Parliament's Week

The Lords

P: Continued tranquil, utterly unstirred by tidings that the Sixth Earl Winterton had just been slapped in the face in the House of Commons by crippled Laborite Charles James Simmons and later challenged to duel.

Reason for Their Lordships' apathy: Lord Winterton is not one of them, but an Irish peer, and moreover a Conservative M. P.

"He struck me lightly with the order paper," said Earl Winterton later of Mr. Simmons. "I most certainly had not provoked this enthusiastic supporter of Mr. Snowden by any allusion to the Chancellor of the Exchequer as 'an insulting dog.' I cannot recollect ever using such a term in relation to a human.* It is quite true that I have since been challenged to a duel, but I decline to say by whom."

The Commons

P: Burst into prolonged uproar as a motion censuring the Labor Government was introduced by Conservative Leader Stanley Baldwin.

"I am not a cannonball Protectionist," he began, alluding to obstreperous Conservative Baron Beaverbrook. "Nor am I an acid drop Free Trader," this shot being, of course, for Laborite Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Snowden.

The nearest that muddling Leader Baldwin could come to saying what he is was to propose censure of the MacDonald Government for rejecting the empire staff arrangement advocated at the Imperial Conference by Canada's Prime Minister Richard Bedford Bennett.

"That scheme was all humbug!" shouted James Henry ("Jim") Thomas for the Government. Amid cries of "Shame! Shame! Withdraw! Withdraw!" he stammered: "Of course I mean nothing personal. He himself [Prime Minister Bennett] is not a humbug."

By a vote of 299 to 234 the House threw out Mr. Baldwin's censure, sustained Scot MacDonald.

P: Threw out 224 to 139 a Conservative motion "deploring" that the Labor Government has not protested Soviet dumping of wheat "produced by conscript labor under tyrannical administration."

Although a Liberal, Sir Donald MacLean warmly championed the Labor Government, declared that Russia's exportable surplus of wheat is negligible in comparison with that of Canada, Australia, the Argentine, the U. S.

"The real trouble," said he, "is that there is too much food in the world!"

P: Learned from acrid Chancellor Snowden that in the last six months nobody has accepted his "invitation" to supply the Government with "evidence sustainable in law" that any Soviet produce is being produced by convict or forced labor.

*English historians can recollect that cheeky remarks have been made in the House of Commons immemorially by the Irish Wintertons, the First Lord Winterton having been ennobled by Charles II after being forced to resign from the House of Commons for his "confounded, quarrel some impudence."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.