Parliament's Week

The Lords and Commons--

P:Adjourned until Oct. 30 after mildly distressing revelations last week concerning plans for the celebration next May of the 25th anniversary of His Majesty's accession to the Throne.

Their Lordships learned from Viscount Hailsham, Secretary for War, that the Irish Free State has refused to send a delegation to the Jubilee (May 6). On May 24 President de Valera's bill to abolish the Free State Senate and pave the way for proclamation of an Irish Republic is scheduled to become law.

"It is His Majesty's wish that the celebration be as simple as possible and that all undue expenditure be avoided." Acting Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin told the House of Commons. "The title 'Silver Jubilee' has. with His Majesty's approval, been officially adopted for the year 1935."

Meanwhile last week, before adjournment:

The Commons--

P:Raised cheer on cheer for that popular John Bull, bottle-nosed Acting Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, as he championed the Government's big Air Force program in homely phrases against a Labor motion of censure and let fall a sentence which rang round the world. "Since the day of the air the old frontiers are gone," cried Orator Baldwin, "and when you think of the defense of England you no longer think of the white cliffs of Dover, but you think of the Rhine. That is where, today, our frontier lies!"

World reaction was instantaneous. French editors were overjoyed at this highly undiplomatic singling out of Germany as Britain's potential foe. The Netherlands' great Liberal daily, Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, said with a bluntness equal to Mr. Baldwin's: "Has in peace time the Premier or Acting Premier of any Great Power in Europe ever spoken in such terms of another great European power? And it is not a flaming sword but a thoughtful smoldering rage that is the attribute of Baldwin."

That the House of Commons was indeed smoldering against Nazidom appeared when Sir John Simon, supporting Mr. Baldwin, drew rare cheers by this involved but venomous reference to Germany: "If His Majesty's Government are to be attacked [for our air program], if our critics are to be answered, let us do it in the good old-fashioned way, by argument and vote, and let us utterly repudiate the methods of gangsters!"

Amid fresh cheers for His Majesty's Government, which will up the number of British war planes from 844 to 1,304 in the next five years, the House threw out the Labor motion of censure by a smash vote of 404 to 60.

P: Gloomed over a warning to the House by President Walter Runciman of the Board of Trade that Britons may now expect some deflation of the boom which started when the Government switched from free trade to protection--a switch which enabled British manufacturers to recover much business in the home market which they had lost to cut-rate foreign competitors. All last week Britain's professionally pessimistic press economists drew dire conclusions from President Runciman's mild assertion: "There are signs that the home market has reached the saturation point."

Shortly after Parliament adjourned last week President Runciman's efforts to stimulate Anglo-German trade received a sharp setback. A Lancashire textile delegation sent to Berlin under Sir George Holden with the cooperation of the Board of Trade reported most adversely on German credit. Promptly in Manchester the Empire's leading cotton spinners announced that they will sell no more yarn to Germany, that as a result they must throw out of work at least 10.000 skilled spinning operatives in Lancashire, 40,000 other Britons, directly or indirectly employed in cotton milling.

P:Accepted with smug satisfaction the happy ending by Turkish Dictator Mustafa Kemal Pasha of the incident in which Turkish shore patrols shot at British officers sailing in Turkish waters, killing one (TIME, July 30).

"Hear! Hear!" cried the House as Captain Anthony Eden announced for the Foreign Office that, while Dictator Kemal's Government absolutely refuses to apologize to His Majesty's Government, Turkey has paid -L-2,000 ($10,000) voluntarily to the family of slaughtered Surgeon Lieut. Robinson.

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