We trust our spirited contemporary has not joined the Hide-the-Truth Press, for we make the sum approximately 7,872,186,090. * * * * * [Illustration: _Old Gentleman (to father of conscientious objector)._ "BUT SUPPOSING A GERMAN WAS GOING FOR YOUR SON WITH A BAYONET--WOULDN'T HE GO FOR THE GERMAN?" _Father of C.O._ "AY! I DOUBT HE'D SAY SUMMAT. 'E'S GOT A SHARP TONGUE WHEN 'E'S VEXED."] * * * * * OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. (_BY MR. PUNCH'S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS_.) I think I prefer Mr. WELLS'S recent essay in the Newest Theology to this too concrete illustration of _The Soul of a Bishop_ (CASSELL). It's not that I object to the irreverence of stripping a poor tired bishop of cassock and gaiters, pursuing him to a sleepless bed and cinematographing all his physical twistings and turnings, his moral misgivings, his torturing doubts. I owe too much to Mr. WELLS' irreverences to mind that sort of thing; and I must say that, for a man who can't have had very much to do with the episcopacy in his busy life, he does manage to give a confoundedly plausible atmosphere to the whole setting. There are two letters from an older bishop to _Dr. Scrope_, the one, yieldingly tolerant, to dissuade him from resignation, the other, written after the accomplished fact, with touches of exquisitely restrained yet palpable malice, which strike me as masterly projections. Mr. WELLS also contrives a wonderful impressiveness in certain passages of the bishop's three visions. But I can't, even after careful re-reading, see the point of making the bishop's enlightenment depend upon a mysterious drug. This has an effect of impishness. There is nothing in _Dr. Scrope's_ development that might not have taken place without this fantastic assistance.... I suppose the general suggestion of this rather wayward and hasty but conspicuously sincere book is, that if only an occasional bishop would secede it would make it easier for the plain man to listen to the rest. And there may be something in this.