Mr. Punch’s History of the Great War
of the bombardment as Paris can, one wonders if Members would still be encumbering the Order-paper with the vexatious trivialities that now find place there, or emitting what a patriotic Labour Member picturesquely described as "the croakings and bleatings of the fatted lambs who have besmirched their country." Per contra we welcome the optimism of Mr. Asquith in discussing new Votes of Credit, though he reminds us of Micawber calculating his indebtedness for the benefit of Traddles. It will be remembered that when the famous I O U had been handed over, Copperfield remarked, "I am persuaded not only that this was quite the same to Mr. Micawber as paying the money, but that Traddles himself hardly knew the difference until he had had time to think about it." Then we have had the surprising but welcome experience of Mr. Tim Healy championing the Government against Sir John Simon's attack on the Military Service Bill ; and have listened to Lord Montagu of Beaulieu's urgent plea in the Lords for unity of air control, a proposal which Lord Haldane declared could not be adopted without some "violent thinking." Most remarkable of all has been Mr. Churchill's intervention in the debate on the Naval Estimates, his gloomy review of the situation—Mr. Churchill is always a pessimist when out of office—and the marvellous magnanimity of his suggestion that Lord Fisher should be reinstated at the Admiralty, on the ground that his former antagonist was the only possible First Sea Lord. Mr. Balfour dealt so faithfully with these criticisms and suggestions that there seems to be no truth in the report that Mr. Churchill has been asked to join the Government as Minister of Admonitions. A new and coruscating star has swum into our Parliamentary ken in the shape of the Member for Mid-Herts, and astronomers have labelled it "Pegasus π β." When the House of Commons passed the Bill prohibiting duels it ought to have made an exception in favour of its own Members. Nothing would have done more to raise the tone of debate, for offenders against decorum would gradually have eliminated one another. Yet Parliament has its merits, not the least of them being the scope it still affords for hereditary talent. Lord Derby, at the moment the most prominent man on the Home Front after the Premier, is the grandson of the "Rupert of Debate," and the
80
