Parliament's Week

The Commons:

P: Subjected Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to polite badgering about the main naval issue over which the United States and the United Kingdom have for 14 years been at odds. Britain, which has many naval bases, seeks an international treaty to hold all navies down to small-sized short-ranged warboats. The U. S., having fewer naval bases, seeks an international treaty permitting all navies to have large-sized, long-ranged warboats. Last week His Majesty's Loyal Opposition argued that the obvious and fair solution is for the U. S. to enter a treaty limiting all navies to small-sized, short-ranged warboats in return for a guarantee by the U. K. that all British naval bases will be available to the U. S. Navy.

Loudly recalled by His Majesty's Loyal Opposition were the many occasions on which U. S. and British statesmen have proclaimed that their countries will "never again" fight each other. Abruptly putting these professions to a British test last week, Liberal Geoffrey Mander asked the Prime Minister directly whether His Majesty's Government would be willing to consider sharing their naval bases with the U. S. Navy.

"No, sir!" answered Stanley Baldwin with a finality which closed the issue.

P: Debated indecisively, while Colonel Charles Augustus Lindbergh listened in the Distinguished Visitors' Gallery, whether the divulging of "shocking evidence in murder cases" is adequately restrained by the Act of 1926.

P: Were gravely disquieted and murmured against Baldwin Cabinet "bumbling" when last week Britain's first winter night air maneuvers had to be suspended by the Air Ministry after two machines crashed with six deaths. The ominous explanation: "foreign sabotage." This, coming so soon after three cases of "sabotage" in the Royal Navy (TIME, Feb. 24), enhanced the anxiety of the House. Its nervousness was further upped by news that a highly important and secret Foreign Office report had vanished from British hands and had been embarrassingly divulged to the world in Rome last week.

To have thereupon accused the British Foreign Office's civil servants of an "indiscretion" would have been contrary to the principles of British parliamentarianism and of British journalism. Instead last week, the London Daily Telegraph spoke of Italian secret operatives having filched the document out of British hands "by a clever piece of indiscretion"--neatest trick of the week.

P: Received back into the House the diffident and bespectacled Secretary of State for Colonies, young Malcolm MacDonald, both he and his father Ramsay MacDonald having now won seats in by-elections after losing out in the general election. MacDonald Senior escorted MacDonald Junior in to take the oath and sign the roll last week amid bedlam from Labor's benches.

"Daddy Judas brings him home," and "Al Jolson and Sonny Boy!" were among the more abusive comments of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition. As Father & Son stiffly and swiftly withdrew, Scottish Laborite John McGovern roared after the Secretary of State for Colonies: "He's following his Dear Old Dad, though he doesn't know where he's going to!"

P: Passed a motion urging "better technical education" for British children after an uproarious, free-for-all in which Lady Astor began by saying that it would have been better for her if she had been put to some useful work at the age of 8. She finally skipped out of the House calling back over her Conservative shoulder, "There is not a single Labor member who would not go into the House of Lords if he had the chance!"

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