I re-settled myself at my desk, smiling a little cynically. How long would the lesson last? Then I happened to glance towards the mantelpiece, beside which Ursula had been standing. There, hastily propped against the clock, was that detestable photograph. It still quivered in the movement of release, as though shaking its shoulders, settling down palpably for another decade. With an uncontrollable impulse I leapt up, seized the abomination and, flinging it on the floor, ground it to powder with my heel. In one word, the anti-squatting campaign had definitely begun. A. E. * * * * * [Illustration: _Navvy._ "WHY DON'T YER WEAR THEM BOARDS THE RIGHT WAY ROUND?" _Sandwichman._ "WOT! IN ME DINNER-HOUR? NOT ME!"] * * * * * "Some five or six million years hence, therefore, it is prophesied, the earth will fall into the grip of an ice age. There will descend on all living things the blight of eternal cod." _Scotch Paper._ Although the danger is not immediate it deserves the serious consideration of the FOOD CONTROLLER. * * * * * =SQUISH.= _(Being some notes on a bye-path in politics.)_ The Board of Agriculture has been biding its time. In the fierce light of publicity which has been beating of late upon Mr. LLOYD GEORGE, Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL and Sir ERIC GEDDES the attempt of this rustic Ministry to assert itself has passed almost unnoticed. Our gaze has been fixed upon the London railway termini, upon Warsaw and upon Belfast; we have been neglecting Campden (Glos.). Yet in that town, I read, "the Ministry of Agriculture has completed arrangements for a commercial course in the State Fruit and Vegetable College to instruct students in the manufacture of preserved fruit products." I have considered the last part of the sentence quoted above very carefully in the light of the Rules and Regulations governing procedure in State Departments, Magna Carta, the Habeas Corpus Act and the Constitutions of Clarendon, and have come to the conclusion that it means "making jam." I am very sure, as the PRIME MINISTER would say, that things are about to happen in preserved fruit products; things will become very much worse and very much sterner in jam. And if in jam why then also in jelly and in marmalade. Even at this moment in the offices of the Board of Agriculture there are a number of clerks, I suppose, sitting with schedules in front of them, something like this:--