THE SUMMER-TIME BILL.
(How the lower creation threatens to ignore it).
Wednesday, May 10th.—Among the Distinguished Strangers in the Gallery was a deputation from the Russian Duma, led by its Vice-President. Unfortunately M. Protopopoff and his colleagues did not see our Parliament at its best. In the Commons the Nationalist factions were noisily assailing the Prime Minister with protests against the executions of the rebel leaders, and ultimately succeeded in inducing him to give them a day for what must in the circumstances be a premature discussion.
Then our Russian friends went to the Lords, where they found a discussion on Ireland actually in progress. It was started by Lord Loreburn, who accused the Government of having neglected the elementary duty of protecting the law-abiding population, and urged upon them collectively the necessity of being as candid as Mr. Birrell had been individually. The War had furnished many instances of the danger to national interests of silence carried to excess. Then Lord Midleton rehearsed a grim catalogue of cases in which the Irish police had been instructed to shut their eyes to seditious offences.
Happily the Russian visitors had left before Lord Crewe rose to make the Government's defence, for I am afraid that they would not have carried away a high impression of Ministerial eloquence or Ministerial statesmanship.
Thursday, May 11th.—To Mr. Redmond's obvious annoyance Mr. Dillon developed a savage attack on the military authorities. They, one gathered, were brutal murderers; the Sinn Feiners, on the contrary, were gallant if misguided patriots of whom he was proud. The Prime Minister, mildly observing that Mr. Dillon had forgotten some of the elementary rules of justice, brought the debate back to the level of common sense by contrasting the small number of executions with the heavy toll of military and civilian life that the rebels had taken. Repeating his coup of two years ago, when he went to the War Office after the Curragh incident, he now announced his immediate intention to go to Ireland, in the hope of discovering some arrangement for the future which would commend itself to all parties. Some of the difficulties that Mr. Asquith will encounter in his laudable enterprise were indicated by Mr. Healy, who hoped that he would put an end to Dublin Castle and the jobbery that had been carried on there by Mr. Redmond and his friends.
In the Lords the Government's Irish policy was again assailed from all sides; but more damaging even than the attacks was Lord Lansdowne's defence. He actually blamed Lord Midleton for having contented himself with warning the Chief Secretary and the Prime Minister of the dangerous happenings in Ireland, and not having come to him (Lord Lansdowne), or to Mr. Balfour, or to Mr. Long. This new doctrine of collective irresponsibility seems fairly to justify the definition, "A Coalition is something that does not coalesce."
"Imports in truth have been so small that the run on home produce has been more or less forced."—Eastern Daily Press.
The Press Bureau will have to be more economical with it than ever.
"Wellington said that the battle of Waterloo was won upon the cricket fields of England. Later—decades later—the bronzed and lithe-limbed athletes of the island kingdom gazed in open-eyed bewilderment upon the flaming indictment of Kipling, 'The muddled oafs at the wicket; the flannelled fools at the gate,' and seeking vainly to follow the poet's logic."
New York Times.
Presented in this form it would baffle anybody.
