21 APRIL 1917, Page 2

We have asked .elsewherewhates the use of the House of

Commons, and urged that it should .apply _itself to the great problems: of the. hour. Instead of doing this, it occupied itself when it met on Tuesday with a futile and ridiculous debate as to whether the War Office, acting purely automatically and officially, did right in pre- venting the Nation, a weekly newspaper distinguished rather for brilliant and bitter journalism than for any wide hold upon public opinion, from being exported to foreign countries. The . War Office imposed the embargo because the Germans were' largely quoting the Nation in their wireless communications, and actually reprinting articles from it and disseminating them among the German troops in the trenches. The inference was of course clear. ' Are you going to be so foolish as to yield when great organs of public opinion in England thus admit the hopelessness of their case ? '