It seems to me that we all take a great deal of interest in the miners
when they strike, but not nearly enough when they hew. And yet
this business of hacking large lumps of fuel out of a hole, since
civilisation really depends on it, ought to be represented to us from
day to day as the beautiful and thrilling thing that it really is. Yet
if we put aside for a moment Mr. SMILLIE'S present demands, we find
the main topics of discussion in the daily Press as I write are
roughly these:--

(1) The prospects of League Football and the Cup Ties.

(2) Ireland.

(3) The prevalence of deafness amongst blue-eyed cats.

(4) Mesopotamia.

(5) The Fall of Man.

(6) The sale of _The Daily Mail_, whose circulation during
the coming winter is for some reason or other supposed to be almost
as important to the children of England as their own.

Of all these topics the first is, of course, by far the most
absorbing, and almost everyone has remarked how the love of sport, for
which Britons are famous, is growing more passionate than ever. It is
not only cricket and football, of course; only the other day there was
a shilling sweepstake on the St. Leger in our office and, from what
I hear of the form of Westmorland in the County Croquet Championship