GREAT BRITAIN: Parliament’s Week: Jul. 25, 1938

The Commons

¶ Reluctantly but unanimously gave final approval to Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Simon’s staggering budgetary decision to spend on the Army, Navy and Royal Air Force $1,750,000,000 in a single year. Sir John, ordinarily rated a cold fish and long the highest paid lawyer in England, told the House in a voice shaking with emotion: “Make no mistake—if we do not succeed and the World does not succeed in finding some way to end the folly of this everlasting expenditure on armaments, then, indeed the future we shall be preparing for our children is one at which we may shudder! We speak as if our civilization was securely based, but there have been other civilizations than ours. Tutankhamen was forgotten until he was dug up. It is very possible that the things protecting our civilization are more slender than they are sometimes thought.”

¶ Were fascinated by the spectacle of a contest between Trotskyism and Stalinism staged on the floor of the House between two of Britain’s most extreme Left M. P.’s, respectively Communist Willie Gallacher and Independent Laborite Jock McGovern. Mr. McGovern demanded that His Majesty’s Government take steps to secure the release from Moscow and Leningrad jails of twelve Indian Communists arrested by Stalin police on charges of Trotskyism. Mr. Gallacher interjected to call Mr. McGovern “a converted revolutionary who now pleads with Capitalism to protect criminals!” Mr. McGovern retorted by calling Mr. Gallacher “a creature so completely under the thumb of Moscow that he dare not stand up and defend British subjects!” After some further parliamentary billingsgate, the matter was left to the British Embassy in Moscow. Most prominent of the twelve Indians arrested in Russia as Trotskyists is the former chief agent of the Moscow Third International in recruiting Indian converts to Communism in Europe, Dr. Virendra Chattopadhyana. At the time of his arrest he was Lecturer on Oriental Languages at Leningrad University.