materially altered the method.  In the attack of January 23 it is supposed that the Head of the Government was aimed at; but most of the shots went wide and hit the Head of our Army in France.  Ministers have not distinguished themselves except by their capacity for “butting-in” and eating their words.  Public opinion has been inflamed rather than enlightened by the discussions on unity of command, and the newspaper campaign directed against our War chiefs.  Meanwhile, the Suffragists have triumphantly surmounted their last obstacle in the House of Lords, and Votes for Women is now an accomplished fact.  But the Irish Andromeda still awaits her Perseus, gazing wanly at her various champions in Convention.  The Ulsterman’s plea for conscription in Ireland has been rejected after Sir Auckland Geddes had declared that it would be of no use as a solution of the present difficulty.  He did not give his reasons, but they are believed to be Conventional.  Mr. Barnes has described the Government as “living on the top of a veritable volcano,” but, in spite of the context, the phrase must not be taken to refer to the Minister of Munitions, who, as everybody knows, cannot be sat upon.

Military experts tell us that this is a “Q” war, meaning thereby that the Quartermaster-General’s department is the one that matters.  Naval experts sometimes drop hints attaching another significance to that twisty letter.  Harassed house-keepers are beginning to think that this is a “queue-war,” and look to Lord Rhondda to end it.  For the moment the elusive rabbit has scored a point against the Food Controller, but public confidence in his ability is not shaken.  All classes are being drawn together by a communion of inconvenience.  The sporting miner’s wife can no longer afford dog biscuits:  “Our dog’s got to eat what we eats now.”  And the pathetic appeal of the smart fashionable for lump sugar, on the ground that her darling Fido cannot be expected to catch a spoonful of Demerara from the end of his nose, leaves the grocer cold.  A dairyman charged with selling unsatisfactory milk has explained to the Bench that his cows were suffering from shell-shock.  He himself is now suffering from shell-out-shock.  At Ramsgate a shopkeeper has exhibited a notice in his window announcing that “better days are in store.”  What most people want is butter days.

[Illustration: 

ORDERLY SERGEANT:  “Lights out, there.”

VOICE FROM THE HUT:  “It’s the moon, Sergint.”

ORDERLY SERGEANT:  “I don’t give a d—–­ what it is.  Put it out!”]

The disquieting activities of the “giddy Gotha” involve drastic enforcement of the lighting orders, and the moon is still an object of suspicion.  Pessimists and those critics who are never content unless each day brings a spectacular success, seem to have taken for their motto:  “It’s not what I mean, but what I say, that matters.”  But the moods of the non-combatant are truly chameleonic.  Civilians summoned to the War Office pass from confidence to abasement, and from abasement to megalomania in the space of half an hour.