Parliament’s Week: The Lords:

Parliament’s Week

¶Lord Stanhope, the Cabinet’s First Commissioner of Works, was understood to hint that His Majesty’s Government think they may soon have to impose highly unpopular Army conscription when he guardedly told Their Lordships. “I am bound to admit that under present conditions of service the volunteer system is obviously in grave danger.”*

¶The Archbishop of Canterbury and other Lords Spiritual and Lords Temporal were reported to have conferred in aprivate room of the House of Lords last week as to whether, in case King Edward attempts to marry twice-divorced Mrs. Simpson, premises of the Church of England and one of its pastors should be provided or withheld. To this United Press report, the Associated Press added that suggestions of abdication by His Majesty to marry Mrs. Simpson were welcomed by some of Their Lordships with the comment, “Then let him abdicate, by all means, and let’s get on with the Duke and Duchess of York”—i.e., as King & Queen.

The Commons:

¶Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden gently deplored Dictator Adolf Hitler’s tearing up of the Versailles Treaty clause which placed German rivers under international control (TIME, Nov. 23), saying: “Despite their assurance given last year of no fur ther moves without previous consultation, the German Government have once again abandoned the procedure of negotiation in favor of unilateral action.”

“What possible confidence can be placed in Germany’s signature to agreements?” asked the Leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, Laborite Clement Attlee. “Are there any more agreements which are likely to be denounced over the week end?” To this reminder that the Nazi Cabinet are accustomed to time their hammer blows to fall while the British Cabinet are taking their accustomed long week end off, no reply was made by Week-Ender Eden, and this week the Cabinet actually met on Sunday.

¶Other questions to which His Majesty’s Government would not reply last week included a barrage from Labor M. P.’s on the subject of the King & Mrs. Simpson.

Miss Ellen Wilkinson, the tiny Member for Jarrow whose “hunger marchers” have recently been snubbed in London,* tackled the Cabinet’s wealthy shipping tycoon, President of the Board of Trade Walter Runciman, thus: “Can the President say why, in the case of two American magazines of high repute which have been imported into this country, during the last few wrecks at least two and sometimes three pages have been torn out?”

“My department has nothing to do with that.” answered President Runciman. When “Wee Ellen” attempted to question the Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, who heads the department concerned, Speaker Fitzroy of the House of Commons refused to permit her question. Skating on thin ice, London editors of popular news-organs, still afraid to print the Simpson story, asked their bewildered readers under screaming headlines “WHAT IS THIS THING WHICH THE BRITISH PUBLIC IS NOT ALLOWED TO SEE?”

“As a Briton, I am not supposed to know anything about Mrs. Simpson,” said Miss Wilkinson off the iloor of the House. “I have seen current issues of TIME with pages ripped out. Shortly after my question to Mr. Runciman. the parliamentary secretary of one of the Ministers came to me and told me there was no censorship of TIME. He told me the pages were torn out in the United States, not in England.”

Added Miss Wilkinson with a laugh, “I immediately asked why—if this were so— the issues reaching subscribers by mail are left untouched.” To this the parliamentary secretary made no answer, but in London some newsdealers by last week had managed to obtain some unmutilated copies of TIME and were in fact bootlegging these to steady British customers. British wholesale newsdealers continued to cut out of every arriving U. S. publication every Simpson story.

¶Members of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, although prevented by the Speaker from complaining in the House, complained in its lobbies that the Independent Labor Party weekly. New Leader, had been blocked by the Conservative owners of the press on which it is printed from bringing out an editorial entitled “How Long Will Censorship Be Maintained?”

“American readers may be interested to know the kind of censorship which is applied here,” said New Leader Editor Archibald Fenner Brockway. “At first the printing company refused to include my editorial because they said it was ‘a breach of faith’ but after I insisted they came back and said their solicitors had told them it might constitute ‘seditious libel.’ ”

“From the working class point of view,” continued Editor Brockway, “the only issue which is relevant is the rumor that Mrs. Simpson has Fascist sympathies. We do not know whether this is true or not, but it may be of significance in the development of events.”

¶Agreeing with Editor Brockway. that the issue of Mrs. Simpson is not in any way a moral one turning upon the number of her divorces but instead pivots on her politics, James Maxton, M. P., famedshaggy-haired extreme left Laborite, declared warmly in the lobby of the House: “Finding himself in difficulties with the aristocracy, the King is on a campaign to consolidate his personal popularity with the masses.

“He will win.

“The King’s dramatic appearance in Albert Hall on Armistice Night (TIME, Nov. 23). his review of the fleet and his present tour of Wales are all designed to overcome the vehement objections to a possible marriage from the ruling classes, especially their spokesman, the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

*King Edward’s close friend, War Minister Alfred Duff Cooper, said with neat understatement during the week that Britons seem hesitant to enlist in the Army ”in the belief that it does not offer a safe career.” According to Mr. Duff Cooper, soldiers’ sweethearts in the United Kingdom now definitely do not like to walk out with a young man in khaki, and His Majesty’s Government are about to supply free the handsome blue “walking out uniforms” which a British Tommy has hitherto had to buy with his own money if his girl was averse to khaki. Echoing Lord Stanhope, Mr. Duff Cooper added. “Unless there is improvement, and a very large one. in the immediate future, our system of voluntary recruiting will break down.” *”Unwittingly by King Edward who, when driving to open Parliament (TIME, Nov. 9), chanced to bow to subjects standing on the opposite side of the street from the Jarrow Marchers who had been permitted by police to stand on a special sector of the pavement in the rain. With tears on her cheeks, Miss Wilkinson presented to the Clerk of the House of Commons the petition of the Jarrow Marchers for succor. Poor though they are, they had had this bound in leather with lettering stamped in gold, and were scarcely surprised, though sorely vexed, when the Clerk of the House of Commons quietly put it away with other books.