atronage of the FOOD-CONTROLLER.

* * * * *

THE FOOD PROBLEM IN PARIS.

The cost of living in the vicinity of the Peace Conference has been
enormously exaggerated. Likewise the difficulty of reorganizing Europe
on a truly ethnic basis. By combining the two questions I have found
them immensely simplified, and I have been in Paris only three days.

My meaning will be clearly illustrated by the record of a single day's
experience--with the representative of the Dodopeloponnesians for
_dejeuner_ and the delegate of the Pan-Deuteronomaniads for dinner.

I made the acquaintance of the first in the lift. On the way down
it came out that I was _journaliste_ assisting at the Conference of
the Peace, whereupon the other introduced himself as secretary of
the Dodopeloponnesian delegation and eager for the pleasure of
entertaining me at _dejeuner_.

Nothing international arose in connection with the _hors d'oeuvres_.
It was between the soup and the fish that my host inquired whether
I had yet found time to look into the just claim of the
Dodopeloponnesian people to the neighbouring island of Funicula.

"You mean," I said, "on the ground that the island of Funicula was
brought under the Dodopeloponnesian sceptre on September 11th, 1405,
by Blagoslav the Splay-fingered, from whom it was wrested on February
3rd, 1406, by the Seljuks?"

"Precisely," he said. "But also because the people of Funicula are
originally of Dodopeloponnesian stock."

"Yet they speak the language of Pan-Deuteronomania," I said.

"A debased dialect," he said, "foisted upon them by a remission of
ten per cent. in taxes for every hundred words of the lingo learned
by heart, with double votes for irregular verbs."

The _entree_, something with eggs and jelly, was excellent.

"Far be it from me to deny," I said, "the fact that Funicula is by
right a part of the inheritance of the Octo-syllabarians"--and I bowed
gracefully to my host, who raised his glass in return--"and I agree
in advance with every argument you put forward in favour of a restored
Sesquicentennial commonwealth by bringing together the scattered
members of the Duodecimal race from all over the world. In fact," I
added as the waiter poured out the champagne, "it seems to me that
in addition to the Island of Funicula there properly belongs, in the
realm of your Greater Anti-Vivisectoria, the adjacent promontory,
geyser and natural bridge of Pneumobronchia,