Parliament's Week The Commons

P:Greeted Postmaster General Sir William Mitchell-Thomson, when he appeared in the House last week, with Laborite shouts of "Shoot him! Put him against a wall!"

This was the exuberant reply of British Labor to a Tory speech made the day before by Sir William at Croydon, in which he shouted: "Certain Socialist (Laborite) leaders are going to end up with their backs against a wall and a firing squad before them if they try to hamper British troops in any Chinese war!"

Since Great Britain is technically not at war with China, Sir William's speech drew the rebuke "unjustifiable flamboyancy" from even the Conservative Evening Standard.

P: Heard Oswald Mosley (Laborite son-in-law of arch Tory the late Marquess Curzon of Kedleston) demand of Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain under what treaty rights British troops are being sent to Chinese soil.

Sir Austen, elevated the eyebrow opposite to that which is clamped down over his monocle, replied frigidly: "The Right Honorable member from Smethwick* must know that the right of a state to protect its nationals does not depend on 'treaty right.'" P: Defeated by a majority of 178 a Laborite resolution against the Government's proposal to reform the trade union law (TIME, Feb. 21). Since the exact nature of the changes which the Cabinet will propose have been kept secret, the debate last week was ingeniously based on conjecture. Said Laborite John R. Clynes: "I don't need to know what the Government is going to propose. Anyone can guess. . . . The Government will attempt to make strikes unlawful, except in circumstances where they are doomed to failure." Sir John Simon, famed for his great pronouncement on the general strike (TIME, May 17) rejoined: "The trade union law is in a muddled state. It would be well to have it cleared. . . . There are ominous signs that the Labor leaders regard the general strike of last May as only a dress rehearsal. . . . Mr. George Hicks, the new Chairman of the Trades Union Congress,/- recently told the American Federation of Labor that more general strikes of a more intense and more formidable character are inevitable."

*Where Mr. Mosley was recently elected (TIME, Jan. 3), during a riotous campaign in which his rich wife (nee Carzon) kissed many a brat, while Premier Baldwin's son Oliver campaigned for Mr. Mosley, and the Premier's daughter Betty campaigned against him.

/-Which called the general strike (TIME, May 10 to Nov. 29).