Parliament's Week

The Lords:

P: Bills enacted by the Mother of Parliaments pass three readings in each House before they are sent to be signed by the King. Last week, when the sensational Matrimonial Causes Bill to liberalize British divorce (TIME, July 12) reached Buckingham Palace, the House of Lords could plume themselves on having injected a series of amendments to the bill cheerfully swallowed by the House of Commons.

Their Lordships did not thus succeed until after a public breakdown, apropos the bill, had been suffered recently in their House by the 18th Earl of Moray, a decorated War veteran whose behavior was such that British press associations at first suppressed the story altogether and even London correspondents cabled only garbled versions. What happened was that Lord Moray boasted of having "married an American girl in Paris," explaining: "Through the careful forethought of my mother-in-law, I can therefore get a divorce in Scotland or America!" From this the Noble Lord switched into totally irrelevant remarks about New York police officials, suddenly interrupting himself to say: "If the Leader of the House will excuse me, I should like to go and put through a personal call to Mr. Gandhi."

Moray then walked out, returned to speak again vaguely on the Matrimonial Causes Bill, then walked toward the Throne rolling a cigaret and made as if to strike a match.

This in the House of Lords is an offense punishable by a $2,500 fine. The Archbishop of Canterbury was seen at this point tensely bending forward with his hand cupped across his forehead as though earnestly praying for Lord Moray. Other peers physically dissuaded him from striking a match, led him out to be attended for several hours by a hastily summoned physician, had him taken home at I a. m. by friends.

As amended by the Lords and passed by both Houses, the Matrimonial Causes Bill extends the grounds for divorce in England from adultery--previously the sole ground--to include also: i) desertion without cause for three years or more; 2) cruelty; 3) incurable insanity if under treatment for at least five years. In hopes of applying brakes to hasty British couples bent on too-swift marriage, the bill provides that a husband & wife must remain married for at least three years before either can sue for divorce, though the courts are empowered to waive this restriction "in cases of exceptional hardship suffered by the petitioner or exceptional depravity on the part of the respondent."

A parliamentary hero this week was the author of the bill, Punch'?, famed Humorist Alan Patrick Herbert, M. P., whose friends call him "Peck" while his public calls him "A. P. H." Not in many years has a private member's bill such as this been permitted by His Majesty's Government to win its way through the Lords and Commons, but in England divorce is still such a risky subject that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain has been overjoyed not to have to touch this bill, fortunately presented by a sort of Court Jester to His Majesty the British Public. Jester Herbert has not taken lightly criticisms of his bill by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Last week he rasped harshly in his hour of triumph at the Primate of All England: "I am bound to say that I am not able--and not for the first time--to follow the workings of that great mind!" C. Prominent Protestant M. P.s such as Winston Churchill hurried with Jewish colleagues like Major James de Rothschild, M. P. to packjam the galleries of the House of Lords last week as it began debate on the Government bill to partition Palestine into a Jewish State, an Arab State and a British Mandate over the Holy Places (TiME, July 19 et ante).

Baron Snell, a onetime ploughboy, stable groom and potman who later became a Fabian Socialist and is chairman of the British Ethical Union led the Labor Opposition's attack. "A complete mess has been made," he declared, "of one of the most honorable tasks ever entrusted to a Government!"

Attacking as a Tory Jew, young Baron Melchett, son of the late great Imperial Chemical Industries tycoon, groaned: "If the Government goes back on the Balfour Declaration and Mandate, as now seems to be planned, it will be the blackest hour in the long history of Jewry. . . . The only Arab the Government pays attention to is the Arab with a rifle!"

An Irishman aged only 28, the 4th Marquess of Dufferin & Ava, had charge of His Majesty's Government's bill in the House of Lords as Undersecretary for Colonies, was on trial last week as a coming Conservative statesman of possibly bright future.

"The Day of the Wrecker--whether Arab or Jew--is done!" he proclaimed, drawing cries of, "But Jews are not employing violence in Palestine!"

"That is true," admitted Lord Dufferin & Ava, then continued his ringing address as a budding statesman by keynoting: "His Majesty's Government are determined not to allow calm proposals to be blocked by threats!" Without a vote in the Lords the bill then went to the Commons.

The Commons:

P: Winston Churchill, having stalked over to the House of Lords to get the lay of the Government's bill to partition

Palestine, slipped back into the House of Commons last week to shotgun it as effectively as he had the Government bill on British armament profiteering, which had to be entirely scrapped and redrafted (TIME, June 28 et ante). In his hunting Mr. Churchill was aided last week by former Prime Minister David Lloyd George and former Colonial Secretary Lieut. Colonel L. C. M. S. Amery. Deftly they put His Majesty's Government on the spot by crying that it was "un-British" to present a bill the effect of which would be for the House of Commons to ask the League of Nations for permission to partition the Mandate of Palestine. Strictly speaking no mandated territory such as Palestine "belongs" to the Great Power to which it is entrusted by the League--indeed the whole system of mandates was evolved at the Versailles Peace Conference to end land-grabbing by the Great Powers--but in the House last week it rapidly appeared that scores of prominent M. P.s of the Prime Minister's own Conservative Party believe with beefy British commonsense that, as one of them said privately, " 'Mandates' are just League of Nations talk and twaddle-- Palestine is British, like every other 'Mandate' and colony we hold!--and we're not going to ask Geneva what we can do with our own."

The Churchill-Lloyd George-Amery sapping and undermining of His Majesty's Government's position was a delicate lobbying and committee-room affair. As it proceeded behind the scenes, the Prime Minister squirmed and conferred in whispers with his colleagues on the Government front bench and House of Commons oratory on the bill scarcely mattered, although some of it was pungent:

Liberal Leader Sir Archibald Sinclair argued that millions of Jews all over the world will develop harmful Freudian complexes if the Jews of Palestine, although given its richest land by the proposed partition, are denied the psychological release of owning certain sacred mounts, even though they be given other mounts. Cried emotional Sir Archibald: "Mount Pisgah will never satisfy the longings which Mount Zion inspires in the Jewish breast! I warn that the whole Jewish race would get a fixation."

To Labor pleas that the proposed Jewish State created by partition would be "too small," peppery Conservative Lieut. Colonel Sir Arnold Wilson retorted: "The largest possible Palestine could not hold 10% of the world's persecuted Jews!"

When cherubic Winston Churchill, who feels keenly that he received no bid to enter the Chamberlain Cabinet and is making the Prime Minister pay dear for this slight, arose with his innocent air, the House of Commons was ripe for the deft amendment he proposed. This was that the House, instead of approving the Government's proposal to partition Palestine and submitting this act of the Mother of Parliaments to the "yes" or "no" decision of the League of Nations, should simply send the Government proposals to Geneva. Thus, if the League says

"no," the Commons will not have been rebuffed; and if the League says "yes" the Commons can still have the last word.

Obviously this Churchill amendment slewed the Government bill so far around as almost to reverse the Prime Minister's intentions and all his Palestine strategy. So many M. P.s leaped from their seats to vote Churchillwise that an official count would have gravely embarrassed Chamberlainians, and the Speaker hastily declared the amendment adopted without a vote. Generally in Jewish and Arab circles this putting of Palestine partition on ice until the League of Nations Council can get around to it next autumn was greeted "with relief."

P: After Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden had said in the House of Commons last week: "If we will not join an international bloc against Communism--and we won't --neither will we join an international bloc against Fascism," Dictator Mussolini newsorgans opined warily: "A new era of good feeling between Italy and Britain finally may be opening."

Three days later Laborite M. P.s demanded to know why "in the name of humanity" His Majesty's Government was not using its warships more vigorously to prevent Spanish Rightist cruisers from stopping Leftist ships carrying "food to starving women and children."

Replied the First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Alfred Duff Cooper: "Let us remember that late in the World War we did everything in our power to starve the women and children in Germany! . . . Those [Leftist food] ships, every one of them, are performing invaluable services to the Spanish [Leftist] Government. . . . Can they really expect that the British Navy will see them safe into harbor?"

"But in the name of common humanity!" interrupted Laborite Wedgwood Benn.

"Common humanity, indeed!" replied the First Lord. "In case you fired on Spanish ships you would be entering the war and risking the lives of British sailors for a cause which no man in this country outside of the [Laborite] Opposition thinks is worth fighting for!"

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