cal tenets of the majority of the
Cabinet are such as can never receive anything but bitter hostility from
this publication. We can't help it. There is a gulf fixed, that is how
it comes about. But on the other hand we must not let this view prevent
us--even though, after all, we are guilty of eulogy--from recognising
their sterling worth. They are indispensable to the navigation of the
ship of state. To change the metaphor, we must be content to let the
train be driven by the engine-driver and not insist upon interference by
the dining-car attendant.

We are well aware that we lay ourselves open to the charge ... (Deletion
of the charge to which we lay ourselves open).

Let us then trust the Government, even blindly. Let our motto be the
immortal words in the "Hunting of the Snark": "_They had often, the
Bellman said, saved them from wreck: though none of the sailors knew
how._"

* * * * *

THE HAPPY ERROR.

As a rule I am not one to peer over shoulders and read other people's
letters or papers. But when one is in a queue waiting for one's passport
to be _vised_, and when one has been there for an hour and still seems
no nearer to the promised land, and when it is the second time in the
day that one has been in a queue for the same purpose--once in France
and once in England--why, some little deflection from the narrow path of
perfect propriety may be forgiven.

Moreover in other ways I behaved better than many of my
fellow-travellers, for I stood loyally behind the man in front of me in
my due place, and did not, as others did, insinuate myself from the side
into positions to which, by all the laws of precedence and decency, they
were disentitled. Indeed I even caught myself wondering whether, had I
any preferential opportunities of getting through first, as some Red
Cross and otherwise influential people had, I should make use of them.
To take any advantage of this weary waiting line of suspects, of which I
was one, would have been almost monstrous.

So, standing there all patiently and dejected, moving forward a foot or
so every four or five minutes, no wonder that I found myself reading the
embarkation paper which the gentleman in front of me had filled up and
was holding so legibly before him.

He was tall and solid and calm and French, with a better cut coat than
most Frenchmen, even the aristocrats, trouble about. He was
broad-shouldered and erect, and I was piqued to fin