ed, "Would
it not be a good idea to call them the Laughing Stock?" Mr. HOGGE is not
one of the chartered jesters of the House so his _jeu d'esprit_ just
caused "a laugh," as the reporters say, and nothing more.

On the Third Beading of the Consolidated Fund Bill Sir JOHN SIMON
renewed his attack upon the Military Service Bill. The tribunals, he
declared, were disregarding the appeal of the widow's only son; the
Yellow Form, of which the late Home Secretary takes the same jaundiced
view as he did of the Yellow Press, was being sent out indiscriminately
to all whom it did not concern: the War Office had issued a misleading
poster; and everywhere men were being "bluffed" into the Army. He
himself would have been inundated with correspondence if he had not had
the happy inspiration of diverting the flood into Mr. TENNANT's
letter-box. Passionately he called upon the Government not to imitate
Germany's brutality.

Mr. LONG, suave as usual, deprecated Sir JOHN SIMON'S ferocity, reminded
him that all cases of hardship could be considered by the Appeal
Tribunals, and promised to investigate the cases that had been
mentioned. "May I send in my list too?" asked Mr. WATT. But Mr. LONG,
unwilling to share the fate of Mr. TENNANT, suggested that the SECRETARY
FOR SCOTLAND would form a more appropriate dumping-ground for Mr. WATT'S
_dossier_.

After Mr. SNOWDEN, Sir THOMAS WHITTAKER and Mr. LOUGH had reinforced Sir
JOHN SIMON'S case with added instances the Government found an
unexpected champion in Mr. HEALY. He was amazed to hear the late HOME
SECRETARY--"one of the Ministers who made the War"--gloating over the
inefficiency of the War Office at a moment when round Verdun was raging
a battle in which the fate of Paris, and perhaps of London, was
involved. Why had he not imitated the monumental silence of Mr. BURNS?
Instead, he, the suppressor of obscure Irish newspapers, had done more
to injure recruiting than any Connemara editor.

I never expected to live to hear the Bank of England described in the
House of Commons as a useless institution. In Mr. HEALY'S opinion, "The
Old Lady of Threadneedle Street," like the other who lived in a shoe,
has too many children, and her attempt to get 190 of them exempted from
military service moved him in a moment of "vituperative irrelevance," as
Mr. PRINGLE subsequently described it, to say the rudest things about
her financial capacity.

_Wednesday, March 1st._--Sir OWEN PHILLIPS, once L