Parliament's Week

The Commons--

P: Peppered Sir Arthur Michael Samuel, one of Britain's greatest financial-legal experts and onetime Financial Secretary to the Treasury, for an opinion on the U. S. Supreme Court's gold clause decision.

Reluctant to speak out, Sir Arthur finally declared: "Stripped of juridical niceties, the effect of the gold clause verdict of the United States Judges is that words have no meaning. The verdict destroys the terms of contracts expressed in explicit language and operative in United States territory. The verdict destroys the reliance by Europe upon any contract of the United States upon which to base stabilization of exchange essential to the restoration of international trade."

P: Were shushed by Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain and Colonial Secretary Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister when Laborite M. P.'s demanded to know whether Britain's Gibraltar-like "Big Five" banks were burned in the peanut oil, pepper and shellac crashes (TIME, Feb. 18, 25) and whether a crash in London's tin market may not be imminent.

Retorted Mr. Chamberlain: "It is entirely contrary to banking practice in this country for a joint-stock bank to speculate in commodities, and I have no reason to assume any banks did so on this occasion."

Snapped Sir Philip, until 1931 a director in Consolidated Tin Smelters: "His Majesty's Government watch the developments in the tin market, but do not consider any action on their part called for. . . . We have never had a complaint that the present high price of tin is unreasonable. . . . In fact the price of tin has remained remarkably stable for many months with the result that speculation has, I understand, greatly diminished."

P: Approved a definitely dignified, able and idealistic panel of seven Britons appointed last week by His Majesty's Government as a Royal Commission to investigate the munitions traffic.

Its professionally impartial Chairman Sir John Eldon Bankes, a retired Lord Justice of Appeal, will be assisted by ex-War Correspondent Sir Philip (Now It Can be Told) Gibbs, Dame Rachel Crowdy of the League of Nations elite antinarcotic squad, Editor-Historian J. Alfred Spender, Lancashire Industrialist Sir Kenneth Lee, Dean Harold Cooke Gutheridge, Law Professor at Cambridge University and Sir Thomas Allen, chief of the Socialist Co-operative Insurance Society, a thorn in British munitions makers' sides.

In Washington high-powered Congressional munitions snoops promptly scoffed and sneered at the new Royal Commission because it is not empowered to extract testimony under oath or to rifle the files of His Majesty's Government. Said Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald: "We felt it would be a great mistake to assume, by giving special powers to the commission, that it would have any difficulty in getting witnesses and evidence. But we mean to give it full support in the discharge of its duties."

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