Parliament's Week

The Lords--

P:Were startled when Viscount Burnham, outstanding publicist, holder of an LL. D. from the universities of Cambridge, McGill, Athens and Perth (West Australia) began to speak bristling words of indignation: "The proceedings of this House now constitute a parliamentary scandal! The House of Commons now passes what bills they please and shovel them upon us too rapidly for serious contemplation or debate. The indignities now heaped upon the House of Lords* would not have been tolerated 30 years ago. I fail to see why they are tolerated now!"

P: Baron Carson, quavering 73-year-old Irish Life Peer: "It's high time . . . [Pause] ... I say it is high time that the Lords asserted themselves! . . . "However . . . [Pause] . . . some of us are to blame. . . . There are about 700 peers . . . [Pause] . . . and yet I notice, whenever I come here that 50 seems . . . [Pause] ... to be a good average attendance."

P: Vicount Haldane, Scottish jurist, statesman, philosopher and educator, onetime (1912-15) Lord High Chancellor: "Nobody takes the work of this House seriously (wagging a finger at the Marquess of Salisbury* Leader of the House of Lords). It is looked upon as a terrible fatality if we must continue debate after it is time for dinner."

P: The Marquess of Salisbury: "A finger has been wagged in my direction. I fail to understand this movement. Was it admonitory?"

P: Viscount Haldane: "It was not admonitory."

P: Earl Russel (closing the debate, since the time lacked but twelve minutes of six o'clock): "The unhappy situation of this House is due, of course, to the fact that the House of Commons has the ear of the nation and holds the nations purse strings."

The Commons--

P: Voted down 271 to 146 a Liberal motion to reduce the salary of Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain. This technical procedure was intended as a motion of censure against the Cabinet for dispatching its recent intemperate and threatening note to Soviet Russia (TIME, March 7). Paradoxically, Sir Austen, although he signed the vote as Foreign Secretary, was its chief opponent in the Cabinet.

P: Heard peace-propagating Sir Austen Chamberlain (see above) declare that relations would not be broken off with Soviet Russia.

P: Were buttonholed in the lobby by successive groups of 25 feminists marshalled by Lady Astor, M. P., to lobby for the bill reducing the minimum voting age for British women from 30 to 21.

*Viscount Astor, husband of famed Nancy Astor, "first woman M. P." said recently: "A great many peers seem to regard the House of Lords as a male sanctuary or a golf club with membership restricted to retired Colonels. . . . They prefer to overlook that it is an assembly making laws for 40,000,000 people of whom half are women. . . . The House of Lords is the only public body which has not recognized that women have rights. . . ."

*The Earldom of Salisbury (first creation by Edward III) dates from 1337 ; but was bestowed (second creation by Queen Elizabeth) upon the great family of the Cecils in 1605, and the Marquisate added in 1789 by George III. The present Marquess and Earl of Salisbury is the highest ranking peer in Premier Baldwin's Cabinet as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords. His father, the 3rd Marquess, was, of course, Queen Victoria's famed Conservative Prime Minister.