Parliament's Week

The Lords: P: Subjected the present National Government to its first defeat in the House of Lords by adopting, 32-to-29, a trivial amendment to the Education Bill opposed by His Majesty's Government but sponsored by the Most Reverend Father Cosmo Gordon Lang. His Grace the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England.

The Commons:

P: Passed, 251-to-128, on third and final reading "that most iniquitous measure,

The Tithe Bill," as it is called by 300,000 English tithe-payers. Their loudly vocal organization at once announced that they will petition King Edward to refuse his signature--a refusal which would upset the whole British theory that the King must do as Parliament votes and the Cabinet advises.*

P: Received from terse Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain the bad news that Britain's current "phenomenal rates of expenditure" for armaments "have made practically certain that there will be a deficit in the Budget.

The only question is what size that deficit will be." Earlier in the week rumors that British civil servants were planning to go on a stayin strike for more pay similar to those in France caused Chancellor Chamberlain to tell the House: "Civil servants who seek to indulge in such strike tactics render themselves liable to instant dismissal!"

P: Received the Prime Minister, now very much under political clouds, with far from spontaneous cheers by Conservative M. P.'s of For He's a Jolly Good Fellow! Afterwards the Tory Party whips whispered to their cheering parliamentarians that Stanley Baldwin will not actually resign before he leaves Britain for his usual August vacation in France.

P: Cheered announcements by His Majesty's Government in a crisp White Paper that for the next ten years sponsored programs and radio advertising will continue to be banned from all broadcasting stations in Great Britain.

P: Discovered that 80 M. P.'s have pledged themselves to support the movement for pensioning British spinsters off at 55 (TIME, July 6). The spinsters keynote: "But for the War, in which the Empire lost more than 1,000,000 men, most British spinsters would have found husbands."

*A purely English problem, tithes have been collected since 786 A.D., mainly to support the Church of England, farmers originally paying a tenth of their crop to the parson. Since 1836 cash payment has been enforced, and in 1936 rural indignation is such that of 5,500 court orders obtained last year to enforce payment of tithes not one was executed. The Tithe Bill, as passed, is to end tithe payments as such by handing to the Church and certain swank "public schools" gilt-edged stock worth $350,000,000 and paying 3 % interest guaranteed by the State. In turn the State will exact for the next 60 years from former tithe-payers sums which, if fully paid, will then wipe out the obligation forever in 1996 A.D. Up & down England's countryside tithe riots have been frequent, and police seeking to find and seize cattle and other possessions of farmers who refuse to pay have disguised themselves as yokels, wandered about with straw in mouth on snooping expeditions, have been roughly handled when unmasked by genuine yokels.

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