26 NOVEMBER 1937, Page 6

The question of the ventilation of the House of Commons

has been assuming portentous proportions in the correspond- ence collimns of The Times. There are 615 Members of the Chamber. Is it a matter of supreme national importance whether they discharge their legislative functions with cold feet or not, with cool heads or fevered ? In one sense I suppose it is, and it may be of some psychological value to decide whether the atmosphere or the speeches play the predominant part in inducing somnolence. And no doubt when The Times receives letters from a series of eminent persons describing how their writers contracted a headache or stiff neck in the House in the 'nineties, or how a window was once opened in the late 'eighties, it feels it must put them in. But do the legislators' dirges over their minor ills demand to be proclaimed throughout those distant seas and shores to which The Times daily carries its interpretation of the ethos of