THE BROKEN-HEARTED HIGHWAYMAN. THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER. "BELIEVE ME, SIR, THIS HURTS ME MORE THAN IT HURTS YOU. FOR BOTH OUR SAKES I HAD HOPED TO LET YOU OFF MORE LIGHTLY THIS TIME; BUT THE COAL STOPPAGE HAS LEFT ME NO CHOICE." ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT. Monday, April 4th.-A black Monday, as far as the House of Commons was concerned. There were questions about trouble in Upper Burmah, trouble at Khangpur, trouble at Singapore, trouble at Melilla, Morocco, where a British sea-captain was arrested under circumstances still to be disclosed, and trouble-any quantity of it-in China. Possibly the one bit of new and interesting information provided by the FOREIGN SECRETARY was that two Chinese Governments, a Communist Government and a Nationalist Government, had been "more or less set up" in Shanghai. "How unhappy could I be with either!" Sir AUSTEN diplomatically omitted to add. The vote for salaries and expenses of the Ministry of Labour produced a debate on unemployment relief. Labour Members accused the Government of pushing the maintenance of the unemployed off the dole and on to the rates, and complained that there was no organised attempt to put them on to useful work, as was done in 1921 in the United States. Members suggested various remedies for unemployment-the acquisition of the machine psychology (Commander HILTON YOUNG), cheapening processes of production (various), more efficient labour exchanges (Miss BONDFIELD), the adoption of a policy of high wages and correspondingly high consumption (Commander KENWORTHY), the adoption of a more elastic monetary policy (Commander BURNEY), the development of electrical power (Captain CROOKSHANK), the adoption of the Washington Hours Convention (Mr. T. SHAW and others), and nothing in particular from the MINISTER OF LABOUR. The rabbit of employment is not to be produced, one gathers, from the top-hat of Parliamentary speechifying. Tuesday, April 5th.— Sir L. WORTHINGTONEVANS revealed that the War Office has one more colonel on full pay than it had before the War. He attributed his existence to the combined exigencies of the Rhine Army of Occupation and the Shanghai Defence Colonel ASHLEY informed Mr. DAY Force. Brigadier-General CHARTERIS, asked the Minister if it was not in fact whose motto is "Fewer and better practically impossible to cross the street Colonels," seemed satisfied with the in Parliament Square even at the places answer. where there were notices. "I entirely disagree," replied the Minister, in the manner of one who knows whereof he speaks. This roused Mr. WILLIAMS, the Member for Reading. Was the Minister aware that it was only Members of the House wearing silk hats who got special facilities? Which rather suggests that the old ditty beginning THE MAD HATTER OF PARLIAMENT SQUARE. MR. J. R. REMER. that the gyratory system of traffic was working satisfactorily. There had indeed been a slight increase in the number of non-fatal accidents, but a falling-off in the total number of slain. Mr. REMER THE CHINESE TIGHT-ROPE. HOLDING THE BALANCE. "You won't go to heaven when you die If you don't wear a collar and a tie " might appropriately be brought up to date and read "You'll soon go to heaven, being dead, If you don't wear a topper on your head." Mr. ROBINSON, speaking in the name of Messrs. Brown, Jones and Robinson, asked the CHANCELLOR OF THE ExCHEQUER if he would consider the question of reducing the tax on beer. The CHANCELLOR replied drily that "announcements of remissions of taxation were reserved for the Budget statement." Then another Mr. ROBINSON, or possibly the same Mr. ROBINSON in another voice, asked the HOME SECRETARY if he would require all copyright hymns to have the word "copyright" written at the foot of the hymn. Again there was nothing doing. Mr. JOHNSTON wished to know if the P.M.G. had any complaints from SIR AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN BETWEEN MR. WHEATLEY AND MR. MITCHELL BANKS. Arbroath about the difficulties of listening-in to the Dundee broadcasting station. The Minister said he had had no complaints. The Member should address his question to the B.B. Corporation. It is unofficially reported that the trouble arose through Dundee broadcasting the noise of a storm on the Hebridean coast which the official announcer, who had mislaid his notes, described to the listeners - in as a sixpence being banged in Arbroath on Hogmanay night. The Report stage of the Indian Navy Bill found the Labour backbenchers in fine elocutionary form. They proposed a number of amendments, all bearing on the question of the right reserved to the Admiralty to take " over the Indian Navy, or to employ and while he was beseeching the ISTER.' He proceeded to explain what it outside Indian territorial waters, on FOREIGN MINISTER to do all in his had happened and was happening in a declaration by the Governor-General power to allay Chinese suspicion his China, to reiterate this country's conin Council that a state of emergency back-benchers ostentatiously stifled ciliatory intentions, to stress the general existed. They opposed its use outside their contemptuous yawns. Chinese agreement existing among the Powers Indian territorial waters under any suspicions will not be allayed if they regarding Nanking, and finally to decircumstances, and particularly the can help it. He asked a number of ques-clare that we were not going to be clause under which the cost is still to tions that had already been answered hustled out of China. fall upon the Indian Government even at Question-time, and his peroration Mr. LLOYD GEORGE said the FOREIGN when it is taken over. They ended by might be briefly summarised as "The SECRETARY was courageously tackling opposing the Bill altogether, though East's awake!" Affairs in China were an exceedingly difficult task and he and Mr. PETHICK LAWRENCE had said that part of a movement of the Eastern his friends would not say one word that the Labour Party was in substantial mind," and he wanted this country to would make it harder. The Motion to agreement with its main object. have a "moral attractiveness" (what- Adjourn was defeated. ever that may mean) about it that would lead to a successful handling of the problem. A dreary and, as always, futile debate on Agriculture followed. Mr. R. J. DAVIES, who inaugurated it, declared that there could be no improvement in agriculture until the farm labourer could call his soul his own and ceased to be looked upon by the farmer as a part of the farmi equipment. He confided to the House that, during the three years when blithe afield to ploughing he had strode beside his team, he had received for the first year no wages, for the second year one pound, and for the third year three pounds. He got Sunday afternoon off and other holidays amounting to two whole days in the year. On the strength of this experience Mr. DAVIES moved a motion a hundred-and-thirteen words and ten commas long, the gist of which was that the ownership of agricultural land should be transferred to the State. Sir G. WHELER came back at him with an amendment eighty-six words and only five commas long, the gist of which was that it shouldn't. He said the pig industry was getting along splendidly and thought the Government should safeguard pig products. 44 6° "NOW THAT APRIL'S HERE." Thursday, April 7th.-The Third Reading of the Forestry Bill in the Lords provoked that Child of the New Forest, Lord MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU, to a formal motion of rejection. He only wished to be assured, however, that public rights in the New Forest would not be diminished by the Bill, and Lord CLINTON had no difficulty in calming his fears. In the Commons the HOME SECRETARY explained that, as from May 1st, our taxis will cost us one-third less, and the hardy citizen who is prepared to tender the exact fare can have quite a nice little run1173-3 yards, to be exact-before his sixpence goes bang. The item. of extra passengers is subject to a similarly reduced charge, but for some reason or other the tariff on perambulators remains unchanged. This should have aroused the ire of the ladies; but Miss WILKINSON, the only lady Member present, was more concerned with getting advertisements into taxis than perambulators on top of them. Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCK asked if a Kenya native who had single-handed rescued a District Commissioner from a lion had been THE HOME OFFICE BLACKBIRD "SINGS A SONG OF suitably rewarded. Mr. ORMSBY This assault on the free breakfastsausage roused Liberal Mr. JONES of Merioneth, who declared that fixity of tenure for the farmer was all that was needed to revive agriculture. Mr. GUINNESS wound up the debate with the declaration that the farmer was worse off than anybody. The Conservative Party's policy was not to confiscate his foundations but to "educate and encourage him." They believed that "Prices were more than politics And lower costs than land reform." Moved, as it always is, by any lyrical outpouring, the House defeated the motion. Wednesday, April 6th.-More China. Much more. China all through Question time and a debate on China to follow. Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD led the inquisition-it certainly could not be called an attack as far as he was concerned SIXPENCE." Mr. MITCHELL BANKS said what we wanted was another CANNING. If the FOREIGN SECRETARY had to defend himself in that House it was not because he had been truculent but because he had pushed the virtue of patience too far. Mr. WHEATLEY from his free vantagepoint on the back bench thought the FOREIGN MINISTER had made "a dreadful mess of things" in China. The Labour Party were the only people who had "proposed a reasonable scheme of protection" for British residents in China, i.e. to bring them home. Sir AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN said there were two parties opposite, one represented by the LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION, the other by Mr. WHEATLEY, who had "withdrawn the light of his countenance from his own Front Bench before he had withdrawn it from the FOREIGN MIN GORE said he had been recommended for the Police Medal, thanked personally by the Governor and given some blankets. "One blanket," corrected Sir HENRY CAVENDISH - BENTINCK, who is always a stickler for accuracy. The Landlord and Tenant (Number 2) Bill was given a Second Reading. Some Conservatives opposed it on the ground that it would mean higher rents and stop the flow of capital into the building industry. Labour Members opposed it on the ground that it did not go further. À propos of one point-the relation of site-value to goodwill in the case of professional men-Sir WILLIAM said that in the years he practised as a solicitor only one client ever came attracted by the brass plate on the door, and he, at the end of the consultation, offered him for his fee a parrot. BORN 1845-RETIRED 1900-DIED 1927. THOUGH seven-and-twenty crowded years have passed Since, dear and honoured friend, you sang your last, Your voice, so true and sweet and crystal clear, Falls unforgettably upon my ear As backward down Time's gulf in memory straying As once at Sydenham fifty years ago.* You took no licence and you played no trick, And gave ungrudging of your very best. So, in the days when Melody's throne stood strong, Of powers that made you by their gentle sway |