Mr. Gladstone stood by me last night. Mr. McKenna was by his side. I am not inventing this dream. It is a true story. (It is Godly sincerity that wins--not fleshly wisdom!) A gentleman, such as you, was by way of interviewing Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone was castigating me. I was a Public Department. He said to you, who were interviewing him, that he was helpless against all the Public Departments, for he was fighting for Economy, and he gave a case to you worse than either Chepstow or Slough. I am sorry to say it was the War Office he was illustrating, as I am devoted to Mr. Churchill and would not hurt him for the world--even in a dream. It is too puerile to describe in print, but what Mr. Gladstone pointed to I have told you in conversation. Now, the above is an Allegory. Imagine! nearly a year after the Armistice and yet we are spending two millions sterling a day beyond an absolutely fabulous income--beyond any income ever yet produced by any Empire or any Nation! _Sweep them out!_ Dr. Macnamara, a few days since, in his _apologia pro vita sua_ excuses his Department to the public by saying that on the very day of the Armistice the Board of Admiralty sat on Economy! _So they did!_ They _sat_ on it! Economy! To send Squadrons all over the globe that were not there before! The globe did without them during the War--why not now? “Oh my Sacred Aunt!” (as the French say when in an extremity). “Showing the flag,” I suppose, for that was the cry of the “baying hounds” in 1905 when we brought home some 160 vessels of war that could neither fight nor run away--and whose Officers were shooting pheasants up Chinese rivers and giving tea parties to British Consuls. How those Consuls did write! And how agitated was the Foreign Office! I must produce some of these communications directly “DORA” is abolished. Well, that’s what “showing the flag” means. _Sweep ’em out!_ Gladstone was hopeless against Departments--so is now the Nation.