House into a Trappist monastery, where Ministers alone might talk
and Members must obey; at the next he was reminding the House, on a
proposal to raise the age of voters, that a great many of the persons
who took part in the massacre of St. Bartholomew were under twenty-two
years of age. But though Members listened and laughed they refused,
for the most part, to vote with him. The Bill came almost unscathed
through the first day of its ordeal in Committee.

_Thursday, June 7th_.--If all the hundred and sixty-eight Questions
on the Order Paper had been fully answered the German Government would
have learned quite a number of things that it is most anxious to know,
for the Pacifist group were full of curiosity regarding the war-aims
of the Allies. Several of the most searching inquiries had to be
met by such discouraging _formulae_ as "I have nothing to add to my
previous reply," or "The matter is still under consideration."

Mr. SNOWDEN, however, learned from the HOME SECRETARY that the
Government, the House and the Country were in full sympathy with
the war-policy laid down by the French Government, and that we were
prepared to go on fighting until it was achieved. Here is something
for his colleagues to tell the Stockholm Conference, if they can get
there.

For some occult reason the word "cheese" always excites Parliamentary
merriment. Mr. GEORGE ROBERTS'S announcement that the Board of Trade
had made arrangements by which a quantity of this commodity would
be available for public use next week was greeted with the customary
laughter. Upon Army requirements, he added, would depend the quantity
to be "released." Colonel YATE was perturbed by this Gorgonzolaesque
phrase, and anxiously inquired to what species of cheese it referred.

* * * * *

[Illustration: THE COMFORTER.

_Lance-Corporal_ (_in charge of footsore Tommy who has fallen out on
the march_). "YOU'VE NOTHING TO GROUSE ABOUT. YOU'RE GETTIN' YOUR
OWN BACK FROM THE GOVERNMENT. AIN'T YOU WEARIN' OUT THEIR BLINKIN'
BOOTS?"]

* * * * *

CAUTIONARY TALES FOR THE ARMY.

III.

(_Private Whidden, who ate his Iron Rations and came to an untimely
end_.)

Private Tom Whidden had a passion
For eating of his iron ration--
A thing, you know, which isn't _done_
(Except, just now and then, for fun),
Because there is a rule about it
And decent people rarely flout it.
But Tom was greed