* * * * * [Illustration: THE "KNIGHTLY MANNER." BELGIUM. "AS LONG AS THERE IS MOTION IN MY BODY, AND LIFE TO GIVE ME WORDS, I'LL CRY FOR JUSTICE!" KAISER. "JUSTICE SHALL NEVER HEAR YOU. I AM JUSTICE!" _BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, Valentinian,_ III. 1. ("There is no longer any international law."--_The KAISER to Mr. GERARD_.)] * * * * * ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT. _Monday, August 13th_.--In a certain political club there used, before the War, to be a popular pick-me-up compounded of a little whisky, a little Angostura and a good deal of soda-water, and known after its inventor as "a Henderson." In one respect the speech explaining his resignation which the right hon. Member for Barnard Castle delivered this afternoon resembled this eponymous beverage, for it was decidedly effervescent. But the other ingredients were wrongly apportioned--too much of the bitters and not enough of the mellowing spirit. His initial mistake was not realising in time that, as Mr. ASQUITH put it, a man cannot permanently divide himself into watertight compartments. As member of the War Cabinet and Secretary of the Labour Party, he seems to have resembled one of those twin salad bottles from which oil and vinegar can be dispensed alternately but not together. The attempt to combine the two functions could only end, as it began, in a double fiasco. [Illustration: THE DOUBLE FIASCO. MR. HENDERSON.] It is fortunate for the Ministry of Munitions that it possesses a spokesman so bland and imperturbable as Sir WORTHINGTON EVANS. In successive answers he informed the House that near Birmingham the Ministry was evicting 130 allotment holders on the eve of their harvest, in order to build a new factory; and that simultaneously it was abandoning in the West of England the site of another gigantic factory, on which a cool million had already been spent. Coming from almost any other Minister this amazing example of how not to do it would have raised a storm of supplemental inquiries, if not a motion for the adjournment. But the House accepted Sir WORTHINGTON'S calm and matter-of-fact narration as quietly as if it were the last word in efficiency and coordination. I was a little premature last week in assuming that Mr. MACCALLUM SCOTT had been silenced by his appointment as Mr. CHURCHILL'S private secretary. A long question to the Board of Trade, on the subject of horse-hides, followed by a series of supplementaries delivered with his customary emphasis, showed that he is not yet resigned to his muzzle. He is not, however, entirely oblivious of the customary etiquette in this matter, for he recited his catechism from the third bench behind Ministers, and only when it was over descended to the second bench, where private secretaries most do congregate.