Mr. WILL THORNE considers that compulsory rationing ought to be postponed until the menus at the hotels and clubs are cut down to two courses. Somebody ought to invite Mr. THORNE, who from his appearance I should judge to have a healthy appetite, to partake of one of these (alleged) Gargantuan feasts and see what he thinks of it. His comment would probably be, "Can't we go and have a steak somewhere?"
When is a leaflet not a leaflet? "When it is an election address," says Sir GEORGE CAVE. At the same time he warned Mr. KING that if he thought to get round the new regulations by embodying his peculiar views in the form of electioneering literature he might still collide with "Dora." The warning was surely superfluous. The last thing any Pacifist M.P. wishes to do is to submit himself to the judgment of his constituents.
Tuesday, November 27th.—Mr. MACPHERSON'S statement that officers with the Expeditionary Force are supplied with whisky at prices varying from 3s. 6d. to 6s. a bottle may have horrified the teetotalers, but has intensified the patriotic desire of some of our Volunteers to share the hardships of these gallant fellows in the trenches.
There was another long-drawn-out duel between Mr. HOUSTON and Sir LEO CHIOZZA MONEY on the subject of shipping freights. The House always enjoys these encounters, although the opponents, like the toy "wrestlers" of our youth, never get much "forrader." The Member for West Toxteth has probably forgotten more about the shipping trade than his opponent ever knew. But for all that Sir LEO keeps his end up, though his assertion that the consumer would not benefit if the Government charged "Blue-book rates" for ordinary cargo does not convince everybody. But then everybody does not understand Blue-books.
Wednesday, November 28th.—The Peers were surprised to hear from Lord COURTNEY that he was not of the creed of the conscientious objector. They had been under the impression that his public career had been one long orgie of conscientious objection to everything that did not emanate from his own capacious brain. Even his hat and his waistcoat proclaim his defiance of conventional opinion.
For weeks past the House of Commons has been invited to believe that German "pill-boxes" were composed of British cement; and the case seemed clear when a British officer wrote from Flanders the other day that he had discovered in the German lines a label plainly marked "Artificial Portland." Members were relieved to learn that the label came from a Belgian factory taken over by the Germans. "If those pill-boxes had really been made of our cement," said a Medway representative, "we should be hammering at them still."
Thursday, November 29th.—Question-time would be much more amusing if Ministers and Members were more accomplished in the art of repartee. A few are quick enough. When Mr. LEES SMITH complained that one of his statements had been described by the FOREIGN SECRETARY as a mare's nest Lord ROBERT CECIL swiftly replied that he did not remember the incident, but had no doubt that if his right hon. friend used the term it was justified.
Under the Redistribution scheme as arranged by the Boundary Commissioners the name West Birmingham would have disappeared from the roll of constituencies. In graceful tribute to the memory of JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN the House unanimously agreed to its reinstatement. It also changed the name of the Woodstock division to the Banbury division; but the idea that this was done as a compliment to the junior Member for the City of London is, I am told, erroneous.