Parliament's Week

The Lords: P: Queried the Lord Chancellor, Viscount Hailsham, onetime War Minister, as to whether the United Kingdom has sufficient food stores to hold out in case an enemy cut off Great Britain's supplies. "We calculate our three months' supply ought to be enough for us in any temporary squeeze,'' replied His Lordship, "but no method of food storage is going to save us as long as we do not keep our control of the sea and the air."

The Commons: P: Cheered whirlwind efforts to secure British control of the sea and air by Air Minister Viscount Swinton and First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Samuel Hoare, who is popularizing his new slogan "BRITAIN MEANS BUSINESS!"

Although supplementary estimates for Britain's great rearmament scramble were issued only a few weeks ago, sensational further supplementary estimates were issued last week. These rocketed the 1936 rearmament bill to $940,000,000 with a further "rearmament loan" in prospect. To questions by nervous M. P.'s as to how quickly the Navy can act, Sir Samuel replied that very shortly the Admiralty will be able to announce that more than half its capital ships are being kept ready for immediate action.

Sixteen new British war boats will soon be laid down, four new British war aerodromes laid out; the rearmament estimate melon is cut among Britain's fighting services thus: Navy $406,445,000; Army $279,555,000; Air Force $254,000,000.

P: Cheered announcements that 4,500 miles of main British motor roads are being "nationalized" by dynamic Minister of Transport Leslie Hore-Belisha. Today British motor cars do not stop dead, as they are supposed to do, before every "Belisha Beacon" at which pedestrians theoretically have the right-of-way to cross (TIME, Nov. 26, 1934), but Mr. Hore-Belisha is capitalizing on the publicity his beacons won to carry out vital reforms. Shocking is the fact that two-thirds of Britain's boasted "Great North Road" from London to Scotland is too narrow for two lanes of traffic. Hundreds of millions must be spent, but for a starter some $25,000,000 is to put 20,000 road workmen into jobs by next autumn.

P: Peppered peppery Undersecretary for Air Sir Philip Sassoon and overwrought Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden with demands that something be done about Germany's insolence in sending the Hindenburg flying over strategic British areas and about Adolf Hitler's neglect to answer Mr. Eden's questions about the intentions of Nazidom in Europe (TIME, May 18). Presently the handsome young Foreign Secretary's doctor packed him off to the country for a "complete rest," and pretty Mrs. Eden explained that her poor "Tony" has been working 16 hours-per-day. His previous letdown (TIME, April 15, 1935) was after he over-exerted himself meeting on one trip those two strenuous dictators Hitler & Stalin, men accustomed to work 16 hours-per-day as long as may be necessary, without cracking.

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