ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.
FUNK-HOLES FOR MINISTERS.
Designed for protection against raids by our air-experts.
Tuesday, March 21st.—Returning from Westminster this afternoon I stumbled in Whitehall upon a Member whom I had not seen in his place this Session. "Going down to the House?" I asked. "What, is it sitting?" he replied; and then it appeared that he was just home on short leave after working hard "somewhere on the Continent," and had no present interest in political controversy. As I reflected on a speech I had just listened to, it occurred to me that the attitude of some of the stay-at-home Members towards the War is much the same as that of my hon. friend towards the House. "What, is it still going on?"
If the Germans were in occupation of the Black Country, if Oxford were being daily shelled, as Rheims is, and if with a favouring breeze London could hear the dull rumble of the bombardment, as Paris can, I wonder if Members would still be encumbering the Order-paper with the sort of trivialities that now find place there.
An exception may be made in favour of Mr. Joe King. He has discovered a little late in the day that a war is going on in Europe, and that it affects a little country called Belgium, whose neutrality was guaranteed by the Powers. He was anxious to know whether Belgium had formally renounced her neutrality, and was no doubt greatly surprised to learn from Sir Edward Grey that, owing to one of the guaranteeing Powers having invaded her, Belgium had become a belligerent.
I do not know whether Mr. Pringle was in the House when this announcement was made. But if so it evidently created no impression on his mind. In the debate on the Army Estimates he followed Captain Tryon, who had delivered an urgent appeal to the Government from the text, "A strong Army and a shorter War." Mr. Pringle's ideal is just the reverse. In his view the Army is too big already, and is taking too great a toll from our industrial and commercial population. The great men who won the Napoleonic War—after twenty-three years—had not a big army; and the consequence was that, while it was going on, British trade expanded by leaps and bounds. To-day, owing to our disastrous military policy the demands upon our tonnage were so heavy that people had to go short of sugar and tobacco. Let us conserve our resources and be ready to dictate terms when Germany has been financially ruined. When Mr. Pringle at last sat down after three-quarters of an hour of this sort of thing I longed for ten minutes of Mr. Balfour at his best. But he was not present, and Mr. Long was so much occupied in defending the Government against the charge of having broken faith with the married men that Mr. Pringle never got the trouncing he deserved.
Wednesday, March 22nd.—One of the most cherished beliefs of the House of Commons is that upon the Second Reading of the Consolidated Fund Bill anything under the sun may be discussed. Colonel Yate was justly surprised, therefore, when the Speaker ruled that he was out of order in criticising the Indian Government for its conduct of the Mesopotamian Expedition, and advised him to reserve his remarks for the Indian Budget discussion—equivalent in these times to the Greek Kalends.
Mr. Chamberlain was surprised too, but, regardless of the ruling, proceeded to make a carefully-prepared reply to the speech which the Hon. and gallant Member had not been allowed to deliver. He frankly admitted that there had been a lamentable breakdown of the hospital arrangements, but steps had been taken to improve them, and a telegram from General Lake showed that the treatment of the men wounded in the recent engagement was satisfactory.
Mr. Pemberton-Billing essayed another and a longer flight to-day, but had a good deal of engine trouble. His Parliamentary friends ought to have warned him that the House does not care to listen to a man reading extracts from his own leading articles, however prophetic they may have been; that the constant reiteration of a phrase such as "I would like to suggest, Mr. Speaker," soon becomes tiresome, and that to call somebody else "the De Rougemont of the air" is to invite the tu quoque. Members became more and more impatient as the orator became more and more dogmatic; and when he rhetorically demanded the name of "one man to whom we could turn to solve the problem" they derisively chorused, "Billing!" Mr. Tennant, recognising the feeling of the House, did not spend much time in refuting Mr. Billing's wild assertions, but devoted most of his speech to replying to Mr. Joynson-Hicks, who had pleaded that the East-Coast towns should be more promptly warned of approaching air-raids. He had personally investigated the arrangements and was positively "staggered" at "the wonderful network that had been set up," and he invited Mr. Joynson-Hicks to come with him privately and share his amazement. Mr. Ellis Griffith was not convinced. He thought that there were still too many strands of red tape in the network, and reiterated the hope that the Derby Committee would soon develop into a Ministry of the Air.
Thursday, March 23rd.—A distressing report in the papers this morning, that the Galloper had been blown up by the Germans, made the friends of Sir Frederick Smith anxious. Had he, on one of his periodical visits to the trenches to see Friend Winston, stumbled across an enemy mine? Happily the report was grossly exaggerated. The Galloper was only a light-ship, and had not been destroyed by the enemy but merely withdrawn by the Trinity House; and on the Treasury Bench this afternoon there was the Attorney-General very much alive.
Mr. Trevelyan had a motion on the paper condemning the administration of the Defence of the Realm Act, and in support of it produced a sheaf of cases, in which he said the Government had abused its powers. Among other acts of vile oppression they had ravished from her home, on September 1st, while her father was away shooting partridges, and had subsequently interned without trial, a young lady against whom no charge had been formulated. It sounded very dreadful, and someone called out, "Is this a Russian case?"
Then arose Sir F. E. Smith, and with a few forensic gestures demolished the house of cards that Mr. Trevelyan had so laboriously erected. Most of his cases were out of court because they had already been in court, the decisions he impugned being those of the magistrates. As for the daughter of the partridge-slayer she was an associate of a notorious German spy, and had come back from Switzerland with a message for one of his agents. As her case had been fully considered by the late Home Secretary he suggested that Mr. Trevelyan should talk to him about it.
This was the most pungent speech of the afternoon. The most amusing was that of Mr. Ginnell, who kept the House in fits of laughter for ten minutes while in his most rasping tones he jerked out epigrams against "this thing calling itself a Government." The Coalition was described as "two poisons blended, which could not make a wholesome drink." Never before has he had such a success. I only hope it will not turn his head and encourage him to attempt conscious humour.
Veteran (instructing "Bantam" in his duties as sentry). "You look over there—there's the Germans. Don't you worry about them—they won't 'urt you. But you watch those blinking rats. They'll get you by the back of the leg and pull you off the bloomin' fire-step in no time!"
"The World at War at —— Theatre Only."
Advt. in Evening Paper.
We are relieved to find that the area of conflict has been so much restricted.