orrespondent_.]

Now that the Food Controller has got into his stride, the nation has begun
to realise the huge debt it owes to his firmness and organising ability,
and is proportionately concerned to hear of his breakdown from overwork.
The queues have disappeared, supplies are adequate, and there are no
complaints of class-favouritism.

[Illustration: BOBBY (at the conclusion of dinner): "Mother, I don't know
how it is, but I never seem to get that--that--nice sick feeling
nowadays."]

It is remarkable how the British soldier will pick up languages, or at
least learn to interpret them. Only last week an American corporal stopped
a British Sergeant and said: "Say, Steve, can you put me wise where I can
barge into a boiled-shirt biscuit-juggler who would get me some eats?" And
the Sergeant at once directed him to a cafe. The training of the new
armies, to judge by the example depicted by our artist, affords fresh proof
of the saying that love is a _liberal_ education.

The situation on the Parliamentary Front has been fairly quiet. The popular
pastime of asking when the promised Home Rule Bill is to be introduced is
no longer met by suitably varied but invariably evasive replies. The
Government has now frankly admitted that the policy of running Home Rule
and Conscription in double harness has been abandoned, and expects better
things from the new pair: Firm Government and Voluntary Recruiting. But
sceptics are unconvinced that the Government will abandon the leniency
prompted by "the insane view of creating an atmosphere in which something
incomprehensible is to occur."

[Illustration: MISTRESS (as the new troops go by): "Which of them is your
cousin?"

NURSEMAID (unguardedly): "I don't know yet, ma'am."]

The lavish and, in many cases, inexplicable distribution of the Order of
the British Empire bids fair to add a peculiar lustre to the undecorated.
The War has produced no stranger paradox than the case of the gentleman who
within the space of seven days was sentenced to six months' imprisonment
for a breach of the Defence of the Realm regulations and recommended for
the O.B.E. on account of good services to the country. The fact that the
recommendation was withdrawn hardly justified the assumption of a
Pacificist Member that a sentence under the Defence of the Realm Act was
regarded as the higher honour of the two.

There is one thing, however, that war at its worst cannot do. It cannot
make an Englishman fo