ABOUT PARLIAMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 September 1915, Page 2

ABOUT PARLIAMENT.

THJS LAMB AND THE LION. (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent). Wellington, September 24. In concluding his eloquent speech on the National Kegistration Bill last night the member for Christehurch North all unconsciously directed the attention of the House and galleries to the preponderance of bald heads on the treasury benches. The public might be surprised, and even amused, he said, to see the Isitt lamb submitting itself to the Massey lion, but when the sons were giving their lives to the Empire there should be no bickering and haggling among the posters, and he wanted then and there to place his services unreservedly at the disposal of the Prime Minister for the performance of any task for which his years and such qualities as he had might fit him. he added, after a dramatic pause, "let the Prime Minister 'remember that if, when the war is over, he does not introduce a Land Bill making adequate provision for the needs of this country,'l shall be after his scalp as eagerly tnd as relentlessly as ever."

BALD HEADS. It was an admirable sentiment, admirably expressed, but before the House could break into the applause that was at the tip of its fingers, Mr. John Payne called from the back benches: "His scalp! You't never.get hold of it'." The waiting applause melted into a roar of laughter, in which Mr. Massey joined as heartily as the rest, and all eyes turned to the seven or eight shining pates adorning the ftont rows to tVe right of the Speaker. There they were, one after another, affirming the popular belief that the penalty for possessing brains is the absence of hair. - Messrs Allen and Herries are the only Ministers with Cabinet rank lacking Nature's test of high mental development, and last night there was many a wag waiting to find a coincidence in their misfortune.

THE OPTIMISTIC DOCTOR. The member for Wellington East, who preserves by himself the Parliamentary traditions of the early eighties, and talks more common sense in five minutes than many younger members 'display in an hour, struck an optimistic note concerning the war, dfirLng the discussion of the Registration Bill, which ought to have put all the pessimists in the House and in the country to shame. He wished, he said, that people would realise what the British Navy and Army had done during the past year and not go about shaking their heads and drawing long faces, that could look no more doleful if the enemy were actually at our Rates. The Navy had done everything it had an opportunity to do, and the Army actually created during tile year had performed the greatest marvels ever recorded in military history. On the western frontier, with the assistance of the Empire's Allies, it was holding back the biggest and best-equipped force, the result of two years of preparation, the world ha 3 ever seen, and in the Gallipoli Peninsula it was progressing yard by yard against almost inconceivable obstacles, which all the German authorities had believed made the place impregnable. Instead of tbnid discreditable pessimism there should be confident, grateful optimism, nnd a daily renewal of the determination of this country to share to the uttermost in the glory of freeing the world from the menace of despotic militarism.

THAT GTSEY MARE. Probably it was, over-anxiety it, avoid offending against the spirit of the party truce that gave the discussion of the illtimed petitions of the special constables this afternoon a sad and tiresome tone that was not proper to the occasion One constable wanted compensation for the loss of a grey mare that had unaccountably died while he was using the poor beast in the suppression of the deplorable strike of two years ago. The information in the possession of the House seemed to leave plerft.v of room for the suggestion that the inoffensive creature dropped dead of shock on, finding herself employed in meddling with an industrial dispute which was no concern of hers, but instead of offering this explanation of the catastrophe the Labor members labored all the old points in all the old ways, till many members moved have been glad to pay the claim themselves if only to get the constable and his trouble? out of the House, and | to ensure his grey mare decent and final burial.