Fight to the Finish?

A huntin', shootin' and fishin' aristocrat of old England is Esme Ivo Bligh, 9th Earl of Darnley, a product of Eton and King's College, Cambridge, a major in the R.A.F. right through World War I. Last week he startled the Empire by rising in the House of Lords to urge that Great Britain should try to make with Germany an immediate peace without victory.

Taking members of the British Cabinet to task for saying that Britain and France are fighting to produce a "change of heart" in Germany, Lord Darnley argued that: "A free offer [of peace] would more likely produce a change of heart and the security we require from Germany. The only satisfactory guarantee we ever will obtain is [German] good will." According to the noble Lord, Britain "in the years after Versailles [failed] to conciliate Germany," and Adolf Hitler has "aimed partly to make his country free and prosperous, but chiefly and mainly absolutely to free it from any danger in the future, and so every threat we made made him think aggression was necessary."

"Boomerangs." The Lords cheered when Baron Snell of Plumstead, a Labor peer, once a stable groom, scathingly denounced "this tribute to Hitler," but Lord Darnley's proposal was warmly seconded by Baron Arnold, who was Under Secretary for Colonies and later Paymaster General in the British Labor Governments of 1924 and 1929. "The policy of a fight to the finish is wrong," cried Lord Arnold, arguing that, if Britain and France continue fighting Germany until the Nazis are overthrown by revolution, the German people will then go Communist and join the Russians in spreading Communism over the whole of Eastern Europe.

The Bishop of Chichester joined with Lords Darnley and Arnold in plumping for peace-without-victory, observing that the Government had not "taken seriously" the efforts of neutrals to mediate. Outstanding in the stuffy Church of England as a progressive student of social and industrial problems, the Bishop sharply criticized Foreign Secretary Viscount Halifax for stipulating fortnight ago that Germany must offer "adequate guarantees" before peace negotiations can begin. Cried the Bishop: "Military, naval and economic guarantees which satisfy the most exacting critics have a way, after 20 years, of recoiling like boomerangs!"

Peace on Whose Terms? Ascetic Viscount Halifax, angered by the whole debate, replied for His Majesty's Government: "I entirely decline to see this country put in the dock of international affairs and held in any way to blame comparable to Germany for the tragedy into which the world has fallen. . . . I am quite certain that Hitler is very anxious for peace--on his own terms. I am not sure he is anxious for peace on terms which would make for the peace of Europe. . . . The argument tonight rests on the premise that there exists today a reasonably possible ground for successful negotiation. It was precisely that premise that I tried to show last week--with great regret and not without knowledge--that I doubted. . . . I do not believe that at present there is evidence enough to justify the course recommended by Lord Darnley. . . . I am always prepared to negotiate. . . . It does not need much imagination to see the damage which some of the speeches made tonight are capable of inflicting on the nation's cause."

Super-Secret. At Paris, in wartime, any French statesman who made such speeches as Darnley, Arnold and Chichester reeled off last week would find his career ended amid shouts of "Traitor!" In phlegmatic London, the sensation in the Lords effectively diverted public curiosity from what happened that same night in the House of Commons, which held its first secret session of World War II.

Up to about the middle of Queen Victoria's reign, any member could secure a secret session by calling to the Speaker, "I spy strangers!" But after this cry had ejected the German Ambassador and the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, the procedure was modified.

Last week police searched the labyrinthine cellars of the Houses of Parliament for spies, even poked through the ventilating system and set a patrol on the roof. At 2 p.m. workmen and staff employes were sent home, and soon afterward certain brawny nobles staged a regular Rugger scrum for the tiny Peers Gallery. One peer was knocked down, although the Earl of Glasgow had cautioned beforehand: "I do hope your Lordships will manage to conduct yourselves with decorum!" Last measure introduced before the session was scheduled to become secret was The Gas and Steam Vehicles Excise Bill. Too decorous to raise the famed old cry of "I spy!" Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain rose at 3 : 5 7 p.m. and observed :

"Mr. Speaker, I beg to call your attention to the fact that strangers are present."

"Strangers are ordered to withdraw!" cried Mr. Speaker Capt. the Rt. Hon. Edward Algernon Fitzroy and out trooped the press, the official stenographers who ordinarily record the minutes of all sessions, and everyone in the galleries except the peers, who included His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester. On the floor of the grossly overcrowded House, which has seats for only 476 of its 615 members, scores of M.P.s squatted tailor-fashion. To eat during the secret session, which lasted more than seven hours, many had bought for sixpence each what were offered in the refreshment rooms as "Secret Sandwiches for Secret Sessions." These contained "macon"--the British wartime substitute for bacon--smoked mutton.

"Bureaucracy Gone Mad?" During World War I there were five secret sessions of the House of Commons, and years afterward it leaked out that at the first of these Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith was heckled to the verge of resigning, until he promised there would be no conscription of married men such as was later carried out under David Lloyd George and is commonplace today. Another leak revealed that Mr. Asquith was asked if Ignatius Timothy Trebitsch-Lincoln M. P. was a spy. No action was taken at the time, but this shady character decided to emigrate at once to the U. S. (where he later confessed that he had spied for Germany), eventually went to China and there became a Buddhist monk.

There were no leaks last week, but before the secret session began Laborites and Liberals said freely that they were going to raise the major issue of whether the Ministry of Supply under Leslie Burgin is a "bureaucracy gone mad," as charged by Socialist Arthur Greenwood, Deputy Leader of the Labor Party, which would like to get all British industry nationalized as a war measure. It was also intended to ask His Majesty's Government why thousands of miners are still jobless despite a coal shortage, and, finally, why the colossal rearmament program has not yet absorbed 1,400,000 British unemployed.

"Rules the Waves." Day after the secret session, the House of Commons again did business in public, and good luck sent Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain the British Navy's triumph over the Admiral Graf Spee (see p. 20) to divert public interest from any Government shortcomings in the conduct of the war. Jubilant M. P.s, convinced more than ever that Britain rules the waves and eager to get away for the holidays, gave the Cabinet easy sailing.

Matter of Taste. The spry old Prime Minister began his own holiday by flying to inspect British troops in France, retorted to reporters who complained that the war is proving boresome: "It is a matter of taste. Personally, I would prefer to be bored rather than bombed."

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