Only on one point did the Conference fail to agree, and that was in regard to Women’s Suffrage.  But, after Mr. ASQUITH’S handsome admission that, by their splendid services in the War, women had worked out their own electoral salvation, even that topic seemed to have lost most of its provocative quality; and there is a general desire to forget what the late PRIME MINISTER described as a detestable campaign and bury the hatchet and all the other weapons employed in it.

[Illustration:  “CO-ORDINATION.”

Foreign Office.        Admiralty
LORD ROBERT CECIL.        SIR EDWARD CARSON]

Do you recall the distraught lady in Ruddigore, who was always charmed into silence by the mystic word “Basingstoke”?  More than once during Mr. CLAVELL SALTER’S over-elaborated speech I hoped that he would remember his constituency and take the hint.  But he went on and on, occasionally dropping into a vein of sentiment and working it so hard that I quite expected to hear him say, “Gentlemen of the Jury” instead of “Mr. Speaker.”  When it came to the division, however, he only carried some three-score stalwarts into the Lobby, and the House decided by a majority of 279 to support the Government’s intention to give immediate effect to the recommendations of the Conference.

Thursday, March 29th.—­Employers in want of agricultural labourers should apply to Lord NEWTON, who has a large selection of interned Austrians, Hungarians and Turks, and undertakes to supply an alien “almost by return of post.”  The Turk is specially recommended, as, even if he fails to give complete satisfaction, the farmer can relieve the monotony of an arduous existence by “sitting on the Ottoman.”

Brave man as he is, the FOOD CONTROLLER is not prepared to prohibit entirely the manufacture of cakes and confectionery.  But he is preparing to do something hardly less daring, namely, to standardize the types that may be sold.

An old spelling-book used to tell us that “It is agreeable to watch the unparalleled embarrassment of a harassed pedlar when gauging the symmetry of a peeled pear.”  Lord DEVONPORT, occupied in deciding on the exact architecture and decoration of the Bath bun (official sealed pattern), would make a companion picture.

The unwillingness of some young Scottish Members to volunteer for National Service is now explained.  It seems that by an unpardonable oversight the appeals of the DIRECTOR-GENERAL, as published in the Scottish newspapers, were addressed “to the men of England.”  The wording has now been altered—­ not too late, I trust, for the country to obtain the valuable assistance of Messrs. PRINGLE and HOGGE.

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[Illustration:  The New-comer. “MY VILLAGE, I THINK?”

The One in Possession. “BOBBY, OLD THING; I TOOK IT HALF-AN-HOUR AGO.”]

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