Parliament's Week

The Commons--

The House was advised that $892,960 was the cost in 1936 of the British Secret Service. This was "less than had been expected," and the ever-efficient Secret Service, far from having overrun its budget as Government departments are inclined to do, reported a tidy little surplus of $7,035. In so far as any British public man has to carry off the honors of being called ''head of John Bull's Secret Service" by such careful newsorgans as Manhattan's Herald Tribune, this duty is discharged by Sir Robert Gilbert Van-ittart, brilliant permanent Undersecretary of the British Foreign Office.* Last week Sir Robert's brother-in-law, vigorous British Ambassador to Germany Sir Eric Phipps, was appointed Ambassador to France, and heaved by the Nazis were sighs of relief. After Dictator Hitler took power, two diplomats Der Fuehrer found too hard and smart for his Nazis were the then U. S. Charge d'Affaires George Anderson Gordon, now U. S. Minister to Haiti, and Sir Eric Phipps.

"John Bull's Secret Service," said the Herald Tribune last November, "is catching and jailing at a record rate spies with German contracts, and worrying the Nazi war staff and diplomatic chieftains by an uncanny knowledge of things which the Nazis thought were impenetrable secrets. . . . Vansittart is the only man living who knows all the Number Ones of the British Secret Service. Even the Prime Minister is denied that knowledge. But one other man is let in on the money side. He is Sir Warren Fisher, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury and Head of the Civil Service; and he does the auditing job himself.

P: The Regency Bill, under which the Duke of Gloucester is to become permanent understudy of King George VI and Regent in the event of His Majesty's "incapacitation" or death (TIME, Feb. 8) was urged with dignity in the House last week by Home Secretary Sir John Simon. As England's greatest lawyer, Sir John recalled how the insanity of King George III prevented that unfortunate monarch from assenting to the Regency Act made necessary by his madness. The present Regency Bill, proposed by King George VI in "a message signed by His Majesty's own hand," should obviate Regency Act difficulties for all time, according to Sir John Simon, and overwhelmingly the House was with him.

Unfortunately the Home Secretary had opened, by mentioning King George III, direct access of attack upon King George VI by the few republican M.P.'s and the lone Communist M.P. last week. Speaker the Rt. Hon. Edward Algernon Fitzroy, a congenitally stanch Monarchist usually quick to choke off belittlers of the Royal Family, was obliged to let them have their say.

Belittled Communist Gallacher: "There is a complete lack of confidence in the present monarch. . . . You have not only had the abdication of a monarch who had been presented as the last word in an Ideal Man, but you have now got a Monarch that no one is sure of at all. . . . His Majesty's Government are only concerned with profits, and so long as the King assisted them in keeping profits going they kept the King. . . . The members of this House are playing with themselves in thinking they can continue to fool the people of this country. . . . There is no other explanation for this Bill than that the Government do not expect the present Monarch to last out his time. Here we are discussing who is going to substitute for His Majesty--even before his Coronation has taken place!"

The House did not dignify Communist Gallacher by shouting him down, as it dignified Edward VIII's champion Winston Churchill during the Crisis (TIME, Dec. 14), but there were cries of "No! No!" last week and that fiery Irish peer, Earl Winterton, livid with fury, growled at Communist Gallacher: "Such suggestions as yours can only be the product of a disordered brain."

Not disordered is the brain of shaggy James Maxton, humorous near-communist (with a small "c") and most picturesque figure in the small Independent Labor Party. Smilingly he twitted His Majesty's Government for providing that Princess Elizabeth, 10, heir apparent to the Throne, shall come of age at 18. "If the duties to be performed are responsible duties, then the appropriate age is the age recognized in all other walks of life--the age of full manhood, of 21 or over," said Laborite Maxton.

"If on the other hand the duties are-- as has been pointed out by the Home Secretary--merely of a purely automatic nature not requiring any maturity of judgment at all but merely the ability to write one's name in a fairly legible hand, then I should imagine that even the young heir to the throne just now, if she has attained ordinary educational advancement, is capable of this particular act." Such gentle fun sped the Regency Bill along to pass the House overwhelmingly 307 to 1, with Mr. Maxton not voting because he acted as a teller.

P: All parties united in stormily denouncing the British Newspaper Proprietors' Association last week. During the months and years in which the story of Mrs. Simpson grew abroad, the docile N. P. A. muzzled itself under Government pressure and kept mum as long as possible, but recently its reporters and cameramen have "got completely out of hand"--in the House of Commons' opinion.

Conservative Sir Percy Kurd and Laborite Emanuel Shinwell last week were typical of British extremes which met to give horrible examples of journalistic prying and peeping into British lives, high, low and intermediate. The coroner in a gruesome North London accident case last week was quoted in the House as remarking of N. P. A. cameramen: "They showed scant regard for decencies in their treatment of the dying patient!" Closing the debate, Home Secretary Sir John Simon warmly assured M.P.'s that he will remonstrate with the N. P. A., drew hearty cheers from all quarters of the House.

P: Japan was denounced by members from cotton-weaving constituencies for working successfully today the following scheme, in cahoots with British cotton printers: During the past three years British imports of Japanese unprinted bleached cotton cloth leaped up from 200,000 yards to 20,000,000 yards. These were printed in British plants, shipped to the Dominions, Crown Colonies and India as "British" (which technically under British law they are, because "finished" in the Kingdom), and sold under the benefits of Imperial preference to British subjects at prices which undercut not only British woven and British printed cloth of similar quality, but even Japanese woven and Japanese printed cloth, which cannot benefit from Imperial preference.

Boiling mad at this Japanese-British sharp practice, M.P.'s demanded that His Majesty's Government bring in a bill to deprive of Imperial preference any cloth which is not British-woven-from-British- made-thread-and-British-finished.

*The Military Intelligence, Naval Intelligence and Secret Intelligence services of His Majesty's Government are separate. Under a Foreign Office rule, if an official paper is found to contain references to their doings, that paper is destroyed and a new one made and entered. Last week the British Embassy in Washington officially and the U. S. State Department informally denied that Sir Robert Vansittart is Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, affirmed that they do not know who is.

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