27 DECEMBER 1940, Page 5

I referred last week to Sir Henry Morris-Jones' question to

the Prime Minister as to the cause of Lord Lothian's death. The answer was as unsatisfactory as it could well be—and as it was bound to be. According to the British Embassy in Washington, said Mr. Churchill, the Ambassador died of toxic poisoning. That redundant phrase means, medically, nothing at all. The adjective and the noun have precisely the same significance. You might as well speak of poisonous poisoning. There, it seems in all the circumstances, the matter must be left. The evidence available is so exiguous that it warrants no conclusion whatever regarding the cause of death.