"The French are thinking of building straw houses to remedy the present housing crisis. The first straw house has already been built at Montargis."--_Evening Paper._ Where, presumably, they are trying it on the well-known local Dog. * * * * * "Negotiating the intricate traffic of the City was quite easy, the engine being responsive to the slightest touch of the steering wheel. It is just the car for the owner-driver." _Financial Paper._ Our chauffeur agrees. He says _he_ wouldn't undertake to drive it down the village street, let alone the City. * * * * * "IS SINGING ON THE DECLINE? A GREAT TENOR'S ADVICE. 'NEVER FIGHT AGAINST THE BRASS.'" _Morning Paper._ It is, we believe, the experience of most impresarios that great tenors almost invariably fight _for_ the brass. * * * * * [Illustration: "QUICK, MUMMIE! COME AND HELP BOBBIE--HE'S FALLEN INTO THE LUCKY DIP."] * * * * * OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. (_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._) So charged is it with liable-to-go-off controversy that I should hardly have been astonished to see Mr. H. G. WELLS'S latest volume, _Russia in the Shadows_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), embellished with the red label of "Explosives." Probably everyone knows by now the circumstances of its origin, and how Mr. WELLS and his son are (for the moment) the rearguard in that long procession of unprejudiced and undeceivable observers who have essayed to pluck the truth about Russia from the bottom of the Bolshevist pit. What Mr. WELLS found is much what was to be expected: red ruin, want and misery unspeakable. The difference between his report and those of most of his forerunners is that, being (as one is apt to forget) a highly-trained writer, he is able to present it with a technical skill that enormously helps the effect. Our author having been unable to deny the shadow, like everyone else save perhaps the preposterous Mr. LANSBURY, the only outstanding question is who casts it. The ordinary man would probably have little hesitation about his answer to that. Mr. WELLS has even less. He unhesitatingly names you and me and the French investors and several editors. Well, I have no space for more than an indication of what you will find in this undeniably vigorous and vehement little volume. But I must not forget the photographs. Some of these, of devastated streets and the like, have rather lost their novelty. Unfortunately, however, for Mr. WELLS as propagandist he has also included a number of the most revealing portraits yet available of the men who are hag-riding a once great nation to the abyss. I can only say that for me those portraits put the finishing touch to Mr. WELLS'S argument. They extinguish it. * * * * *