Lords Vexed

His Majesty George V, King and Emperor, reputedly ordered conveyed to Conservative Premier Stanley Baldwin last week a very strong though private intimation that His Majesty disapproved the Cabinet's sensational proposal to "reform" the House of Lords (TIME, July 4). The reform would limit the number of peers, and thus, by implication, abolish the sovereign's present prerogative to create additional peers at pleasure. Last week not only the King but a very large number of the younger Conservative M. P.'s made known their opposition to the proposed bill which would vastly increase the power of the House of Lords. As a result the Cabinet met in secret session, to consider how the proposal--after having existed only a week--might best be scrapped.

Next morning Colonial Secretary Leopold Charles Maurice Stennett Amery announced to the House of Commons amid cries of "Hear! Hear!" that the bill will not be introduced in anything like its proposed form. Members of Parliament promptly dubbed it "dead."

Some scores of peers who had hurried down from their estates last week to champion the measure in the House of Lords were vexed --returned to their shires.