Parliament's Week

COMMONWEALTH (British Commonwealth of Nations)

House of Commons:

P: Lady Astor spoke in favor of a motion to permit British women married to aliens to retain their British nationality. Said she:

"Women are intensely partiotic, and it is hard because a woman is married to an alien that she has to give up that which is very dear to her. Woman has always been inconvenient, but she is an inconvenient necessity or she would never have been introduced into the Garden of Eden [laughter], and woman will become more inconvenient if the law of the land does not go in the way which thinking women want it to go."

The motion was subsequently adopted.

P: A private bill, presented by a Labor member, was defeated in its first reading by a majority of 67. In his election campaign, Premier Baldwin had promised to grant the franchise to women on equal terms with men./- This was cited in defense of the bill, but the Government, through the mouth of Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Home Secretary, stated that it was not yet prepared to grant the reform. The Prime Minister's pledge was, however, confirmed.

P: Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain informed the House that, under present circumstances, the Government liad no intention of sending an Ambassador to Moscow.

P: The question of the naval base at Singapore was again raised. Premier Baldwin created a stir by declaring that responsible Japanese opinion was not opposed to the construction of the base as had often been claimed.

P: An item in the Home Secretary's estimates moved ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Snowden to intense indignation. The item was a matter of about $5,500,000 for a special grant to the Government of Northern Ireland to help defray the expenses of the special constabulary. Mr. Snowden declared that there is, counting police and specials, a bobby for every six families in Ulster. He further declared that the money was being used for the "support of Orange ascendancy," and said that, if parliamentary etiquette permitted it, he would, "characterize with an ugly word" the methods of the Belfast Government in illegally extracting money from the British Treasury.

P: Men must be 21 before they can vote in parliamentary elections, women 30.