Parliament's Week

Parliament's Week

The Lords & Commons--

P: Resumed their sessions last week, after enjoying the longest Christmas recess taken by Parliament.

P: Were given to understand that Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin will petition the Crown to dissolve the House of Commons on May 24, and plans to hold a General Election on Thursday, June 13.

The Lords--

P: Droned through a little perfunctory debate, during which several Peers of the Realm were observed to be reading the just-published memoirs of Viscount D'Ab ernon, who was Britain's first post-War ambassador (1920-26) to Germany. At the Spa Conference in 1920, Viscount D'Abernon wrote in his diary, under date of July 6: "Lloyd George and Lord Curzon* are fine representatives. Impudence and dignity are attributed to them by some foreign critics. But the impudence is so extraordinarily quick and intelligent and decided, the dignity so grand in manner and so imposing, that no country could wish for anything better in the way of representatives. . . . Curzon was born grandiloquent. . . . His unique achievement was to combine dignity with humor."

The Commons --

P: Were startled by an astounding ambiguity let fall when the Prime Minister was intimating to the House that he favors the building of a railway tunnel under the British Channel (see International). The purport of easy-going Mr. Baldwin's care less remark was, in effect, that he would not be surprised if the forthcoming general election should sweep his party (Conservative) out of their present absolute majority control of Parliament. Said the Prime Minister: "In view of the time required to carry the project through all stages to the completion of the tunnel, the Government is convinced that it would be in the public interest to deal with this important question outside party atmosphere and by agreement so that a decision of one Government might not be upset by another."

Recalling that Leader of the Labor Party James Ramsay MacDonald had favored the tunnel when he was Prime Minister (1924), Mr. Baldwin added, even more explicitly:

"If the course adopted by Mr. Ramsey MacDonald in 1924 should again com mend itself to him and to Mr. Lloyd George (Leader of the Liberal Party), I should like to obtain co-operation from the outset of the inquiry."

Earlier in the week Viscount Rothermere, England's most potent newspaper tycoon, once Conservative, now Liberal, blatantly and confidently predicted in his Daily Mail the fall of the Conservative Government.

P: Chuckled as the Lady Astor, patrician Virginia-born British M. P., silenced a feminine opponent on the floor of the House with the fine old Southern expletive, "Oh, rats!"

The argument started when the noble Lady's knowledge of slum children was challenged by the Labor party's famed spinster M. P., Miss Ellen ("Wee Ellen") Wilkinson.

"It is difficult to accept the Noble Lady's opinions as final," said Miss Wilkinson, "for we all know that her own children had every care that money can give them."

"Wouldn't it be just as logical," cooed Lady Astor, "to say that because you are not a mother you should have no right to talk about children?"

Retorted "Wee Ellen," unruffled: "One expects from the Noble Lady that cheap sort of sneer."

"One does not need to be poor to have a heart!" cried Lady Astor. "Women who have money have just as much interest in child welfare as any other women!"

"Perhaps," admitted Miss Wilkinson, "but you seem to be most interested in keeping your money."

"Oh, rats!" said Lady Astor. and apparently Labor's "Wee Ellen" could think of no logical reply. "Hear! Hear!" cried delighted members of the Noble Lady's party--Conservative.

*Famed "Curzon of Kedleston" (1859-1925) was then British Foreign Secretary. Too little remembered is the fact that he was at least the grandfather of the Dawes Plan. As British Foreign Secretary (1919-24), he had officially denounced as "utterly illegal" the French at tempts to squeeze reparations out of Germany by occupying the Ruhr. As an alternative course he urged and finally persuaded the Allied Powers to convene the Committee of Experts which drafted the Dawes Plan. Two decades earlier he had been one of England's greatest Viceroys of India (1899-1905). His posthumous biography by the Earl of Ronaldshay was published last year by Boni & Liveright; 3 vols., $15.