20 DECEMBER 1935, Page 3

I have never known the threats to disobey a three-line

whip on a Vote of Censure by abstention in the lobby or a vote with Opposition more widespread than they have been this week. Members have realised that their correspondence is not, as so often when feeling is roused against the Government, " factory made," but that it comes from electors who have never written to their Members before, and that it comes by no means exclusively from the League of Nations Union supporters. What influences their opposition too, is the feeling that in the first month of a parliament they are free to embarrass the Government without bringing on themselves, if they are successful, a General Election. For the moment the French system of fixed Parliaments is really in operation in England, and the Prime Minister is robbed of that invaluable weapon in bringing his supporters to heel—the threat of dissolution.