ernment has done
something to please Mr. PEMBERTON-BILLING. The hon. Member, who has
always affected the "soft shirts that Sister Susie sews," is flattered
to think that he has set a fashion which must now become universal.
When Captain BATHURST, falling into his humour, assured him that even
BEAU BRUMMEL would accept the position with patriotic resignation,
Mr. BILLING felt that he had found his true vocation as an arbiter of
taste.

In moving a Vote of Credit for the unexampled sum of five hundred
millions, Mr. BONAR LAW apologised for a slight error in his Budget
statement. He had then estimated the expenditure of the country at
five and a half millions a day. Owing to fortuitous circumstances, the
amount for the first thirty-five days of the financial year had turned
out to be seven and a half millions a day. Mr. MCKENNA, conscious
of some similar lapses in calculation during his own time at the
Exchequer, handsomely condoned the mistake. Still one felt that
it strengthened the stentorian plea for economy made by Mr. J.A.R.
MARRIOTT in a maiden speech that would perhaps have been better if
it had not been quite so good. The House is accustomed to a little
hesitation in its novices and does not like to be lectured even by an
Oxford don.

[Illustration: THE SECRET SESSION.

_WINSTON._ "NO REPORT OF SPEECHES. IT HARDLY SEEMS WORTH WHILE."]

The debate produced a number of speeches more suitable for the Secret
Session that was to follow. Our enemies will surely be heartened when
they read the criticisms passed by Mr. GEORGE LAMBERT, an ex-Minister
of the Crown, upon our Naval policy, and by Mr. DILLON on the Salonika
Expedition; and they will not understand that the one is dominated
by the belief that no Board of Admiralty that does not include Lord
FISHER can possibly be efficient; and that the other is congenitally
unable to believe anything good of British administration in Ireland
or elsewhere.

For once Mr. BONAR LAW took the gloves off to Mr. DILLON, and told him
plainly that more attention would be paid to his criticism if he was
himself doing something to help in the prosecution of the War.

_Thursday, May 10th_.--I gather from Mr. SPEAKER'S report of the
Secret Session that nothing sensational was revealed. The PRIME
MINISTER'S "encouraging account of the methods adopted to meet the
submarine attack" was not much more explicit, I infer, than the speech
which Lord CURZON was making simultaneously, _urbi