ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.
It is whispered that a representative of the Sartorial Press is trying to induce the Speaker to reconsider his statement that he (the Speaker) "has nothing to do with the clothes that Members choose to wear."
Tuesday, June 20th.—Once again the House of Lords has forestalled the Commons by its elastic procedure. During the brief recess the Empire has been stirred to its depths by the tragic death of Lord Kitchener. Almost his last official act was to meet his critics of the House of Commons face to face, reply to their questions, and leave them silenced and admiring. Yet to-day the Commons could do no more than listen to the sympathetic messages from foreign Parliaments read out to them by the Speaker, and learn from the Prime Minister that to-morrow he would endeavour to give expression to their feelings upon this "irreparable loss." The Lords, less fettered by formality, were able at once to pay their tribute to the great dead and to hear his praises sounded by a Statesman, a Soldier and a Friend.
The Speaker is no Alexander seeking fresh worlds to conquer. Invited to rebuke an Irish Member for wearing a Sinn Fein badge he flatly declined, with the remark that he had nothing to do with the clothes Members chose to wear. In refusing to set up as an arbiter elegantiarum I think Mr. Lowther is wise, for the post in these days would be no sinecure. Time was when the House was the best-dressed assembly in the world. When the late Mr. Keir Hardie entered its precincts with a little cloth cap perched upon his luxuriant curls he created quite a shock. To-day no one, except perhaps the Editor of The Tailor and Cutter, would mind much if Mr. Snowden were to appear in a fez or Mr. Ponsonby in a pickelhaube.
Wednesday, June 21st.—What struck me most in the Prime Minister's tribute to Lord Kitchener was his evident sense of personal loss in parting from one with whom he had been in daily association for two strenuous years. So with the other speeches delivered. Each was touched with genuine emotion and illustrated some one or other of Lord Kitchener's outstanding qualities, Mr. Bonar Law spoke of the sure instinct which caused him to realise at the very outset the gigantic nature of the present War; Mr. Wardle of the absolute straightness which won for him the confidence of the working-classes Sir Ivor Herbert, a personal friend who had occasionally differed with him, of the unflinching courage with which he faced alike Dervishes in the desert or critics in Parliament; and Sir George Reid of the equally conspicuous humanity which he displayed as an administrator in repairing the ravages of War. Through all these varied tributes rang the note of Duty Well Done.
A singularly perverse fate obstructs the efforts of the Government to tax cocoa. As beer is notoriously the beverage which supports the pens of Tory leader-writers, so cocoa is supposed to be the appropriate stimulus of Liberal nibs. Until the War it got off remarkably cheaply, as compared with its rival, tea, being only taxed 1d. a pound. Mr. Lloyd George dared add no more than a halfpenny to the impost, but Mr. McKenna with sublime courage proposed to make the tax a round sixpence.