Manchurian and other exotic beef recently
foisted upon London consumers.

Mr. REMER is one of the most attractive and enterprising of the new
Members. But I am afraid, despite his cheery appearance, that he is
a bit of a pessimist. With Peace believed to be so near, it was
distinctly depressing to find him calling attention to the danger of
a deficiency of pit-props "in any future war," and refusing to be put
off with the usual official answer, "in view of the urgency of the
question."

There are few topics which excite more general interest in the House
than the shortage of whisky. When, in reply to a complaint by Colonel
THORNE that a firm of Scotch distillers had refused to furnish their
customers with adequate supplies, Mr. GEORGE ROBERTS remarked that
he would like to be supplied with "specific cases," he was, no doubt
unconsciously, expressing an almost universal desire.

Before the War, as we learned from Mr. ILLINGWORTH, Government offices
used to send on the average about forty thousand telegrams a month. At
the end of it the number had risen to close on a million. Much of the
increase is due, no doubt, to zeal for the rapid despatch of public
business, but some, one fears, to the natural tendency of dug-outs
(even in Whitehall) to protect themselves with wire-entanglements.

If one were to believe all that the Scottish Members said about
their own country in the debate upon the Housing (Scotland) Bill Dr.
JOHNSON'S gibes would be abundantly justified. Half the population,
according to Sir DONALD MACLEAN, are living in such over-crowded
conditions that the wonder is that any of the children survive to
man's estate, and still more that they retain sufficient energy to run
most of the British Empire. But in the circumstances a certain amount
of exaggeration may be forgiven. When it is a case of touching the
Imperial Exchequer for local advantage the Scot is no whit behind the
Irishman in "making the poor face."

_Tuesday, May 6th_.--The Scottish peers are no less impressed with the
miserable condition of their country, Lord FORTEVIOT declared that in
the Western Hebrides the housing accommodation was no better than the
caves of primitive man. Yet these cave-dwellers furnished some of
the stoutest recruits to the British army. Perhaps it was their early
experience that made them so much at home in the trenches.

Their lordships gave a Second Reading to the Solicitors' Bill,
designed to enable the Incorporat