The meeting was considering Mr. SMILLIE’S suggestion when our reporter, who had contracted a chill during Mr. BERNARD SHAW’S remarks, took his departure.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Officer (to N.C.O. in charge of Chinese labour party).  “I SUPPOSE THESE CHINKS BLOW THEMSELVES UP SOMETIMES, DON’T THEY?”

Corporal.  “OH, NOTHING TO SPEAK OF, SIR—­NOT NEAR AS MUCH AS THEY USED TO.”]

* * * * *

JOURNALISTIC ENTERPRISE.

    “NEWS BY TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE.

    “To-day is Pancake Day.”—­Daily Mail, March 4.

* * * * *

    “HIGH-CLASS FISH DURING THE LENTEN SEASON.

    “All kinds arrive daily direct from the coast, and prices the
    maximum when possible.”—­Advt. in Provincial Paper.

To judge by our own fishmonger, they always are possible.

* * * * *

From the report of a prosecution for selling eggs above the controlled price: 

    “Mr. ——­, for the defence, contended that the lay mind could
    assume that new-laid eggs laid by the vendor’s fowls were not
    within the scope of the Order.”—­Birmingham Daily Post.

In a poultry case the opinion of the “lay mind” should have been conclusive, but the Bench decided otherwise.

* * * * *

    “When is the State going to help mothers with large families?  If
    the cost of living has increased 100 per cent., then for eight
    persons the increase is 800 per cent.

    “How many mothers with eight in family have received an increase of
    800 per cent. in their income since 1914?—­W.W., London.”—­Daily
    Sketch.

“W.W., London,” should not be allowed to squander his gifts on the daily Press.  We want a statistician like this to tot up the German indemnity.

* * * * *

THE WATCH DOGS.

LXXX.

My Dear Charles,—­You are a lawyer and you ought to know.  Yet to myself, when I compare my profits with those of the Government in this deal, I seem a model of innocence.

Let me refresh your memory of the facts.

In the Spring of 1918 I was dispensing passports to deserving cases in the name of His Majesty’s Government.  In the neutral country where I was doing this there was a very wicked and a very plausible man, whom we will call Mr. Abrahams (he has had so many surnames at one time and another that a new one cannot do him any harm).  Rate of exchange stood at the figure of twenty local francs to the pound sterling, and, as you would put it, other things were equal.