[Illustration:  THE SECRET SESSION.

WINSTON. “NO REPORT OF SPEECHES.  IT HARDLY SEEMS WORTH WHILE.”]

The debate produced a number of speeches more suitable for the Secret Session that was to follow.  Our enemies will surely be heartened when they read the criticisms passed by Mr. GEORGE LAMBERT, an ex-Minister of the Crown, upon our Naval policy, and by Mr. DILLON on the Salonika Expedition; and they will not understand that the one is dominated by the belief that no Board of Admiralty that does not include Lord FISHER can possibly be efficient; and that the other is congenitally unable to believe anything good of British administration in Ireland or elsewhere.

For once Mr. BONAR LAW took the gloves off to Mr. DILLON, and told him plainly that more attention would be paid to his criticism if he was himself doing something to help in the prosecution of the War.

Thursday, May 10th.—­I gather from Mr. SPEAKER’S report of the Secret Session that nothing sensational was revealed.  The PRIME MINISTER’S “encouraging account of the methods adopted to meet the submarine attack” was not much more explicit, I infer, than the speech which Lord CURZON was making simultaneously, urbi et orbi, in the House of Lords, or Mr. ASQUITH would not have observed—­again I quote the official report—­that “hardly anything had been said which could not have been said openly.”

That none of the Nationalists should have addressed the House was perhaps less due to their constitutional reticence than to the depressing effect of the South Longford election, where their nominee was defeated by the Sinn Fein candidate—­one MCGUINNESS, and evidently a stout fellow.  But it is odd to find that the debate was conducted without the assistance of Messrs. BILLING, PRINGLE and HOGGE.  Their eloquent silence was a protest, no doubt, against the eviction of the reporters.  Mr. CHURCHILL was probably suffering equal anguish, but with patriotic self-sacrifice he refused to deprive his fellow-legislators of the privilege of hearing once again his views on the conduct of War.

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[Illustration:  Mrs. Smith (to Mr. Smith, who has just been examined by Army Medical Board).  “WHAT DID THE DOCTOR SAY TO YER?”

Mr. Smith. “’E SEZ TO ME, ‘YOU’VE GOT A STIGMA AN’ A CONGENIAL SQUINT.’”]

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JILL-OF-ALL-TRADES AND MISTRESS OF MANY.

[The Daily Chronicle, writing on women farmers, quotes the tribute of HUTTON, the historian, to a Derbyshire lady who died at Matlock in 1854:  “She undertakes any kind of manual labour, as holding the plough, driving the team, thatching the barn, using the flail; but her chief avocation is breaking horses at a guinea per week.  She is fond of Pope and Shakespeare, is a self-taught and capable instrumentalist, and supports the bass viol in Matlock Church.”]