tch. It accounts for the dexterity
invariably displayed by Parliament when new enactments are placed on
the Statute-Book, for the simplicity of the language in which they are
couched, and for that minimum of employment to the legal profession to
which these specimens of masterly legislation subsequently give rise.
The Eminent K.C. is, by the way, reputed to be a somewhat expensive
luxury when you avail yourself of his services in your civil capacity,
but he must be well worth it. A man who can be so mystifying when he
proposes to be lucid must prove a priceless asset to his client when
he undertakes the task of bamboozling a dozen unhappy countrymen
penned in a box. It is hard to picture to yourself this impressive
figure giggling sycophantically at the pleasantries of a humorous
judge. But he must have conformed to convention in this matter in the
past, for how otherwise could he now be an Eminent K.C.?

During many months of acute national emergency, while the war was
settling into its groove, there was no more zealous, no more
persevering, and no more ineffectual subject of the King than the
Self-Appointed Spy-Catcher. You never know what ferocity means until
you have been approached by a titled lady who has persuaded herself
that she is on the track of a German spy. We Britons are given to
boasting of our grit in adversity and of our inability to realize when
we are beaten. In no class of the community were these national traits
more conspicuous in the early days of the war than in the ranks of the
amateur spy-catching fraternity and sisterhood--for the amateur
spy-catcher never caught a spy. Only after months of disappointment
and failure did these self-appointed protectors of their country begin
to abandon a task which they had taken up with enthusiastic fervour,
and which they had prosecuted with unfaltering resolution. Although it
was at the hands of the despised professional that enemy agents were
again and again brought to face the firing party in the Tower ditch,
the amateurs entertained, and perhaps still entertain, a profound
contempt for the official method. One fair member of the body, indeed,
so far forgot herself as to write in a fit of exasperation to say that
we must--the whole boiling of us--be in league with the enemy, and
that we ought to be "intered."

They were in their element when, after the fall of Maubeuge, it
transpired that the Germans had gun-platforms in certain factories
situated withi