Five years ago General SEELY, then Secretary of State for War, asked timidly for a single million for aircraft.  To-day, as Under-Secretary for Air, he boldly demanded sixty-six millions, and explained that but for the Armistice the amount would have been two hundred millions.  And the House, after hearing his glowing account of the wonderful achievements of our airmen, readily voted the money.  A good deal of it is to go, quite rightly, to relieving the hardships of demobilisation, which fall with peculiar severity on men whose special training is not much use to them in civil life.  The least we can do when they are forced to descend from their chosen element is to insure them against a bad landing.

* * * * *

TO A VEGETABLE-MARROW.

  O monstrous, O Gargantuan, overgrown! 
    O huge!  O gross!  O squat! 
  Whose one redeeming virtue—­one alone—­
    Is that you weigh a lot;
  Who will not thrive upon the common soil,
  So that the patient digger e’en must toil
      To raise a special mound
      Above the level ground
  That you may sun yourself upon the sloping earth
  And, like the wicked, wax to an uncommon girth.

  But it is not your vast circumference
    That stirs this passing strain;
  I would not sing although, to move you hence,
    They fetched their biggest crane;
  It is that men should shovel tons of that
  Into the maws of some capacious vat,
      Add sugar (half-a-pound)
      And stir it round and round;
  Then, at the last, throw in some ginger with a spade
  And label the result as “Lemon Marmalade.”

* * * * *

From a description of the first flight of R 33:—­

    “Alas, the meteorological conditions, at first considered
    probable, turned out worse.”—­Yorkshire Paper.

Nothing so likely as the improbable.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  SENSATIONAL SURPRISE STRIKE OF HEROES IN CINEMA-LAND.

PICKETS OF HEROES PREVENT BLACKLEG COLLEAGUE FROM WORKING WHEN THE HEROINE MOST PARTICULARLY NEEDS HELP.]

* * * * *

THE BIBLE IN PAIN.

MR. H.G.  WELLS’ new novel, based on the Book of Job, and Mr. ARNOLD BENNETT’S new play dealing with the story of JUDITH and HOLOFERNES, by no means exhaust the Biblical and Apocryphal motives from which our popular writers are now drawing inspiration.

Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD’S next novel will be a minutely analytical study of the contrasted temperaments of ESAU and JACOB, the one standing for revolt and the other for a rather smooth and supple orthodoxy.

Mr. E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM is turning his attention to a new spy romance woven about the experiences of CALEB and JOSHUA.

Professor CHALMERS MITCHELL has long been engaged on a monograph on the Ark and its inmates, in which the famous zoologist will explain the conditions under which the animals lived, the segregation and food problems, and how the complexities following disembarcation were dealt with by NOAH and his family.  Lord PIRRIE is contributing a chapter on the structure of the vessel, and there will be an appendix on the dangers of overcrowding by Sir ARTHUR NEWSHOLME.