the House and of the public, I take it, are the same as the interests of
the nation."

[Illustration: DEFENSIVE DUET BY MESSRS. ASQUITH AND WINSTON CHURCHILL.]

If there was any lingering doubt as to the main responsibility for the
inception--as apart from the carrying out--of the Dardanelles affair Mr.
CHURCHILL himself must have removed it. Unlike his former chief he welcomes
the publication of the Report, which in his opinion has shared among a
number of eminent personages a burden formerly borne by himself alone. But
his enthusiasm for the project as it originally formed itself in his
fertile brain is undiminished, and he still marvels that for the want of a
little further sacrifice we should have abandoned the chance of cutting
Turkey out of the War, and uniting in one friendly federation the States of
the Balkans.

_Wednesday, March 21st._--General MAUDE'S manifesto to the people of
Baghdad, with its allusions to the tyranny under which they had long been
suffering, did not escape the eagle eye of Mr. DEVLIN, ever anxious to
scarify British hypocrisy. So he drafted a long question to the PRIME
MINISTER, embodying the most salient passages of the manifesto. Much to his
disgust it appeared on the Paper without its "most beautiful and striking
passages." The SPEAKER explained that he had blue-pencilled "a good deal of
Oriental and flowery language not suitable to our Western climate." Not the
least part of the joke is the rumour that the manifesto was largely the
work of a Member of the House well versed in Eastern lore.

_Thursday, March 22nd._--The Ministry of National Service, being unprovided
at present with a Parliamentary Secretary, is supposed to be represented in
the House by Mr. ARTHUR HENDERSON. But as the Member for Barnard Castle has