After Mr. SNOWDEN, Sir THOMAS WHITTAKER and Mr. LOUGH had reinforced Sir JOHN SIMON'S case with added instances the Government found an unexpected champion in Mr. HEALY. He was amazed to hear the late HOME SECRETARY--"one of the Ministers who made the War"--gloating over the inefficiency of the War Office at a moment when round Verdun was raging a battle in which the fate of Paris, and perhaps of London, was involved. Why had he not imitated the monumental silence of Mr. BURNS? Instead, he, the suppressor of obscure Irish newspapers, had done more to injure recruiting than any Connemara editor. I never expected to live to hear the Bank of England described in the House of Commons as a useless institution. In Mr. HEALY'S opinion, "The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street," like the other who lived in a shoe, has too many children, and her attempt to get 190 of them exempted from military service moved him in a moment of "vituperative irrelevance," as Mr. PRINGLE subsequently described it, to say the rudest things about her financial capacity. _Wednesday, March 1st._--Sir OWEN PHILLIPS, once Liberal Member for Pembroke, returned to the House to-day as Unionist Member for Chester. To signalise the capture of so gigantic a prize--he is 6ft. 6in. in his stockinged feet--Lord EDMUND TALBOT and Sir G. YOUNGER, Unionist Whips, conducted him to the Table; and as they are both of moderate height the procession gave the effect of a _Mauretania_ going to her moorings in charge of a couple of tugs. When Dr. MACNAMARA moved a Supplementary Estimate of L10 for the Navy, I was reminded of PRAED'S lines "On seeing the SPEAKER asleep in his chair":-- "Hume, no doubt, will be taking the sense Of the House on a saving of thirteen pence." But there were differences. The L10 was not an ordinary "ten-pun' note" but was a "token" representing something like four and a half millions received by the Fleet for services rendered to Foreign Powers and others; and Mr. WHITLEY, who was in the Chair, too so far from being asleep, was intensely wide-awake. Members who sought to discuss Naval policy generally were promptly pulled up, and the SECRETARY OF THE ADMIRALTY, when in his third or fourth attempt to explain the Vote he remarked hypothetically, "Suppose we were to sell a battleship----" was himself called to order, Mr. WHITLEY evidently regarding such a reduction of the Fleet as unpatriotic even in imagination.