eet unrationed revelry" were still to come,
and _Dulce Domum_ could not yet be sung in every sense, February
brought us some relief in the demobilisation of the pivotal pig. And the
decision to hold a National Industrial Conference was of encouraging augury
for the settlement of industrial strife on the basis of a full inquiry and
frank statement of facts. In other walks of life reticence still has its
charms, and even in February people had begun to ask who the General was
who had threatened not to write a book about the War.

March, the mad month, remained true to type. Even Mr. Punch found it hard
to preserve his equanimity:

O Month, before your final moon is set
Much may have happened--anything, in fact;
More than in any March that I have met,
(Last year excepted) fearful nerves are racked;
Anarchy does with Russia what it likes;
Paris is put conundrums very knotty;
And here in England, with its talk of strikes,
Men, like your own March hares, seem going dotty.

Abroad the ex-Kaiser was very busy sawing trees, possibly owing to an
hallucination that they were German Generals.

[Illustration:

THE EASTER OFFERING

MR. LLOYD GEORGE (fresh from Paris): "I don't say it's a perfect egg, but
parts of it, as the saying is, are excellent."]

At home the Government decided to release such of the Sinn Fein prisoners
as had not already saved them the trouble, and a Coal Industry Commission
was appointed on which no representative of the general public was invited
to sit--that is to say, the patient, much enduring consumer, not the public
which has all along sought to discount peace by premature whooping,
jubilating, and Jazzing. For the Dove of Peace, though in strict training,
seemed in danger of collapsing under the weight of the League of Nations'
olive bough, to say nothing of other perils, notably the Bolshy-bird, a
most obscene brand of vulture.

Mr. Wilson was once more on the Atlantic, and Mr. Lloyd George, distracted
between his duties in Paris and the demands of Labour, recalled Sir Boyle
Roche's bird, or the circus performer riding two horses at once. In
Parliament the interpretation of election pledges occupied a good deal of
time, and Mr. Bonar Law twice declared the policy of the Government in
regard to indemnities as being to demand the largest amount that Germany
could pay, but not to demand what we knew she couldn't pay. It would have
saved him a great deal of trouble if at