we knew she couldn’t pay.  It would have saved him a great deal of trouble if at the General Election the Government spokesmen had insisted as much upon the second half of the policy as they did on the first.  Earnest appeals for economy were made from the Treasury Bench on the occasion of the debate on the Civil Service Estimates, now swollen to five times their pre-war magnitude, and were heartily applauded by the House.  To show how thoroughly they had gone home, Mr. Adamson, the Labour Leader, immediately pressed for an increase in the salaries of Members of Parliament.

[Illustration: 

OVERWEIGHTED

PRESIDENT WILSON:  “Here’s your olive branch.  Now get busy.”

DOVE OF PEACE:  “Of course, I want to please everybody, but isn’t this a bit thick?”]

[Illustration:  HOW TO BRIGHTEN THE PERIOD OF REACTION

MOTHER (to son who has fought on most of the Fronts):  “Don’t you know what to do with yourself, George?  Why don’t you ’ave a walk down the road, dear?”

FATHER:  “Ah, ‘e ain’t seen the corner where they pulled down Simmondses’ fish-shop, ’as ’e.  Ma?”]

On the Rhine the efforts of our army of occupation to present the stern and forbidding air supposed to mark our dealings with the inhabitants were proving a lamentable failure.  You can’t produce a really good imitation of a Hun without lots of practice.  Gloating is entirely foreign to the nature of Thomas Atkins, and he could not pass a child yelling in the gutter without stooping to comfort it.  At home his education was proceeding on different lines.  The period of reaction had set in, and unwonted exertions were necessary to stimulate his interest.  Such artless devices were, however, preferable to the pastime, already fashionable in more exalted circles, of kicking a total stranger round the room to the accompaniment of cymbals, a motor siren, and a frying pan.

After a month of madness it was not to be wondered at that we should have a month of muzzling, though the enforcement of the order might have been profitably extended from dogs to journalists.  The secrecy maintained by the Big Four—­a phrase invented by America—­the conflict of the idealists with the realists, and the temporary break-away of the Italian wrestler, Orlando, were bound to excite comment.  But a shattered world could not be rebuilt in a day, with Bolshevist wolves prowling about the Temple of Peace, and the Dove at sea between the Ark and Archangel.  The Covenant of the League of Nations, though in a diluted form, had at last taken shape, the Peace Machine had got a move on, and the Premier’s spirited, if not very dignified, retaliation on the newspaper snipers led to an abatement of unnecessary hostilities, though the pastime of shooting policemen with comparative impunity still flourished in Ireland, and the numbers and cost of our “army of inoccupation” still continued to increase.  Innumerable queries were made in Parliament on the subject of the unemployment dole, but the announcement that the Admiralty did not propose to perpetuate the title “Grand Fleet” for the principal squadron of His Majesty’s Navy passed without comment.  The Grand Fleet is now a part of the History that it did so much to make.