[Illustration:  “Can’t we go and have a steak somewhere?” Mr. WILL THORNE.]

Where Russia is concerned Mr. BALFOUR declines to be included among the prophets; all he knows is that that unhappy country has not yet evolved a Government with which he can negotiate.  He was more explicit regarding the German tale of a Privy Council in 1913, presided over by the KING, at which Mr. ASQUITH and Lord KITCHENER conspired with Sir EDWARD GREY and Lord MORLEY (whose “Reminiscences” are strangely silent on the subject) to declare war upon Germany.  Who after this shall dare to say that the Germans have no imagination?

Mr. WILL THORNE considers that compulsory rationing ought to be postponed until the menus at the hotels and clubs are cut down to two courses.  Somebody ought to invite Mr. THORNE, who from his appearance I should judge to have a healthy appetite, to partake of one of these (alleged) Gargantuan feasts and see what he thinks of it.  His comment would probably be, “Can’t we go and have a steak somewhere?”

When is a leaflet not a leaflet?  “When it is an election address,” says Sir GEORGE CAVE.  At the same time he warned Mr. KING that if he thought to get round the new regulations by embodying his peculiar views in the form of electioneering literature he might still collide with “Dora.”  The warning was surely superfluous.  The last thing any Pacifist M.P. wishes to do is to submit himself to the judgment of his constituents.

Tuesday, November 27th.—­Mr. MACPHERSON’S statement that officers with the Expeditionary Force are supplied with whisky at prices varying from 3s. 6d. to 6s. a bottle may have horrified the teetotalers, but has intensified the patriotic desire of some of our Volunteers to share the hardships of these gallant fellows in the trenches.

There was another long-drawn-out duel between Mr. HOUSTON and Sir LEO CHIOZZA MONEY on the subject of shipping freights.  The House always enjoys these encounters, although the opponents, like the toy “wrestlers” of our youth, never get much “forrader.”  The Member for West Toxteth has probably forgotten more about the shipping trade than his opponent ever knew.  But for all that Sir LEO keeps his end up, though his assertion that the consumer would not benefit if the Government charged “Blue-book rates” for ordinary cargo does not convince everybody.  But then everybody does not understand Blue-books.

[Illustration:  “Sir Leo keeps his end up.”  MR. HOUSTON.  SIR LEO CHIOZZA MONEY.]

Wednesday, November 28th.—­The Peers were surprised to hear from Lord COURTNEY that he was not of the creed of the conscientious objector.  They had been under the impression that his public career had been one long orgie of conscientious objection to everything that did not emanate from his own capacious brain.  Even his hat and his waistcoat proclaim his defiance of conventional opinion.