the Clyde was the pièce de résistance. At Question time Mr. Lloyd George, fresh from the Paris Conference, had to deal with a number of inquiries put by the little group of Scottish malcontents whose notion of patriotism is to embarrass the Government on each and every occasion. Mr. Hogge wanted to know when the Minister of Munitions was going to give the other side of the case—"the German side," as an interrupter pertinently put it; and Mr. Pringle intimated that a settlement could have been reached but for the unreasonableness of the Government.

This gave Dr. Addison, usually the mildest-mannered man that ever lanced a gumboil, an opportunity of administering to big accuser a much-needed lesson in deportment. The hon. Member had first forced himself, without invitation, into a private conversation in the Minister's room, and had then given a totally misleading account of what took place. He had made himself the spokesman of a body which had displayed "a treacherous disregard of the highest national interests."

Mr. Pringle was as much surprised as if he had been bitten by a rabbit, and wound up an unconvincing defence of himself with the remark that he would rather keep silence than say anything to exacerbate feeling. It is a pity