Parliament's Week

The Lords: P: Were treated to a vigorous denunciation of Democracy--particularly the U. S. brand--and a spirited defense of Fascism by that strong-minded patriarch, the Bishop of Exeter, Rt. Rev. Lord William Gascoyne-Cecil, whose father, the late great Marquess of Salisbury, was thrice Prime Minister.

"Mussolini has said--and I believe it--that Democracy is essentially immoral," cried the Lord Bishop. "Democracy is immoral because appeal is made to the personal motive, to man's self-interest. Democracy tends to demoralize people, to make them selfish, to think of their own interests and not of the community's."

With his white beard waggling in emphasis, Exeter's Gascoyne-Cecil graphically described his latest visit to the U. S., urging British Laborites to go and see for themselves how sordid, graft-ridden and enslaved by party machines he found U. S. Democracy. This brought His Lordship to his point, namely, that the House of Lords ought not to pass the India Bill (TIME, June 17) on second reading last week because it may give Indians a modicum of Democracy. "How are you going to void some great political machine's controlling the great masses of India?" cried Salisbury's son, urging that 350,000,000 Indians should remain under the benevolent rule of British civil servants.

Pointing to China as the Orient's most horrible example of attempted Democracy, the Bishop of Exeter concluded: "Life in India is much more like that in China than in Exeter! Twenty years ago some wonderful hopes were expressed about China. When the power of the Emperor was removed, there were to be representative institutions and responsible Government. Why has China's fairest province just been plucked from her? Because her generals are all dishonest! Their morality is completely gone."

The Commons:

P: Became abruptly interested in President Roosevelt when Conservative Thomas Levy demanded that His Majesty's Government act to protect "from the partial control of a foreign government" such British public utilities as are controlled by U. S. holding companies now controlled in turn by RFC.

In Mr. Levy's vivid mind, gas for the stoves of London cannot be called safe from the tentacles of the New Deal. "I can assure the House," replied Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Sir Samuel Hoare, "that British public utilities users are amply safeguarded in this case by British law and consequently cannot be affected by operations of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation of the United States."

P: Subjected His Majesty's Government to Laborite heckling on H.R.H. Edward of Wales's recent plea for stretching forth the hand of friendship to Hitler Germany (TIME, June 24) which went on until Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare declared : "I neither approve nor disapprove."

This provoked headlines screaming that the Government DISAVOWS the heir-apparent and caused London newshawks to ferret out a curious little sequence of events. Early this month Imperial Germany's onetime Crown Princess Cecilie arrived in London and was had to tea by King George and Queen Mary. Sir Harold Wernher, humdrum husband of her dashing friend Lady Zia Wernher, conferred with Edward of Wales. Finally, before he made the speech which last week had to be "disavowed," Cecilie lunched with Edward of Wales. According to her friends, Imperial Germany's Crown Princess complained to him: "My country is not being given a fair chance, and it is time somebody in Britain said a friendly word for Germany."

Since these friendly words to Berlin sorely vexed Paris, new British Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare last week sent private assurances to the French Embassy that he positively had not encouraged part-German-blooded Edward of Wales to make his pro-German speech.

P: Were startled when one of the House's swankest Conservative members, Thomas Loel Guinness, banking scion, brew kinsman and an officer of George V's Irish Guards, sued his wife for divorce last week, naming an Indian as corespondent (see p. 54). The Indian: Prince Aly Khan, son of His Highness the Aga Sultan Sir Mohammed Sha ("The Aga Khan"), who is of holiest Moslem descent and whose horse Bahram won Britain's latest Derby.

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