Parliament's Week

The Lords:

P: Prepared as an aftermath of the de Clifford manslaughter case (TIME, Dec. 16 et seq.) to abolish the right of an accused lord to trial by his peers. Reason: taxpayers object to forking up the $50,000 such trials can cost. Introducing a motion to brand the right of a peer to trial by the House of Lords as "archaic," Bachelor Viscount Sankey, recently Lord Chancellor, last week declared:

"Pageantry has its place, but nobody wants a criminal trial to be a pageant!"

Gobbled the Earl of Halsbury in protest : "I thought the de Clifford trial was most impressive, most impressive."

"Certainly the procedure should be maintained in cases of treason!" urged the ist Baron Rankeillour, Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons in 1924-29. But such objections and proposals last week went unheeded. By a vote of 45-to-24 the few peers in the House upheld Lord Sankey, and the Government was thus enabled to prepare a bill under which an arrested peer will face ordinary trial in Britain's ordinary courts.

The Commons:

P: Received from His Majesty the first written message of King Edward VIII to the House (see p. 18).

P: Resumed active deliberations, for the first time since the demise of George V, by plunging back into obscure depths of British foreign policy unplumbed since the resignation as Foreign Secretary of Sir Samuel Hoare (TIME, Dec. 30). Most effective spokesmen for His Majesty's Loyal Opposition are has-been Prime Minister David Lloyd George, 73, and has-been Labor Party Leader George Lansbury, 77. Last week they tried to harass His Majesty's Government into fulfilling the pre-election pledge given by Prime' Minister Stanley Baldwin actively to support "collective security" and the League of Nations in measures for Peace.

"You are constantly boasting of your organization of 50 nations for sanctions against an aggressor!" roared "Old George" Lansbury at His Majesty's Government. "If you can organize for that, you can organize to remove the causes and excuses for aggression. It is as easy to organize for construction as for destruction. That's all I am asking this government of the greatest imperialist power in the world to do. go to Geneva and start the organization of a world economic conference, where Germany, Japan, Italy and all the rest of them can state their case. They know it better than we do. And I hope that in such an enterprise we will be big enough to let the people of India, Egypt and Africa participate in such a conference on equal terms and rights with ourselves."

This was backed up by David Lloyd George. "I don't believe you'll have peace in the world," he cried, "until you reconsider the mandates!"--i.e., old German colonies shared out among the victorious Allies. "There is Belgium, with a population of seven or eight millions, who has the best piece of German East Africa," continued Mr. Lloyd George. "She has also the whole Congo. Portugal, with a small population, has a million square miles. Holland is in the same position. Each of these countries has great tropical territories, and here you have Germany with none and Italy with practically none. I don't believe you'll make peace in the world unless you go to meet them in a friendly way and say: 'The British Empire is prepared to reconsider the question of mandates.' "

Thus Mr. Lansbury and Mr. Lloyd George gave public tongue to proposals now being voiced in Great Britain by many potent private persons, notably in the City, that Great Powers hungry for territory simply must be sated at the expense of Small Powers. Neither Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin nor Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden let themselves be drawn into so much as a word of reply, although the issue thus scratched by Lansbury and Lloyd George was regarded in Government circles as the most crucial of 1936. With the Government's party whips cracking, a motion by Mr. Lansbury for immediate action was defeated 228-to-137, whereupon the House voted confidence 207-to-125 that "His Majesty's Government will take all practicable steps to promote international prosperity and better understanding between peoples."

Of great significance, the debate revealed that even "Old George" Lansbury, a lifelong Socialist, uncompromising pacifist and militant champion of the League of Nations, now finds himself in that large camp which is so intimidated by the facts that Adolf Hitler could bomb London, and Benito Mussolini could bomb British war boats in the Mediterranean, as to agree with Sir Samuel Hoare that II Duce and Der Fuhrer should, with British approval, receive portions of Africa now belonging to non-British nations. C. Sir Arnold Wilson, M. P., fresh from a holiday visit to Rome, disclosed that Premier Mussolini had asked him: "Do you Britishers really believe that you should, in the past, have left the savage world to its own devices--in the New World, the Antipodes, Africa and Asia? Have your activities in the last 300 years been criminal adventures, in your eyes?

"Are not we Italians, by imitating you, paying you the highest compliment? Was Cecil Rhodes a criminal?

"Is it not time that the British people realized that their present attitude implicitly condemns all that is greatest in their history?"

P: Having lost his seat in the general election, James Ramsay MacDonald last week won another in a by-election, and the following disclosure was made by Lord Blanesburgh: "Some days before the state opening of Parliament which was canceled owing to Princess Victoria's death, the King summoned MacDonald and said: 'I think it is all wrong that you who have been Prime Minister for so long, merely because you have no seat either in the Lords or the Commons, should not be present at the state opening of Parliament, and accordingly I invite you to attend me and as Lord President of the Council to stand behind me when I read my address.' That was characteristic of King George."

Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, seeking a safe constituency for the King's silver-haired, silver-tongued friend, arranged for MacDonald to contest a seat representing the Scottish Universities, notwithstanding that as Labor Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald sought and failed some years ago to combine the three Scottish Universities' seats into one. Last week the Scottish academicians recognized that Mr. MacDonald is now as Conservative as any man in the Kingdom, sent him to the House of Commons where Conservatives cheered and Laborites jeered. C. Speeded extension of Unemployment

Insurance ("The Dole") to include agricultural workers by passing through second reading a bill under which jobless farmhands, previously denied any dole, would receive a dole considerably less than that of the urban proletariat. Labor M.P.'s demanded dole "equality for farmhands" but finally abstained and the vote was 231-to-2.

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