it strengthened the stentorian plea for economy made by Mr. J.A.R.
MARRIOTT in a maiden speech that would perhaps have been better if
it had not been quite so good. The House is accustomed to a little
hesitation in its novices and does not like to be lectured even by an
Oxford don.

[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