Volume 156 — THE FOOD PROBLEM IN PARIS.

The cost of living in the vicinity of the Peace Conference has been enormously exaggerated. Likewise the difficulty of reorganizing Europe on a truly ethnic basis. By combining the two questions I have found them immensely simplified, and I have been in Paris only three days.

My meaning will be clearly illustrated by the record of a single day's experience—with the representative of the Dodopeloponnesians for déjeûner and the delegate of the Pan-Deuteronomaniads for dinner.

I made the acquaintance of the first in the lift. On the way down it came out that I was journaliste assisting at the Conference of the Peace, whereupon the other introduced himself as secretary of the Dodopeloponnesian delegation and eager for the pleasure of entertaining me at déjeûner.

Nothing international arose in connection with the hors d'oeuvres. It was between the soup and the fish that my host inquired whether I had yet found time to look into the just claim of the Dodopeloponnesian people to the neighbouring island of Funicula.

"You mean," I said, "on the ground that the island of Funicula was brought under the Dodopeloponnesian sceptre on September 11th, 1405, by Blagoslav the Splay-fingered, from whom it was wrested on February 3rd, 1406, by the Seljuks?"

"Precisely," he said. "But also because the people of Funicula are originally of Dodopeloponnesian stock."

"Yet they speak the language of Pan-Deuteronomania," I said.

"A debased dialect," he said, "foisted upon them by a remission of ten per cent. in taxes for every hundred words of the lingo learned by heart, with double votes for irregular verbs."

The entrée, something with eggs and jelly, was excellent.

"Far be it from me to deny," I said, "the fact that Funicula is by right a part of the inheritance of the Octo-syllabarians"—and I bowed gracefully to my host, who raised his glass in return—"and I agree in advance with every argument you put forward in favour of a restored Sesquicentennial commonwealth by bringing together the scattered members of the Duodecimal race from all over the world. In fact," I added as the waiter poured out the champagne, "it seems to me that in addition to the Island of Funicula there properly belongs, in the realm of your Greater Anti-Vivisectoria, the adjacent promontory, geyser and natural bridge of Pneumobronchia, from which the last Seljuk ruler, Didyffius the Forty-fifth, leaped in front of a machete wielded by his eldest son, who therefore became Didymus the Forty-sixth."

He was delighted to find so much sympathy and understanding in an alien journalist from far across the seas. His bill, so far as a hurried and discreet glance could reveal, was 89 francs 50 centimes, not including the taxe.

On the other hand, the sous-secrétaire of the Pan-Deuteronomaniad delegation, who took me out to dinner that same night, paid 127 francs (including theatre tickets) before he proved to my satisfaction that the basic civilization of Funicula Island is after all Pan-whatever-you-call-it.

At any rate my point is made. My expenditure on food these three days in Paris has been negligible, and there is rumour that the Supra-Zambesian delegation is thinking of opening a hotel with running water, h. and c., in every room.

Gunner. "DO YOU PLAY THE PIANO?"

Jack. "NO, SIR."

Gunner. "NOR THE 'CELLO?"

Jack. "NO, SIR."

Gunner. "WELL, THE NEXT TIME YOU HEAR RUMOURS OF A BARBER JUST FOLLOW THE MATTER UP."