AT WESTMINSTER
HAT everyone was concerned to discover when the House of Commons reassembled on Tuesday was whether the Easter holiday had quietened members' nerves and improved their tempers and also whether the nocturnal strife over prayers was to continue. And what did we find ? Both Government and Opposition behaving towards each other With forbearance and even friendliness. And it lasted throughout the whole sitting. Wonderful. It is doubtful il anyone had expected the House to return in quite this melting mood. It really touched the heart. So amicable was the atmo- sphere that a foreigner from beyond the Iron Curtain might have thought the single-party state had arrived here, too. To crown all, four prayers that a fortnight ago would have kept the House up most of the night were disposed of within a couple of hours and the Government spokesman, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, Mr. Rhodes, was actually heard compli- menting the Opposition on being conciliatory and constructive while Opposition members in their turn assured Mr. Rhodes that he. too, was a pretty reasonable chap.
This passage from the sultry, electric pre-Easter atmosphere to this comparative sunshine was, of course, far too good. It cannot last. The relaxation of the Conservative pressure on prayers has probably been dictated by a desire not to spoil any chance there may be of the two front benches reaching agree- ment on an alternative method of praying against orders and regulations. Both at the time of writing are taking soundings about the possibility of such an agreement. Both parties have an interest in reaching a concordat. The Government naturally wants to escape from exhausting sequences of late night sittings and the Conservatives, one suspects, would not be sorry to drop this tactic which, applied with the crudity we saw before Easter, is a dubious though not illegitimate weapon. It might prove a boomerang in the country.
And yet the disposal of this prayer business could not alter the fundamental cause of the discord—the virtual stalemate and the conflict of party interests regarding an early election, the Government being determined to postpone it to a more suitable moment for itself, as it thinks, and the Conservatives equally determined to bring it about tomorrow if it can. There can be no truce in this struggle in spite of Tuesday's civilities.
The old Conservative Adam peeped out for a moment when Mr. Stokes was telling the House of the inquiry be has ordered into the excess expenditure on the Festival Gardens and of the resignation of Sir Henry French. If it had not peeped out it would have been unforgivable. Mr. Stokes had stated with a large innocence that Sir Henry French shared his view that when things went wrong with the control of public expenditure then it was desirable there should be a change (let Mr. Stokes be anathema for this horror) in the "top direction." The opening for the counter-stroke was glaring, but nobody, not even Mr. Eden, took it until, just before the next business was called, Mr. Nigel Fisher, the Conservative member for Hitchin, saved the day and his party's reputation by inquiring, in effect, why "top directors" who had lost the public millions in East Africa and Gambia had not acted in Sir Henry French's high-principled way. The effectiveness (not to say obviousness) of the retort now being apparent to the Conservatives they cheered madly.
The House of Lords has been quite insulated from the recent rude contest at the other end of the corridor. On Tuesday it had one of its recurrent debates on London traffic. This one furnished the brave spectacle of Lord Strabolgi and Lord Howe (politically poles apart) proposing a traffic dictator for the metropolis. Lord Howe even seems to see "the mighty heart" being brought to a dead stop by the traffic chaos during the
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