schools and saluted by millions of children. To the suggestion that the public offices should be similarly adorned the Government, under the erroneous belief that patriotism and militarism were identical, has hitherto maintained an unflagging opposition. But to-day Lord Crewe admitted that the proposal was reasonable.

Sir George Reid has made the surprising discovery that there are a number of excellent speakers in the House of Commons who do not speak, but concentrate themselves upon the despatch of business. Perhaps this was his genial way of indicating the more obvious fact that there are others of a precisely opposite kind. He himself is an excellent speaker who speaks; but concentration is perhaps hardly his strongest point, and he wandered to-day over so many fields that the Chairman had more than once, with obvious regret, to recall him to the strict path of the Finance Bill, which ultimately passed its first reading, amid cheers that it would have done the Kaiser good to hear.

Mr. Pemberton-Billing, having been prevented by the Budget from making his usual Tuesday speech, delivered it to-day, and had a success which was, I trust, as gratifying to him as it was surprising to the House.

Wife. "Do you think the Zeppelins will come here?"

Husband. "Very possibly, I should say."

Wife. "Then I shan't start the Spring cleaning."

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