Parliament's Week

The Lords--

P: Sat stonily through a great squirting of spleen at the Prime Minister by an old friend who left the Labor Party to follow Scot MacDonald but is now the bitterest foe of his National Government. Fired to fury by the repeal of the land tax which he as Chancellor of the Exchequer riveted on England's great hereditary landlords, self-made and landless Viscount Snowden of Ickornshaw sneered at the Prime Minister: "Once he gave me assurance in a tearful voice that the land tax would be maintained. That was at the time he was begging me not to resign" (as Lord Privy Seal--TIME, Oct. 10, 1932).

Since then, according to Lord Snowden, Britain's Conservatives who hold the whip hand of majority over Scot MacDonald have made him their creature to such an extent that: ''They will have no use for him at the next election, except the use that is made of a reformed drunkard at a temperance meeting!"

The fact that Their Lordships studiously ignored this outburst of Lord Snowden was taken to mean not that the Prime Minister lacked defenders, but that silence was the best means of glossing over his latest breakdown, which leaves the Lord Privy Seal and Conservative Party Leader Mr. Stanley Baldwin as the Empire's acting Premier (TIME, July 2). With Miss Ishbel MacDonald, faithful daughter and housekeeper, the Prime Minister sails this week aboard the Duchess of Richmond from Liverpool to vacation in Canada. According to Dr. L. A. Swann, a London eye specialist attending the American Optometric congress in Toronto last week, "Degeneration of the eye has set in. Both the Prime Minister's eyes have been attacked by glaucoma. Because the eye is unable to throw off its natural fluids it becomes hard through tension. Blindness may result."

The Commons--

P: Roared approval as Lord Privy Seal Mr. Stanley Baldwin took over as Acting Premier with a suave but unmistakable Tory intimation that, with Pacifist MacDonald out of the way, His Majesty's Government will at once proceed to build nearly 1,000 additional fighting planes.

P: Shared with Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain, whom they loudly cheered, the honor of breaking last week the German Moratorium recently declared by Reichsbank President Dr. Hjalmar Schacht (TIME, June 25). To bring Dr. Schacht to his senses the Commons, well aware that Germany has a favorable trade balance with Great Britain, passed a bill enabling Chancellor Chamberlain to confiscate enough British payments due on German goods to make good the Fatherland's announced default on Dawes and Young bond interest payments. By brandishing this authority from the Commons last week, Chancellor Chamberlain scared Berlin into a promise to make full interest payment on the bonds concerned for the next six months (see col. 3).

P: Peppered Acting Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin with questions as to whether a stronger Franco-British entente amounting to alliance is not in course of being forged by the exchange of visits between the French and British general staffs (TIME, July 9) and the visit to Great Britain this week of bellicose French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou accompanied by French Naval Minister Francois Pietri. Despite strong denials by Mr. Baldwin that any such thing is afoot, Pacifist Labor M. P.'s remained restive, caused Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain to add the weight of his denial by declaring in Birmingham. "There is not a word of truth to the report that the forthcoming visit of Barthou is a sinister attempt to commit this country to some new continental alliance."

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