Parliament's Week

The Lords:

P:Were droning over the Private Possession of Firearms Bill when Lord Marley created a sensation by implying that Lord Strabolgi owns a submachine gun similar to those used by U. S. gangsters & police.

"Yes," agreed Lord Strabolgi, "and so under this bill I would be liable to two years' penal servitude. I think it should be amended."

Hastily added Lord Marley. "No doubt many citizens have similar ones!" It was then promised that the bill will be amended.

The Commons:

P:Strongly condemned by resolution, homework for school children in the United Kingdom after its rigors had been movingly conjured up by a Labor M. P. who climaxed, "So I asked my eldest boy about this homework only this morning and he said, 'Father, the House of Commons should consider this slavery at home instead of the slavery in Ethiopia!'" P:Raised a question so delicate that Foreign Minister Anthony Eden did not trust himself to reply verbally. The question: Is there any international convention which His Majesty's Government could invoke to stop the Argentine Republic from issuing stamps on which the "British" Falkland Islands are described as "Argentine." Replied careful Mr. Eden in writing: "The answer is in the negative." In Buenos Aires next day villainously mustached Argentine Foreign Minister Carlos Saavedra Lamas in effect hissed that if that proud beauty Britannia continues to think the Falkland Islands are hers, that is perfectly all right with him. "In Britain they always maintain that the Islands are theirs, just the same as we always maintain they are ours," explained the Foreign Minister. "It is a century-old controversy, but they have admitted, and we consider that Mr. Eden has just admitted again, our 'assertion of claim.' ":* P:Received with loud and significant cheers a speech by former Civil Lord of the Admiralty George Lambert in which this mild-mannered Liberal M. P. urged His Majesty's Government to "adopt a two-power air standard--a British Royal Air Force twice as strong as that of any other nation! . . . The League of Nations has failed, and we must rely on our own strong right arm. . . . There is more loot in London than in Addis Ababa, and I prefer that London should not be at the mercy of any Dictator!" Only Comrade William Gallacher, the House's new and lone Communist M. P., opposed Britain's current $1,500,000,000 rush to increase her armament (TIME, Nov.11), a rush so precipitous that last week the Admiralty besought sailors who have been pensioned off to rejoin the colors immediately. Yapped "Red Willie": "A strong Britain under the present Government would be a menace to Civilization!" In a salty plea for more efficient Imperial Defense, which evoked sensational repercussions against the Prime Minister (see col. 3), Rear Admiral Sueter put further steam into Britain's arming program by declaring that the Kingdom's Scottish Naval bases are "too near to Germany," and also exposed are all the southern English bases which should, in Rear Admiral Sueter's opinion, be removed to the west. Hoarsely he cried: "It is objected that we could not remove the southern dockyards because the wives and families of the crews live there. That isn't the way war is waged. The southern ports are all open to aerial bombardment. . . ."

*The more than 100 islands have a total population of 2,437 and lie obscurely some 300 miles east of Cape Horn. Discovered by Britons, they were seized in succession by the French and Spanish. In 1914 the Falklands won their first real fame when off their shores British Admiral Sturdee destroyed the daring German raider squadron of Admiral von Spee.

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