THE FORGOTTEN CAUSE.
Man in the Street. "WELL, IF THE OTHER ALLIES SAY SO TOO, THERE MUST BE SOMETHING IN IT. BUT I ALWAYS UNDERSTOOD THE GOVERNMENT WAS TO BLAME FOR EVERYTHING."
ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.
Monday, March 8th.—I should hesitate to call Sir Hamar Greenwood the Pooh-Bah of the Ministry, though he has something of that worthy's sublime self-confidence and his capacity for taking any number of posts. The House, which knows him both as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department of the Board of Trade, was surprised to hear him answering questions relating to the nascent oil-wells in the United Kingdom, and to learn that he had become "Minister for Petroleum Affairs." But there the likeness ceases to be exact. Pooh Bah's interest was in palm-oil.
Mr. Neal caddies for Sir Eric Geddes.
A few days ago the Chancellor of the Exchequer facetiously compared the critics of the Government to the poet of Rejected Addresses who declared that it was Buonaparte "who makes the quartern loaf and Luddites rise." Out of the Government's own mouth the critics are now, at any rate, partially justified, for the Prime Minister announced that the bread subsidy was to be halved, and that on and after April 12th the quartern loaf would rise—he did not quite know where.