VERDUN, FEBRUARY-MARCH, 1916.
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.