Day by day we read long lists of merchant vessels sunk by U-boats, and while the Admiralty’s reticence on the progress of the anti-submarine campaign is legitimate and necessary, the withholding of statistics of new construction does not make for optimism.  Victory will be ours, but not without effort.  The great crisis of the War is not passed.  That has been the burden of all the speeches at the opening of Parliament from the King’s downward.

Lord Curzon, who declared that we were now approaching “the supreme and terrible climax of the War,” has spoken of the late Duke of Norfolk as a man “diffident about powers which were in excess of the ordinary.”  Is not that true of the British race as a whole?  Only now, under the stress of a long-drawn-out conflict, is it discovering the variety and strength of its latent forces.  The tide is turning rapidly in Mesopotamia.  General Maude, who never failed to inspire the men under his command on the Western front with a fine offensive spirit, has already justified his appointment by capturing Kut, and starting on a great drive towards Baghdad.

[Illustration:  THE LAST THROW]

On the Salonika front, to quote from one of Mr. Punch’s ever-increasing staff of correspondents, “all our prospects are pleasing and only Bulgar vile.”  On the Western front the British have taken Grandcourt, and our “Mudlarks,” encamped on an ocean of ooze, preserve a miraculous equanimity in spite of the attention of rats and cockroaches and the vagaries of the transport mule.

[Illustration: 

HEAD OF GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT (in his private room in recently commandeered hotel):  “Boy!  Bring some more coal!”]

At home the commandeering of hotels to house the new Ministries proceeds apace, and a request from an inquiring peer for a comprehensive return of all the buildings requisitioned and the staffs employed has been declined on the ground that to provide it would put too great a strain on officials engaged on work essential to winning the War.

The criticisms on the late Cabinet for its bloated size have certainly not led to any improvement in this respect, and one of the late Ministers has complained that the Administration has been further magnified until, if all its members, including under-secretaries, were present, they would fill not one but three Treasury Benches.  Already this is a much congested district at question-time and the daily scene of a great push.  Up to the present there are, however, only thirty-three actual Ministers of the Crown, and their salaries only amount to the trifle of L133,000.  The setting up of a War Cabinet, “a body utterly unknown to the law,” has excited the resentment of Mr. Swift MacNeill, whose reverence for the Constitution (save in so far as it applies to Ireland) knows no bounds; and Mr. Lynch has expressed the view that it would be a good idea if Ireland were specially represented at the Peace Conference, in order that her delegates might assert her right to self-government.