Lord BUCKMASTER, that "most susceptible Chancellor," made a very ingenuous defence of his colleagues. They were the unconscious victims of adroit interviewers, who obtained information from them by a process of extraction so painless that they did not know the value of what they were giving away. It is time that these innocents were protected against themselves. A gag must in future be issued to every Minister with his Windsor uniform. The discarded G.R. armlets of the V.T.C. might very well serve the purpose. _Wednesday, May 3rd_.--When, some nine years ago, Mr. AUGUSTINE BIRRELL was appointed Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant a friend who had some knowledge of Irish affairs wrote to him: "I do not know whether to congratulate you or condole with you, but I think it is the latter." It was an easy guess, but its confirmation took an unusually long time. Indeed, at one moment it looked as if Mr. BIRRELL would escape the almost invariable fate of Irish Secretaries, and leave Dublin with his political reputation enhanced. When he had placed the National University Act on the Statute-book, thus solving a problem that had baffled his predecessors since the Union, he might have sung his _Nunc Dimittis_ in a halo. Perhaps he was not sufficiently ambitious to demand release; perhaps none of his colleagues was anxious to take his job; perhaps the Nationalist leader insisted on keeping him in the silken fetters of office as a hostage for Home Rule. Anyhow, the opportunity was missed; and thenceforward Nemesis dogged his track. Two years ago it seemed that Ulster would be his stumbling-block. The War saved him from that, but only to bring him down through more sinister instruments. In his pathetic apology this afternoon he confessed that he had failed to estimate accurately the strength of the Sinn Fein movement. He might have been wrong in not suppressing it before, but his omission to do so was due to a consuming desire to keep Ireland's front united in face of the common foe. This frank admission of error would in any case have disarmed hostile criticism; but its effect was strengthened by the unseemly interjections with which Mr. GINNELL accompanied it. If the Member for Westmeath is a sample of the sort of persons with whom the CHIEF SECRETARY had to deal, no wonder that he failed to understand the lengths to which they would go. Mr. REDMOND, obviously disgusted by the pranks of his nominal supporter, chivalrously shouldered part of the blame that Mr. BIRRELL had taken upon himself; and even Sir EDWARD CARSON, though a life-long and bitter opponent of his policy, was ready to admit that he had been well-intentioned and had done his best.