at the
far end of Whitehall. It evoked an admirable reply from Lord LYTTON, who,
though not exactly a typical British tar in appearance, has evidently
absorbed a full measure of the sea-spirit. Necessarily reticent as to the
exact nature of the steps that are being taken to deal with the
sea-highwaymen, he made the comforting announcement that already we had
achieved very considerable success. This was endorsed by Lord CURZON, who
revealed the interesting fact that he too is now a member of the Board of
Admiralty, and was able to state that, after two years of "frightfulness,"
the British mercantile marine was only a small fraction below its tonnage
at the commencement.

The British revolution goes on apace. The Game Laws, over which so many
Parliamentary battles have been fought, were swept away in a moment this
afternoon when Captain BATHURST announced in his usual level tones that
British farmers would in future be allowed to destroy pheasants with as
little compunction as if they were rabbits, and with no regard to the
sacredness of close-time.

After this momentous announcement, which transforms (subject to the opinion
of the law-officers) every tenant-farmer into a pheasant-proprietor,
Members took a little time to recover their breath. But some of them were
soon hard at work again heckling the Government over the multiplication of
new departments and secretariats. Mr. SWIFT MACNEILL, whose reverence for
the Constitution (save in so far as it applies to Ireland) knows no bounds,
could hardly contain his fury at the setting up of a War Cabinet--"a body
utterly unknown to the law"--and the inclusion therein of Ministers without
portfolios but with salaries.

[Illustration: THE GREAT PUSH. CONGESTION ON THE TREASURY BENCH.]

He received a certain amount of rather gingerly support from Mr. RUNCIMAN
and Mr. SAMUEL, who had evidently not forgotten what happened to Mr.
MCKENNA yesterday. Mr. SAMUEL was a distinguished Member of a Government
under which both the Ministry and the bureaucracy were swollen in
peace-time to unprecedented size; but that did not prevent him from
complaining that under the present _regime_ the Administration had been
further magnified until, if all its members, including Under-Secretaries,
were present, they would fill not one but three Treasury Benches. Already
it is a much-congested district at Question-time and is the daily scene of
a Great Push.

If underlying these criticisms there was