The Week in Parliament
Our Parliamentary Correspondent writes: The House of Commons is uneasy and should be uneasy. As I write we await the statement from the Prime Minister and the subsequent debate ; nothing else matters in comparison. Speculation and gossip have been free to move along the corridors, but nobody is interested in anything but facts. Behind the wonderful unity of the country there are still genuine and lamentable party differences, especially on the more extreme fronts. There are those who wish to dispense immediately with the services of certain Conservative Ministers ; there are others who wish to put every Communist in gaol. But the German threat to our shores affects every Member alike, and the House has now its own Local Defence Corps. Each Minister is judged solely by his response to the dominating, overwhelming fact of this new threat. Answers from some departments are still unsatis- factory, and the War Office still fails to be convincing. Mr. David Robertson, the Member for Streatham, exposed the bad conditions prevailing at railway termini, which in fact is a serious criticism of the Welfare Department of the War Office. Everyone imagined that some funds were available for this excellent work done by voluntary societies, but apparently this is not the case.
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