The Cabinet, as we have recently been reminded in the
Sunday Press, is an elderly body. But outside their ranks there are remarkably few active politicians who were engaged in public life during the last war. One of the survivors is Lord Rea of Eskdale, who was Liberal Chief Whip in the last Parliament, and who maintained discipline among his crew by methods reminiscent of Captain Reece, the captain of the ' Mantelpiece.' Fortunately, the atmosphere of another place has failed to chill his enthusiasms. On Tuesday he urged the Government to set up a Commission, on the lines of the Speaker's Conference in 1917, to consider the redistribution of the constituencies and the whole system of Parliamentary representation. He argued with great cogency that in those areas where the result at election times is a foregone conclusion, the minority parties, being in effect disfranchised, tend to lose interest in politics. He also reminded their Lordships of the tremendous responsibility that would rest upon the House of Commons elected after the war. Lord Stanhope, with a superabundance of Minis- terial caution, declined to make any announcement at all. He could not even venture a statement regarding the pro- longation of the present Parliament.
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