'CONTEMPTIBLE.'"]

* * * * *

ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

_Tuesday, June 5th_.--In listless and dejected mood the House
of Commons reassembled after its all-too-brief recess. Members
collectively missed their MARK, for Colonel LOCKWOOD, the only popular
Food Controller in history, had been summoned upstairs and left the
Kitchen Committee to its fate. The shower of Privy Councillorships,
baronetcies and knighthoods which had simultaneously descended upon
the faithful Commons afforded little compensation for this irreparable
loss; and even the sight of the ATTORNEY-GENERAL'S immaculate spats
appearing over the edge of the Table was insufficient to dispel the
prevailing gloom.

Mr. PEMBERTON-BILLING made a gallant effort to galvanize his
colleagues into life. Remembering that it was an air-raid that got
him into the House--some people will never forgive the Germans for
this--he seldom allows a similar incident to pass without endeavouring
to improve the occasion. As his policy of "two bombs to one" failed to
intrigue Mr. BONAR LAW he sought to move the adjournment, but when the
Question was put only five Members, instead of the necessary forty,
rose in its support.

If Sir H. DALZIEL has his way, and the consumer is allowed to purchase
his sugar unrefined, the British breakfast will become a most exciting
meal. Lice, beetles and, on one occasion, a live lizard have been
found in the bags arriving from Cuba. Even with meat at its present
price, Captain BATHURST doubts whether such additions to our dietary
would be really welcome.

In the pre-historic times before August, 1914, the POSTMASTER-GENERAL
was wont to give on the Vote for his department a long and discursive
account of its multifarious activities, and to enliven the figures
with anecdotes and even with jokes. Mr. ILLINGWORTH knows a better
way. With deliberate monotony he reeled off his statistics to a
steadily diminishing audience. Only once did he evoke a sign of
animation. He has abolished the absurd rule that the person presenting
a five-pound note at a post-office should be required to endorse it;
and, in defending this momentous change, he remarked that he himself
had endorsed many such notes, "but never with my own name." For a
moment Members were startled by this cynical admission of something
which seemed to their half-awakened intelligence very like a
confession of forgery. But the POSTMASTER-GENERAL soon put them to