His initial mistake was not realising in time that, as Mr. ASQUITH put it, a man cannot permanently divide himself into watertight compartments.  As member of the War Cabinet and Secretary of the Labour Party, he seems to have resembled one of those twin salad bottles from which oil and vinegar can be dispensed alternately but not together.  The attempt to combine the two functions could only end, as it began, in a double fiasco.

[Illustration:  THE DOUBLE FIASCO.

MR. HENDERSON.]

It is fortunate for the Ministry of Munitions that it possesses a spokesman so bland and imperturbable as Sir WORTHINGTON EVANS.  In successive answers he informed the House that near Birmingham the Ministry was evicting 130 allotment holders on the eve of their harvest, in order to build a new factory; and that simultaneously it was abandoning in the West of England the site of another gigantic factory, on which a cool million had already been spent.  Coming from almost any other Minister this amazing example of how not to do it would have raised a storm of supplemental inquiries, if not a motion for the adjournment.  But the House accepted Sir WORTHINGTON’S calm and matter-of-fact narration as quietly as if it were the last word in efficiency and coordination.

I was a little premature last week in assuming that Mr. MACCALLUM SCOTT had been silenced by his appointment as Mr. CHURCHILL’S private secretary.  A long question to the Board of Trade, on the subject of horse-hides, followed by a series of supplementaries delivered with his customary emphasis, showed that he is not yet resigned to his muzzle.  He is not, however, entirely oblivious of the customary etiquette in this matter, for he recited his catechism from the third bench behind Ministers, and only when it was over descended to the second bench, where private secretaries most do congregate.

Tuesday, August 14th.-Mr. KING has a legitimate grievance against the Government spokesmen.  Two Nationalist Members having been allowed to go to the United States to collect funds for their party, he asked yesterday whether he too would be permitted to proceed abroad on a similar mission.  Mr. BONAR LAW, with his habitual courtesy, replied that he, personally, would not offer any objection.  But this afternoon, on putting an almost identical question to Lord ROBERT CECIL, Mr. KING was informed, with a touch of brusquerie, that “there are some people to whom we should not think of granting a passport.”  He cannot reconcile these replies, which seem to him to afford convincing proof that the Government does not know its own mind.

The Ministry of Munitions, In order to cater for the spiritual needs of the new population at Gretna, has simultaneously provided sites for the Church of Scotland, the Church of England, the Roman Catholics and the Congregationalists.  The local blacksmith is said to be aggrieved by all this ecclesiastical rivalry.