Mr. SHORTT was not in his place, but the interests of the Home Department did not suffer in the hands of the Under-Secretary. Sir HAMAR GEEENWOOD rattles out his replies with the speed and accuracy of a machine-gun, and has a neat formula for dealing with "supplementaries": "All these further Questions are covered by my original answer." * * * * * "But in course of time sympathetic Americans and the other tribes will be searching the ruins of burned-out passions and agonies, armed with the rewritten Badaeker or its Allied equivalent."--_Manchester Guardian_. The re-writing seems to have begun already. * * * * * [Illustration: _The Muzzled One_. "TAKE MY TIP, YOUNG FELLER, AND HOP IT--_QUICK_. THERE'S A COPPER COMING."] * * * * * MORE MUSICAL RECONSTRUCTION. _(By our Special Reporter, who is also busy with the Coal Commission.)_ At the three hundred and seventeenth sitting of the Musical Reconstruction Commission Mr. Justice Bland, the President, said he felt sure he would be voicing the feelings of all present in tendering his congratulations to Sir Leonardo Spaghetti Coyne on his elevation to the peerage as Viscount Vermicelli of Milan, and to Mr. Gladney Jebb on receiving the honour of K.P.O. (Knight of the Proletarian Order). A memorandum on the economics of the Russian Ballet and the probable cost of its reorganisation on a Marxian basis was read by Mr. Ploffskin of the Garden City Gymnosophist Guild. By a scheme for a uniform salary for all dancers, compulsory vegetarian diet, and the exclusive use of the balalaika, Mr. Ploffskin was of opinion that a Bolshevist Ballet might be safely organised so as to satisfy the artistic aspirations of the proletariat and counteract the pernicious influences of the pseudo-Ethiopian style affected by the idle rich. Examined by Sir Edwin Edgar, O.M., Mr. Ploffskin admitted that none of the famous Russian composers of recent years had associated themselves with the Revolutionary movement, and that the Russian Ballet had originally been an integral part of the Imperial Opera. But he had no doubt that on a proper proletarian basis it would function with a far more beneficent activity. He pointed out that there was a strong facial resemblance between TROTSKY and M. PADEREWSKI, and between LENIN and BEETHOVEN. In reply to a question from Mr. Moody MacTear, Mr. Ploffskin said that he had been down a coal-mine in Siberia. Sir Mark Holloway, who next occupied the witness's chair, admitted, in reply to the questions of Sir Gladney Jebb, that, since his student days, he had seldom been engaged in manual labour on any instrument for more than two hours a day. It was not necessary for a conductor. But he knew of pianists who practised for six or even eight hours a day with impunity.