know whether to
congratulate you or condole with you, but I think it is the latter."

It was an easy guess, but its confirmation took an unusually long time.
Indeed, at one moment it looked as if Mr. BIRRELL would escape the
almost invariable fate of Irish Secretaries, and leave Dublin with his
political reputation enhanced. When he had placed the National
University Act on the Statute-book, thus solving a problem that had
baffled his predecessors since the Union, he might have sung his _Nunc
Dimittis_ in a halo.

Perhaps he was not sufficiently ambitious to demand release; perhaps
none of his colleagues was anxious to take his job; perhaps the
Nationalist leader insisted on keeping him in the silken fetters of
office as a hostage for Home Rule. Anyhow, the opportunity was missed;
and thenceforward Nemesis dogged his track.

Two years ago it seemed that Ulster would be his stumbling-block. The
War saved him from that, but only to bring him down through more
sinister instruments. In his pathetic apology this afternoon he
confessed that he had failed to estimate accurately the strength of the
Sinn Fein movement. He might have been wrong in not suppressing it
before, but his omission to do so was due to a consuming desire to keep
Ireland's front united in face of the common foe.

This frank admission of error would in any case have disarmed hostile
criticism; but its effect was strengthened by the unseemly interjections
with which Mr. GINNELL accompanied it. If the Member for Westmeath is a
sample of the sort of persons with whom the CHIEF SECRETARY had to deal,
no wonder that he failed to understand the lengths to which they would
go.

Mr. REDMOND, obviously disgusted by the pranks of his nominal supporter,
chivalrously shouldered part of the blame that Mr. BIRRELL had taken
upon himself; and even Sir EDWARD CARSON, though a life-long and bitter
opponent of his policy, was ready to admit that he had been
well-intentioned and had done his best.

Later on, when the PRIME MINISTER had introduced the new Military
Service Bill, establishing compulsion for all men married or single,
Colonel CRAIG made a vain appeal to Mr. REDMOND to get the measure
extended to Ireland. Nothing would do more to show the world that the
recent rebellion was only the work of an insignificant section of the
Irish people.

[Illustration: HIS MASTER'S VOICE.

(With acknowledgments to the well-known poster.)

Mr. Lloyd George to Mr. Holt,