To avoid treading upon any of these varied susceptibilities the great AUCKLAND had to execute a sort of diplomatic egg-dance; but he did it with consummate skill and temporarily satisfied everybody with the promise of a full statement upon trade policy so soon as Peace has been signed.  I hope this won’t make the Germans more dilatory than ever.

At the Press Gallery dinner the other night the SPEAKER, who was the guest of the evening, recalled the three golden rules for Parliamentary orators—­“Stand up; speak up; shut up”; and added that while some Members paid very little attention to the second of them there were a few whose stentorian tones he would like to borrow in case of a disturbance.  But really I don’t think he need worry.  To dam a rising tide of “Supplementaries” this afternoon he called the next name on the Order-Paper; and his crescendo effect—­“Mr. Grattan Doyle!—­Mr. Grattan Doyle!!—­Mr. GRATTAN DOYLE!!!—­Mr. GRATTAN DOYLE!!!!”—­could not have been bettered by Mr. JACK JONES.

I hope the fighting Services are not going to revive their pre-war jealousy of one another.  The tone in which Dr. MACNAMARA, when somebody asked a question about the Portsmouth “butchery department,” jerked out “War Office!” was calculated to give rise to misapprehension.

The Ministry of Health Bill found Mr. DEVLIN in a dilemma.  He makes it a rule never to support anything that emanates either from the House of Lords or from the Government.  But on this occasion his two betes noirs were in opposition, for the Lords had decided that the new Minister should have but one Parliamentary Secretary, and the Government was determined to give him two.  Whichever way he voted the Nationalist Leader was bound to do violence to his principles.  And so, with that quick-wittedness for which his countrymen are justly renowned, he walked out without voting at all.

[Illustration:  A DIPLOMATIC EGG-DANCE.

SIR AUCKLAND GEDDES.]

Tuesday, May 27th.—­It is odd that the House of Lords, which has done so much for the emancipation of women still refuses to allow peeresses in their own right to take part in its debates.  They would have been very useful this afternoon, when two Bills affecting their sex were under discussion.  An extraordinary amount of heat was developed by the Nurses Registration Bill, introduced by Lord GOSCHEN, and I am sure some of the charming ladies in the Strangers’ Gallery must have been longing to produce their clinical thermometers and descend to the floor to take the temperatures of the disputants.

[Illustration:  “I WON’T SUPPORT ANYTHING.”

MR. DEVLIN.]

So far as one could gather, the Bill is the outcome of a quarrel between the College of Nurses and the rest of the profession.  Who shall decide when nurses disagree?