If the Germans were in occupation of the Black Country, if Oxford were being daily shelled, as Rheims is, and if with a favouring breeze London could hear the dull rumble of the bombardment, as Paris can, I wonder if Members would still be encumbering the Order-paper with the sort of trivialities that now find place there. An exception may be made in favour of Mr. JOE KING. He has discovered a little late in the day that a war is going on in Europe, and that it affects a little country called Belgium, whose neutrality was guaranteed by the Powers. He was anxious to know whether Belgium had formally renounced her neutrality, and was no doubt greatly surprised to learn from Sir EDWARD GREY that, owing to one of the guaranteeing Powers having invaded her, Belgium had become a belligerent. I do not know whether Mr. PRINGLE was in the House when this announcement was made. But if so it evidently created no impression on his mind. In the debate on the Army Estimates he followed Captain TRYON, who had delivered an urgent appeal to the Government from the text, "A strong Army and a shorter War." Mr. PRINGLE'S ideal is just the reverse. In his view the Army is too big already, and is taking too great a toll from our industrial and commercial population. The great men who won the Napoleonic War--after twenty-three years--had not a big army; and the consequence was that, while it was going on, British trade expanded by leaps and bounds. To-day, owing to our disastrous military policy the demands upon our tonnage were so heavy that people had to go short of sugar and tobacco. Let us conserve our resources and be ready to dictate terms when Germany has been financially ruined. When Mr. PRINGLE at last sat down after three-quarters of an hour of this sort of thing I longed for ten minutes of Mr. BALFOUR at his best. But he was not present, and Mr. LONG was so much occupied in defending the Government against the charge of having broken faith with the married men that Mr. PRINGLE never got the trouncing he deserved. _Wednesday, March 22nd._--One of the most cherished beliefs of the House of Commons is that upon the Second Reading of the Consolidated Fund Bill anything under the sun may be discussed. Colonel YATE was justly surprised, therefore, when the SPEAKER ruled that he was out of order in criticising the Indian Government for its conduct of the Mesopotamian Expedition, and advised him to reserve his remarks for the Indian Budget discussion--equivalent in these times to the Greek Kalends. Mr. CHAMBERLAIN was surprised too, but, regardless of the ruling, proceeded to make a carefully-prepared reply to the speech which the Hon. and gallant Member had not been allowed to deliver. He frankly admitted that there had been a lamentable breakdown of the hospital arrangements, but steps had been taken to improve them, and a telegram from General LAKE showed that the treatment of the men wounded in the recent engagement was satisfactory.