more happy than when route-marching; never more unhappy than when compelled to break out of the line. Indeed, so much did he enjoy column of route that when off duty with two or three other horses he would play at route-marching, taking up a position in Indian file and avoiding any sort of arrangement which brought him abreast of his companions.

At last we had to part. I don't know the right way to express this. Possibly I was reissued without him; I am not sure what the process was. At any rate we separated, he remaining at the camp and I proceeding on duty to the Depôt. I said good-bye to him and he nuzzled for the last time at my side pocket. Having munched the sugar, he turned to the more serious business of his manger. I think this must have been his way of concealing his emotion.

RAG-TIME IN THE TRENCHES.

Roll up, rally up!
Stroll up, sally up!
Take a tupp'ny ticket out, and help to tote the tally up!
Come and see the Raggers in their "Mud and Slush" revoo.
(Haven't got no money? Well, a cigarette'll do).
Come and hear O'Leary in his great tin-whistle stunt;
See our beauty chorus with the Sergeant in the front;
Come and hear our gaggers
In their "Lonely Tommy" song;
Come and see the Raggers,
We're the bongest of the bong.

Roll up, rally up!
Stroll up, sally up!
Show is just commencing and we've got to ring the ballet up.
Hear our swell orchestra keeping all the fun alive,
Tooting on his whistle while they dance the Dug-out Dive.
Come and see Spud Murphy with his double-ration smile,
('Tisn't much for beauty, but it's Phyllis Dare for style);
Come and see our scena,
"How the section got C.B.;"
Bring a concertina
And we'll let you come in free.

Roll up, rally up!
Stroll up, sally up!
First and last performance. If you want to see it, allez up!
Come and sit where "Archibalds" won't get you in the neck
(If it's getting sultry you can take a pass-out check).
Come and hear the Corporal recite his only joke;
See the leading lady slipping out to have a smoke;
Sappers, cooks, flag-waggers,
Dhooly-wallahs too;
Come and hear the Raggers
In their "Mud and Slush" revoo.

Commercial Candour.

"The perfume par excellence ... unapproached and unapproachable." Advt. in Provincial Paper.

"GERMAN FOOD CRISIS.

Attempt to congeal the truth as to shortage."—Buenos Ayres Standard.

The Huns are so economical that they put even Truth into cold storage.

"Cheery messages come through from General Townshend. He is sewing vegetable seeds and has asked for gramophone needles." Lloyd's Weekly News.

The ordinary kind being unsuited for such delicate stitchery.

ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

Tuesday, February 29th.—Mr. Lloyd George announced to-day that the Members of the Cabinet had decided to take one-fourth of their salaries in Exchequer Bonds. Murmurs of applause followed, and before they had died away Mr. Hogge launched his great joke. Leading up to it with the remark that Exchequer Bonds can be sold the next day, he asked, "Would it not be a good idea to call them the Laughing Stock?" Mr. Hogge is not one of the chartered jesters of the House so his jeu d'ésprit just caused "a laugh," as the reporters say, and nothing more.

On the Third Beading of the Consolidated Fund Bill Sir John Simon renewed his attack upon the Military Service Bill. The tribunals, he declared, were disregarding the appeal of the widow's only son; the Yellow Form, of which the late Home Secretary takes the same jaundiced view as he did of the Yellow Press, was being sent out indiscriminately to all whom it did not concern: the War Office had issued a misleading poster; and everywhere men were being "bluffed" into the Army. He himself would have been inundated with correspondence if he had not had the happy inspiration of diverting the flood into Mr. Tennant's letter-box. Passionately he called upon the Government not to imitate Germany's brutality.

Mr. Long, suave as usual, deprecated Sir John Simon's ferocity, reminded him that all cases of hardship could be considered by the Appeal Tribunals, and promised to investigate the cases that had been mentioned. "May I send in my list too?" asked Mr. Watt. But Mr. Long, unwilling to share the fate of Mr. Tennant, suggested that the Secretary for Scotland would form a more appropriate dumping-ground for Mr. Watt's dossier.

After Mr. Snowden, Sir Thomas Whittaker and Mr. Lough had reinforced Sir John Simon's case with added instances the Government found an unexpected champion in Mr. Healy. He was amazed to hear the late Home Secretary—"one of the Ministers who made the War"—gloating over the inefficiency of the War Office at a moment when round Verdun was raging a battle in which the fate of Paris, and perhaps of London, was involved. Why had he not imitated the monumental silence of Mr. Burns? Instead, he, the suppressor of obscure Irish newspapers, had done more to injure recruiting than any Connemara editor.

I never expected to live to hear the Bank of England described in the House of Commons as a useless institution. In Mr. Healy's opinion, "The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street," like the other who lived in a shoe, has too many children, and her attempt to get 190 of them exempted from military service moved him in a moment of "vituperative irrelevance," as Mr. Pringle subsequently described it, to say the rudest things about her financial capacity.

Wednesday, March 1st.—Sir Owen Phillips, once Liberal Member for Pembroke, returned to the House to-day as Unionist Member for Chester. To signalise the capture of so gigantic a prize—he is 6ft. 6in. in his stockinged feet—Lord Edmund Talbot and Sir G. Younger, Unionist Whips, conducted him to the Table; and as they are both of moderate height the procession gave the effect of a Mauretania going to her moorings in charge of a couple of tugs.

When Dr. Macnamara moved a Supplementary Estimate of £10 for the Navy, I was reminded of Praed's lines "On seeing the