GREAT BRITAIN: Parliament’s Week: Dec. 17, 1934

The Lords:

¶ Cheered a belated tribute to Hoover Diplomacy by one of the Empire’s brainiest peers, Philip Henry Kerr, Marquess of Lothian. “The great failure of the present British Government in the Far East,” said Lord Lothian, “is that it did not cooperate wholeheartedly with the United States when Secretary Stimson protested against Japan’s absorption of Manchukuo.” Welcoming with terse realism Japan’s present virtual rupture of the London Naval Parley, the Marquess exclaimed, “Now we have an opportunity to redeem our blunder, and if the situation is wisely handled it may be possible to restore to the Pacific a collective system strong enough to vindicate the principles set up in the group of Washington treaties in 1922.”

Urging His Majesty’s Government to rally to the principles of these treaties—the 5-5-3 ratio and the “Open Door” etc.—Lord Lothian concluded: “But I should very much like to ask the United States definitely how far they mean to go themselves in making these principles effective.” This drew from obliging U. S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull a prompt statement that the Roosevelt Administration’s course in this matter has not been charted, will depend on developments.

The Commons:

¶ Eased into the first phase of Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon’s promised munitions probe (TIME, Dec. 3 ) when Laborite F. S. Cocks subjected His Majesty’s Government to a barrage of questions amounting to this charge: one of the King’s officers onactive service in China was permitted to act as a munitions salesman for Vickers-Armstrong, Ltd., and the War Office’s dossier of correspondence relating to this officer has been destroyed. To Laborite Cocks’sloud question “Have they been destroyed so that the secrets of the War Office and armament firms will not be disclosed?” the Government’s representative in the House at the moment, Mr. Douglas Hacking, Financial Under Secretary of the War Office, deigned no reply. He had previously admitted that the correspondence in question could not be found.

Meanwhile such eminent pacifists as Viscount Cecil, H. G. Wells and the Bishop of Chelmsford vigorously protested last week that Britain’s munitions quiz must not be buried in the doldrums of a Parliamentarycommission packed with Conservatives, but must be conducted by a full dress and traditionally impartial Royal Commission, having the same powers as the U. S. Senate’s munitions inquisitors.

¶ Settled down to spend nearly a year debating legislation based on the Linlithgow India Report (TIME, Dec. 3) after it passed the Conservative Party Caucus last week by a smash majority of three to one. Thus was squelched the Die-Hard Revolt against Conservative Leader Stanley Baldwin led by pugnacious Winston (“Winnie”) Churchill and the testy old Marquess of Salisbury. Though nobody really expected Squire Baldwin to go down in defeat, the House was vastly excited when he faced the caucus threatening to resign leadership of the Conservative Party if defeated. Stocky Mr. Baldwin, the image of John Bull, tugged gently at his large lapels as he murmured this ultimatum: “Todayyou have a good chance of keeping India in the Empire forever” by adopting the Linlithgow Report. “If you refuse this opportunity you’ll inevitably lose India before two generations have passed.”

This was mere opinion, but the opinions of Squire Baldwin have made English history time & again since the War, and they made it again last week. As he has muddled through Depression, he muddled through the caucus to the greatest party victory of his career. Conservatives said of Mr. Churchill: “Winston is through. He can never come back after this.” But that, too, was a mere opinion, for Conservative Churchill’s entire career has been a series of falls from which only he could ever have recovered.