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GREAT BRITAIN: Parliament’s Week: Nov. 23, 1936

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TIME

The Lords:

¶Shipping peers such as Lord Essendon of Furness, Cunard White Star and 27 other lines, expostulated in vain last week against the Government’s announced intention to decrease or abolish British shipping subsidiesas soon as mounting freight rates equal or surpass the rates of 1929.

“I appeal especially to the Government to assist our Pacific and Far Eastern shipping!” cried Lord Lloyd. “The traffic between Bombay and Japan, not many years ago, was entirely British. Now it is 80% Japanese.”

The Commons:

¶Sir Thomas Inskip, the pompous new Secretary for Coordination of Defense (TIME, March 23), reported on British Rearmament in an emotional rather than factual vein, “I have never believed and refuse to believe that war is inevitable,” affirmed Sir Thomas. “I am not going to admit the British Navy has met an opponent which cannot be mastered…. It is suggested that the growth of air power has destroyed our historic security as an island. That is only a fraction of the truth. . . . We have a long start over anyone who is ill-advised enough to meddle with our freedom.”

In a spirited attack on Sir Thomas, rapier-tongued Winston Churchill made the most of an admission that the Cabinet is keeping “fluid” its Rearmament plans. “The Government cannot make up their minds,” snorted Mr. Churchill, “and so they decide only to be undecided, resolve only to be irresolute, are adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful but impotent!”

Admitting by implication Mr. Churchill’s charge that the Government has been laggard in Rearmament, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin told the House with what he called “appalling frankness” that “democracies are always about two years behind dictatorships.” In these circumstances,argued the Prime Minister, the democratic British Cabinet are doing the best they can and “every phase of the defense problem is being studied by the best brains of the country, including 29 Ministers of the Crown, 179 officers of the Fighting Services, 283 civil servants, elevenrepresentatives of the Dominions and 30 persons outside the Government services.”

Mr. Baldwin seemed to think that by this statement he had assuaged the fears of the House, and Sir Thomas Inskip confided that the Best Brains plan to defend London from air attack partly by means of a “balloon barrage”; hundreds of balloons floating high above the capital secured by steel cables which, it is hoped, will entangle the wings of enemy bombing planes.

¶The First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Samuel Hoare, revealed that while Britain is bound by treaty to aid Belgium or France if these are attacked by Germany, in the minds of members of the British Cabinet “the situation differs materially from the situation in 1914. In 1914 there were in existence definite commitments. There was an actual and agreed plan between the French, and British general staffs. In the present case there are no such commitments. We shall have to judge the situation when it arises.”

These words could be read as meaning that the Cabinet are in a mood to shrug off some of Britain’s most solemn treaty obligations. Before Europe could be shocked, however, Sir Samuel’s entourage explained that the First Lord’s words were an expression of the fact that Britain is not bound to send any particular kind of aid although she is bound to send aid and is true to this obligation.*

¶The Home Office informed the House that gas masks at the rate of2,000,000 per month will soon be available for distribution free to the 45,000,000subjects of King Edward in the United Kingdom “in the event of an emergency.”The Home Secretary Sir John Simon, speaking in behalf of his bill to ban the wearing of “political uniforms” (TIME, Nov. 16), told the House with an owlish air of knowing more than he could reveal: “Information has reached me which goes to show that both in the case of Fascist and Communist organizations, their funds have been supplemented from abroad.”

No. 1 British Fascist Sir Oswald Mosley, whose party holds not a single seat in Parliament, cracked back from his five-story Fascist Headquarters Building: “We demand that Simon produce his evidence. It is utterly untrue that the British Union of Fascists receives money from foreign sources! This looks to me like part of a frame-up by Parliament to get their bill through and fix Fascism if they can.”

*Such official explanation only made more obscure Sir Samuel’s reasons for making such a statement and British officials were obliged to disclose further the surprising fact that today the French General Staff is cold to the idea of having a British land force again rushed across the Channel as in 1914, though the French are hot to have all possible British fighting aircraft dispatched on the first outbreak of hostilities.

Reputedly Kaiser Wilhelm II referred in 1914 to “England’s contemptible little Army” and the disclosures of last week revealed that the French, while too polite to employ the Kaiser’s adjective, recall how much squabbling there was between British and French commanders in 1914—18. They fear that the necessarily small British Army may have been more trouble than its heroism was worth. Putting this even more politely the New York Times observed last week: “French generals are not certain that they want another British Expeditionary Force on their flank clogging their roads and transport facilities.”

Apoplectic British veterans, who proudly call themselves the “Old Contemptibles,” could be heard vowing in their British clubs last week that in the next war there must be no sending of “New Contemptibles.”

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