14 DECEMBER 1901, Page 3

The Westminster Gazelle of Tuesday had a very amusing cartoon

representing the various Liberal chiefs each sitting armed with a rifle in a little blockhouse of his own, with a legend underneath that to be effective "blockhouses must be linked together." Curiously enough, blockhouses have always proved good material for political wits. Our readers will doubtless recall the story of Canning's famous impromptu. One of the members of Mr. Addington's Administration was laboriously defending a vote for providing the lower reaches of the Thames with blockhouses. On which Canning wrote :— " If blocks can from danger defend us, Two places are safe from the French : The one is the mouth of the river,

The other the Treasury Bench."