He died at daybreak the following morning. "The Thus the curtain rang down upon Bourlon Wood. President of the Immortals (in Eschylean phrase) had ended his sport" for the day. Soon the velvety sky was twinkling with stars. Everybody tried to improve the half-finished trenches, many dug for themselves round or coffin-like holes in the freezing ground, and lying down endeavoured to sleep. But the battlefield is never quiet. The Germans, growing bolder, crept down to the edge of the sunken road and now a bomb would be thrown, and now a sudden alarm would cause every man to seize his rifle, and every gunner to stand to his gun. The star-lights would go up all round, a strange glimmer illuminated the frosty trunks of the trees. Then in a gust of anger the firing started all along the line, and the metallic snap of the bolts vied with the crack of the rifles and the rattle of Lewis guns and machine-guns. After a while these died away into comparative silence. Once all the German batteries opened like a roll of thunder, and for half an hour the sky was alight with flashes, and the shells came racing overhead. But sleep is master of all; and except for the sentries, who were always peering into the shadows, each man lay down with his thoughts, slept, or became a victim to the merciful drowsiness of those utterly worn out. About the middle of the night a sound more strange than any other came to the ears. "Honk, honk, honk!" and there was a roar as of a mighty rushing wind. "Honk, honk, honk!"-the sound came nearer. It was the flight of the wild geese into the autumnal north. Few had heard that sound before in France. It seemed as if the souls of the departed were fleeing from a distracted world to the remotest solitudes. Sleep came at last, or that mental drowsiness which is nearest to sleep. Dreams and fancies stole upon the mind, those merciful dreams which clothe reality in happiness and peace. After all, it seemed, the curtain of night had rung down, not upon a tragedy, but only upon an episode in the everlasting human drama of love and pain. Why and whence and whither? . . . We could not say. They knew perhaps who lay rigid now in the heart of the wood; but not we. One certainty only emerged from the tangle of doubts and impressions; there was in the world something greater by far than fear or grief or mental agony or physical pain some human spirit that triumphed over these and surpassed civilization itself. There came to the mind then the sergeant and the two Lewisgunners who lay near by. A fragment of each personality presented itself in turn the plain unremarkable faces, the Cockney accent of one, the Scotch gruffness of another, the unfailing gaiety of a third. These knew nothing of God, they never thought of themselves, they never approached in imagination their own sublimity. Yet out of the humble simplicity of their lives had been achieved the greatest of all things.. The last reflection was a sad one. Where was the place of beauty in a distracted world? Bourlon Wood must have been fair enough in the spring-time, the summer, and the early autumn. Even now it held the pleasant contours, the russet and mahogany colouring, the warm red and black tints of the winter woodland. The little community of birds and beasts had fled. Its immemorial silence, its dim and secret places, its wind-rocked solitude that had remained unbroken for generations, where were they now? . . . Even Nature, it seemed, had been ravished by man. A sound of talking disturbed these dreams, a long file of men came stumbling down the shadowy path. "Who are you?" "We are the relief." AN OFFICER THE PARLIAMENTARY PATH TO PLACE AND HONOUR STRESS has been laid on the fact that the present Parliament, being now in the eighth year of its existence, is with three exceptions the longest lived in British history. But there is something even more important than length of existence, and that is that in the conferment of pecuniary emoluments and social distinctions upon members the record of the expiring Parliament has no parallel in British annals. Membership of the House of Commons has, in short, become, not merely a profession or a business, but an easy stepping-stone both to income and titular reward. Since the last General Election the movement towards the personal aggrandizement of members has indeed been going steadily forward, but few probably have noticed the point which it has reached. Is it, for example, realized that nearly every tenth member of the House of Commons is now also a member of the Ministry, and that the Ministry contains almost twice as many members of the House of Commons as it did when the last General Election was held and the present House elected? A simple comparison will make that position clear. When Mr. Balfour left office in 1905 there were in his Ministry only sixty members, and of that number thirtyfour were members of the House of Commons. To-day the Ministry comprises at least ninety-four members and of these sixty-one are members of the House of Commons, while six are commoners without seats, making sixty-seven commoners in all. In a House of 670 members, assuming that all the Ministers had seats, a total of sixty-seven would give the proportion of exactly one in ten as members of the Administration. Look at the way in which the Ministry has been swollen. The new creations include three members of the War Cabinet (one vacancy at present) without portfolio at £5000 a year each. The Air Council was established with a President at £2000 a year, and a Parliamentary Secretary at £1200 a year. But the President has now been made Air Minister with the status of a Secretary of State, and the salary of a Secretary of State is £5000, though it is still uncertain whether the salary of the new Secretary will be fixed at £5000 or not. The salary of the newly created Minister of Munitions is £5000 a year with a Financial and a Parliamentary Secretary at £1200 a year each. The new Ministers of National Service, Food, Shipping, Labour, and Pensions have all been assigned £2000 a year, with £1200 a year each to their five Parliamentary Secretaries. The salary attached to the newly created post of Minister of Reconstruction is £2000 a year. The same amount is voted to the new Minister of Blockade, who acts also as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and an additional Under-Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs has been created at £1500 a year. A Minister of Propaganda has also been appointed, at present in association with the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster; and a new Department of Commercial Intelligence has been brought into existence. Probably both will mean new or increased salaries. Other new offices include those of an Assistant Postmaster-General, a second Civil Lord of the Admiralty as well as an additional Civil Lord of the Admiralty, an additional Secretary to the Board of Agriculture, and a new Joint-Secretary to the Treasury. It is calculated that these new offices mean the yearly addition of £52,300 to the cost of the administration. The sum in itself is small, and, in relation to the huge expenditure which the war has entailed, is a mere bagatelle. But it is only one item in a series of charges which have swollen the cost of the Parliamentary machine. Look at what has now become the annual charge for the Ministry proper. The varying yearly salaries may be shown. in table form thus: Of this total, as already shown, the new departments account for £52,300, so that while at the beginning of this Parliament the net payments to members of the Government was little more than £180,000 a year, it is now over £234,000 a year. That increase, too, is continuing and ike'y to continue. There is no doubt VOL. LXXI * Exclusive of fees. 13 considerable inequality of remuneration, but the yearly average works out at not much less than £3000 per Minister. It is said that certain Ministers holding offices that would have carried Cabinet rank before the war pool their salaries to secure uniformity as between themselves, but that, of course, does not affect the payments from public funds. Then in order to arrive at the full cost of the Parliamentary machine one must not overlook the payment now made to unofficial members. This is a matter that had been talked of for many years, but it was not till the present Parliament came into existence that the proposal was carried into effect. It was during the Session of 1911 that the House agreed that unofficial members should be paid £400 a year each, whether they desired to receive that sum or not, and it will be seen at once that this means a very substantial addition to the annual Parliamentary charge. In round figures there are now about 600 unofficial members, and 600 members at £400 a year each absorb not less than £240,000, but for one reason or another as much as £252,000 has been voted. Add this to the salaries of Ministers and we get the following notable figures: Salaries of members of Ministry £ 234,225 252,000 £486,225 The new Reform Act increases the number of members to 707, and £400 a year to thirty-seven additional members will increase the total payment by £14,800, raising it to £266,800. By salaries to Ministers appointed to new departments and by payments to unofficial members, the cost of the Parliamentary machine has been increased, or is being increased, from about £180,000 at the time of the last General Election to a sum that approximates to £500,000. That is not a temporary charge arising out of the war and liable to extinction at the close of the war. It is a permanent addition of over £300,000 a year payable for the most part to men who secure election to the House of Commons. The proportion which goes to peers who hold office is inconsiderable. But that is not all. Under the Representation of the People Act, now passed into law, Members of Parliament while taking salaries for their services have relieved themselves also of certain electoral and registration charges which formerly they had to bear. That relief may be examined under three heads. First, there is registration. In the past some members have incurred heavy expense through having to maintain, or contribute to the maintenance, in the constituency of an agent to attend to registration work and put names on or off the register. Now the registration work is to be undertaken by the town clerks of |