Game Sir Philip

While George V bowed in humiliation to the will of Australia's Prime Minister James Henry Scullin (see p. 17) one of His Majesty's representatives in the Australian state of New South Wales stoutly defied the local Premier of that State, Laborite J. T. Lang.

Mr. Lang faced last week the same problem which confronted Mr. (later Lord) Asquith in 1910-11 when he was Great Britain's Prime Minister. The House of Lords had refused Mr. Asquith's Parliament bill, designed to remove the Lords' veto power over "money bills." Mr. Asquith announced that unless the Lords voted the Parliament bill he would "advise" George V to create as many new peers of Asquithian persuasion as might be needed to pass the bill. Their Lordships, knowing that the King would do as Mr. Asquith might advise, avoided the issue, yielded.

In Sydney, capital of New South Wales, Laborite Lang not only threatened to advise but did advise His Majesty's representative Sir Philip Game, Governor of the State, to create as many new Laborite members of the Upper Chamber as might be necessary to cause the said Upper Chamber to vote its own abolition. So might James Ramsay MacDonald attempt to abolish the House of Lords.

Faced by Laborite Lang's advice, game Sir Philip Game refused to take it. So might George V have refused Mr. Scullin last week (see p. 17). In London the King (through the Times) defended his yielding course as the stronger, held that to have defied Mr. Scullin would have been "weaker."

In New South Wales the Lang Government declared that Sir Philip Game's position is "an untenable one." Sir Philip held it. Mr. Lang then told reporters that Sir Philip had promised him some time ago, "man to man," that he would not balk at appointing the necessary Laborites to abolish the Upper House. Sir Philip neither confirmed nor denied this promise, continued to balk. Then Mr. Lang threatened to ask George V to recall Sir Philip Game.

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