against our War chiefs.
Meanwhile, the Suffragists have triumphantly surmounted their last obstacle
in the House of Lords, and Votes for Women is now an accomplished fact. But
the Irish Andromeda still awaits her Perseus, gazing wanly at her various
champions in Convention. The Ulsterman's plea for conscription in Ireland
has been rejected after Sir Auckland Geddes had declared that it would be
of no use as a solution of the present difficulty. He did not give his
reasons, but they are believed to be Conventional. Mr. Barnes has described
the Government as "living on the top of a veritable volcano," but, in spite
of the context, the phrase must not be taken to refer to the Minister of
Munitions, who, as everybody knows, cannot be sat upon.

Military experts tell us that this is a "Q" war, meaning thereby that the
Quartermaster-General's department is the one that matters. Naval experts
sometimes drop hints attaching another significance to that twisty letter.
Harassed house-keepers are beginning to think that this is a "queue-war,"
and look to Lord Rhondda to end it. For the moment the elusive rabbit has
scored a point against the Food Controller, but public confidence in his
ability is not shaken. All classes are being drawn together by a communion
of inconvenience. The sporting miner's wife can no longer afford dog
biscuits: "Our dog's got to eat what we eats now." And the pathetic appeal
of the smart fashionable for lump sugar, on the ground that her darling
Fido cannot be expected to catch a spoonful of Demerara from the end of his
nose, leaves the grocer cold. A dairyman charged with selling
unsatisfactory milk has explained to the Bench that his cows were suffering
from shell-shock. He himself is now suffering from shell-out-shock. At
Ramsgate a shopkeeper has exhibited a notice in his window announcing that
"better days are in store." What most people want is butter days.

[Illustration:

ORDERLY SERGEANT: "Lights out, there."

VOICE FROM THE HUT: "It's the moon, Sergint."

ORDERLY SERGEANT: "I don't give a d--- what it is. Put it out!"]

The disquieting activities of the "giddy Gotha" involve drastic enforcement
of the lighting orders, and the moon is still an object of suspicion.
Pessimists and those critics who are never content unless each day brings a
spectacular success, seem to have taken for their motto: "It's not what I
mean, but what I say, that matters." But the moods of the non-combatant are
trul