MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD N1COLSON
ON the day this article appears the Parliament elected in Novem- ber, 1935, will have completed almost ten years of life. On Friday morning we shall file into the House of Lords to hear our sentence of death and shall then file back again to our own temporary Chamber grasping the hand of Mr. Speaker in what for some of us will be a long farewell. The mood of the House during the last fortnight has shown a strange tangle between past friendship and future animosity. We have endured so much together, we have shared such acute anxieties and such astounding triumphs, we have come each one of us to appreciate so sincerely the patience, decency and fortitude which men of every party have displayed during the dark years, that there will long exist between us a bond of solidarity and affection. It is like the last July days of the school year, when the prefects and the lower boys forget the harshness of preceding terms and realise that some strange intimacy unites them in a common sunset glow of Abscheidsstimmung ; when people who have shunned each other for months make small shy gestures of friendship ; and when the knowledge that this great experience, which for so long has been common to us all, will cease henceforward to be common to us all, creates a general atmosphere of sentiment, of regret, of play-boxes being packed for the last time in the dormitory corridor, of strawberries and cream for the last time ; and the final roll-call. Yet for us, the members of an expiring House of Commons, these dying chords, these harmonies in the minor key, are already shot through by the strident trumpets which presage future conflict ; and to our regret at parting from each other is added the acid thought that we who through these hard years have behaved so generously together should be riven by the clangours of party strife.
It is strange indeed to look back across the years to that Wednes- day evening of November, 1935, when, bench by bench, we were summoned to take the oath, the new boys glancing to right and left with timid curiosity, the old boys displaying their familiarity by a deliberate ease of movement and by the cordial intimacy with which they greeted each other and the members of the House of Commons staff. How little cld we foresee on that November evening the long ordeals through which we were fated to Pass or the tremendous dramas which we were destined to witness! To us it seemed that a cautious Cabinet, backed by a strong majority and pledged to col- lective security, would be able finally to heal the scars of the First German War and to create under the aegis of the League of Nations some balance of contentment between the satisfied and the unsatis- fied Powers. Almost at once, however, there fell upon the pavement the first hot heavy drops which presaged the approaching thunder- ttorm. Within a fortnight from our first meeting the Abyssinian cloud loomed heavily upon the horizon, and the House was startled from its optimism by the Hoare-Laval Agreement and the great battle of sanctions which ensued. For a while, in January, 1936, our sense of national solidarity was restored by unanimous sorrow at the death of King George V and we stood together in the Chill silence of Westminster Hall as the coffin was carried slowly to the catafalque, the diamonds of the crown flashing in the shadows of eight hundred years. But almost immediately, on March 9, Hitler burst through the Locarno treaties and occupied the Rhineland, and opinion was again divided between those who saw in this intemperate action the first unfolding of a dreadful plan, and those who sought to persuade themselves that it was no more than the logical and not unwelcome consummation of the policy of Gleichberechtigung.
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Looking back, one can see these patterns of unity and disunity shaping and reshaping as the years went by. There came that tragic and extraordinary day of December to, 1936, when within a few hours we passed through all its stages "A Bill to give effect to His Majesty's declaration of abdication" and when we knew that within a few minutes only "His Majesty shall cease to be King and there shall be a demise of the Crown." No man who was present on that occasion can ever forget either the amazing simplicity with which
the then Prime Minister, Lord Baldwin, fulfilled his painful task or the restraint which members of all parties then displayed. And thereafter the long-drawn agony of the Spanish Civil War came to confuse judgement and to introduce into our debates an element of passion which was none the less embittered because it was sincere. Gradually through the smoke screen of the Abyssinian and the Spanish controversies we began to descry the panzer division's of Hitler's army massing for the supreme assault. We had the invasion of Austria, the threats to Czechoslovakia, the wild relief of Munich, the bitter disillusion when Prague was seized upon the Ides of March, of 1939. From that moment the conflict between the " appeasers " and the " war-mongers " was merged in a Mood of grim but united apprehension ; and when September 3 came the House was prepared to face unanimously the ardours and endur- ances which we all foresaw. History perhaps will blame the late Parliament for the disunion, timidity, and lack of insight which it displayed during the years between 1935 and 1939; but she will have nothing but praise for the united resolution, the wise forbear- ance, the truly selfless patriotism which inspired all parties between 1939 and 1945. It may be true that in the years of doubt Parliament did not give to the country the firm guidance which the situation required ; but it is also true that from the moment when the cer- tainty of danger became apparent both Houses of Parliament became the focus and representation of the nation's will.
The Coalition Government which eventually was formed under Mr Churchill's leadership will perhaps figure in history as the most efficient Cabinet which this country has ever possessed. A legend will accumulate for future generations around the personality of Winston Churchill—with its mixture of pugnacity and sentiment, of combativeness .and generosity, of the formidable and the gracious. of pride and modesty, of the human and the superhuman, of vision and blind spots. The glory of this legend may dim the gratitude which we owe to the great administrators who aided him—to Lord Woolton, Lord Leathers, Sir John Anderson and Mr. Ernest l3evin. Future generations may underestimate the skill and patience dis- played by Mr. Eden or the immense services rendered to the nation by the Chiefs of Staff. To some, even contemporary opinion is less than just. Sir James Grigg—who was never wholly able to master the irritation caused him by the fact that the House of Commons is a representative, rather than a select, Assembly—has the con- solation of knowing that his efficiency has earned him the admiration of those whom he respects. Yet the country as a whole is unaware what it owes to Mr. Attlee's sense and patriotism, even as it doe, not appreciate the capacity and unselfishness of Mr. Arthur Green- wood in his essential but embarrassing task of leader of a non-existenz Opposition. And above all I trust that the historians will study Mr. Herbert Morrison's administration of the almost dictatorial powers vested in him by the Defence Regulations, and will pay tribute to his insistence, in spite of popular clamour, that these powers were justified only by imminent national peril and must-be relaxed so soon as that peril had passed away.
It has been a great Coalition ; it has been a great Parliament ; we can only regret that each has been dissolved. We may feel proud that the political genius of our race has secured that, during years of danger such as this island has never faced since the Armada, we have been able to preserve undamaged and undamageable our ancient heritage and institutions ; that we have been able to combine, with- out detriment to our gigantic effort in war, the maximum of indi- vidual liberty with the maximum of unity ; and that in so doing we have proved for all time that in a great national crisis a democracy can be as disciplined and as efficient as any totalitarian State. It may be that during these ten years there have been many fooli,h things said within the walls of Westminster and that only seldom has the voice of wisdom been heard without interruption. But the pulse of Parliament throughout was calm, united, strong.
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