rds and Commons to our
sailors and soldiers and all the other gallant folk who are helping us to
win the War. On the strength of this capacity for rising to the occasion
one may pass over the many sittings at which a small minority of
Pacificists and irrelevant inquisitors have dragged the House down to the
depths of ineptitude or worse. In the debate on the Air Force in Committee,
one member, if we count speeches and interruptions, addressed the House
exactly one hundred times, and it is worthy of note that his last words
were: "This is what you call muzzling the House of Commons." If we were
to believe some critics, the British Navy is directed by a set of
doddering old gentlemen who are afraid to let it go at the Germans, and
cannot even safeguard it from attack. The truth, as expounded by the
First Lord, Sir Eric Geddes, in his maiden speech, is quite different.
Despite the Jeremiads of superannuated sailors and political longshoremen,
the Admiralty is not going to Davy Jones's locker, but under its present
chiefs, who have, with very few exceptions, seen service in this War,
maintains and supplements its glorious record.

Save for an occasional game of "tip and run," as with the North Sea convoy,
enemy vessels have disappeared on the surface of the ocean; and the long
arm of the British Navy is now stretching down into the depths and up into
the skies in successful pursuit of them. If the nation hardly realises what
it owes to the men of the Fleet and their splendid comrades of the
Auxiliary Services, it is because this work is done with such thoroughness
and so little fuss, and, as Mr. Asquith put it, "in the twilight and not in
the limelight."

[ILLUSTRATION:

AUNT MARIA: "Do you know I once actually saw the Kaiser riding through the
streets of London as bold as brass. If I'd known then what I know now I'd
have told a policeman."]

The general sense of the community is now practically agreed that
compulsory rationing must come, and the sooner the better. Lord Rhondda is
still hopeful that John Bull will tighten his own belt and save him the
trouble. But if we fail, the machinery for compulsion is all ready.

Reuter reports that a British prisoner has been sentenced to a year's
imprisonment for calling the Germans "Huns." On the Western front Tommy
usually calls them "Allymans," "Jerry," or "Fritz." But even if this
prisoner did use the word he cannot be blamed. The choice was the Kaiser's
when, as Attila's u