by an
army of youthful workpeople had been subsequently removed.

Any gloom engendered by the fore-going announcement was quickly dissipated
by Mr. BONAR LAW, who read a telegram from General MAUDE, announcing the
fall of Kut-el-Amara.

The rest of the afternoon was chiefly occupied by a further combat over the
merits of Lord FISHER. Although, as Dr. MACNAMARA subsequently remarked,
"this is not the time for fighting battles along the Whitehall front," I am
afraid the House thoroughly enjoyed Sir HEDWORTH MEUX'S discursive account
of his relations with the late FIRST SEA LORD, who really seems to be quite
a forgiving person. At least it is not everybody who, after being greeted
at a garden-party with "Come here, you wicked old sinner," would afterwards
invite his accuser to lunch at the Ritz.

In the first statement of policy made by Mr. LLOYD GEORGE after his
appointment as Prime Minister he said that the primary step towards a
settlement of an age-long Irish trouble would be the removal of the
suspicion of Irishmen by Irishmen. Mr. DILLON'S notion of contributing to
that desirable end is to accuse Sir BRYAN MAHON, who has had to deport
certain recidivist Sinn Feiners, of being the tool of a Dublin Castle gang.
Not, of course, that Mr. DILLON is in sympathy with Sinn Feiners; on the
contrary he dislikes them so much that he would like to keep St. George's
Channel between them and himself. But by his own speeches he has hypnotized
himself into the belief that everything done by the British Government in
Ireland must have a corrupt motive. His colleague from West Belfast is not
much wiser, to judge by the tone of his speech to-night; and I think Mr.
DUKE, who is doing his best to reconcile the irreconcilable, must have been
tempted to adapt one of MR. DILLON'S phrases and to say that Ireland was
between the DEVLIN and the deep sea.

_Tuesday, February 27._--The capture of Kut has had an exhilarating effect
upon Lord CREWE. Not long ago he was warning us against excessive
jubilation over the British advance in that region. Now he justified his
title by coming out as a regular _Chanticleer_, and invited Lord CURZON to
tell the assembled Peers that we might be confident of regaining
predominance in the whole of Mesopotamia.

[Illustration: LORD BUCKMASTER'S DREAM OF A BRIGHTENED HOUSE OF LORDS.]

In these times the Lords can refuse nothing to the Ladies. In moving the
second reading of a Bill to enable women to become