AMERICA AGAIN.

A situation of extreme international delicacy has recently arisen. We understand, with regard to the impending strike of Italian organ-grinders and ice-cream merchants in the Metropolis, that Signori Rimbombo Furioso and Fagiuolo Antico, representing the Amalgamated Society of Itinerant Instrumentalists and the National Union of Refrigerated Tuck Sellers, have lately been invited to a conference with Dr. Macnamara, and their economic grievances are now under the consideration of the Minister of Labour. These, briefly, are as follows:

It now appears that in order to make a bid for the large Italian vote in the forthcoming Presidential elections in the U.S.A. a violent anti-British propaganda campaign is raging on the other side of the Atlantic, and that an enormous amount of spurious sympathy is being manufactured on behalf of the purveyors of rotary music and frozen confectionery in Soho. Beautiful Italian girls are daily besieging the British Embassy at Washington with placards bearing such inscriptions as—

SHOULD HOKEY POKEY SUFFER?

ENGLAND COERCES HER TRAVELLING ORGANISTS.

AMERICANS! HELP THE DUMB APE!

The agitation is the more uncalled for since, as a matter of fact, both Signor Furioso and Signor Antico, like most of their compatriots in this country, are pronounced Irredentists and filled with aspirations for a larger Italy, so that they have little or nothing in common with anti-Imperialistic America. Nevertheless, so bitter is the feeling which has been aroused that large subsidies are being sent overseas and Black Hand gangs organised to resist the London police. All over the outer suburbs organ-grinders are refusing to move on, and insist on playing well into the early hours of the morning. Deleterious substances of an explosive nature are being mingled with the ice cream, or else it is being supplied in such a watery condition that it is impossible for customers to lick it out of the receptacle without ruining their shirt fronts and waistcoats. Monkeys are being trained to give violent manifestations of ferocity, and, should the present heat-wave continue, rabies is anticipated.

The latest development is a rumoured suggestion from the U.S.A. Government that a representative should be sent over to take part in the Conference, and the names of Mr. Joe Dempsey and Mr. Charles Chaplin have been put forward as possible mediators.

V.

"All is not plane sailing yet for the German in search of foreign markets."—Evening Paper.

But wait till their flying bagmen get to work.

Hairdresser in Ancient Assyria. "Don't go, Sir. I shall be finished with this nobleman in three or four hours."