THE OPPOSITION FREAK.
"Where are they gone, the old familiar faces?" was the question one asked oneself on looking at the crowded benches of the House of Commons. It was said of a Past President of the United States that he was the politest man in America—"he gave up his seat in a street-car and made room for four ladies." The gap made on the Front Opposition Bench by the involuntary retirement of Mr. ASQUITH—to which generous allusion was made by the PRIME MINISTER—is so vast that the joint efforts of Sir DONALD MACLEAN and Mr. ADAMSON to fill it met with only partial success. Unless, by the way, Mr. SPEAKER definitely decides the problem of precedence, it is to be feared that the hoped-for acceleration of business will not occur, for at present each of them thinks it necessary to speak whenever the other does, like the hungry lions on Afric's burning shore. For all their outward politeness I am sure "the first lion thinks the last a bore"; and if they insist on roaring together much longer the House will think it of both of them.
The corner-seat whence Mr. PRINGLE flung his barbed darts at the Government is filled, physically, by Mr. STANTON. Lonely Mr. HOGGE now sits uneasily upon the Front Opposition Bench, but, fearing perhaps lest its dignified traditions should cramp his style, makes frequent visits to the Lobby.
In accordance with ancient custom Sir COURTENAY ILBERT asserted the right of the House to initiate legislation by calling out "Outlawries Bill" in the middle of the SPEAKER's recital of the Sessional Orders. Some of the new Members, I fancy, took the interruption seriously, and thought that this was the outcome of the "Punish the KAISER." movement.
The Mover and Seconder of the Address fully deserved the customary compliments. Col. Sir RHYS WILLIAMS' quiet and effective style explained his success as a picker-up of recruits; while Lt.-Commander DEAN, V.C., though he faced the House with much more trepidation than he did the batteries of Zeebrugge, got well home at the finish.
The lot of a Labour leader just now is not a happy one. Perhaps that accounted for the querulous tone assumed by Mr. ADAMSON, who seemed more concerned with the omissions in the KING's Speech than with its contents. His best sayings were imported from America, but he would have done better to content himself with LINCOLN and abjure BRYAN, whose "cross-of-gold" fustian will not bear repetition.
After Sir DONALD MACLEAN had thoughtfully provided a welcome tea interval the PRIME MINISTER rose to reply to his critics. The accusation that he had forgotten some of his recent promises, such as "No Conscription," "Punish the Kaiser," and "Germany must pay," did not trouble him much. If these election-eggs had hatched out prematurely and the contents were coming home to roost at an inconvenient moment he had no time to attend to them. What the country most needs at the moment is a firm clear statement on the Labour troubles, and that is what it got. So far as those troubles are due to remediable causes they shall be remedied; so far as the demands of Labour are based upon class-greed they shall be fought tooth and nail. There were a few dissentient shouts from the Opposition Benches, but the House as a whole was delighted when the PREMIER in ringing tones declared that "no section, however powerful, will be allowed to hold up the whole nation."
Wednesday, February 12th.—The Lords had a brisk little debate on agriculture. Lord LINCOLNSHIRE paid many compliments to Lord ERNLE for what he had accomplished as Mr. PROTHERO, but could not understand why, having exchanged the green benches for the red, he should have reversed his old policy, "scrapped" the agricultural committees and begun to dispose of his tractors. Lord ERNLE, in the measured tones so suitable to the Upper House, made a good defence of the change. The chief thing wanted now was to "clean the land," where noxious weeds, the Bolshevists of the soil, had been spreading with great rapidity. As for the tractors, the Board thought it a good thing that the farmers should possess their own, but would retain in its own hands enough of them to help farmers who could not help themselves—not a large class, I imagine, with produce at its present prices.
In the Commons an hour was spent in discussing the Government's now customary motion to take all the time of the House. Up got Mr. ADAMSON, to denounce it, now the War was over, as sheer Kaiserism. Up got Sir DONALD MACLEAN to defend it as commonsense, though he induced Mr. BONAR LAW to limit its duration to the end of March. Colonel WEDGWOOD pleaded that private Members might still be allowed to bring in Bills under the Ten Minutes' Rule; but that Parliamentary pundit, Sir F. BANBURY, asserted that there was no such thing in reality as the Ten Minutes' Rule, and pictured the possibility of whole days being swallowed up by a succession of private Members commending their legislative bantlings one after another with the brief explanatory statement permitted on such occasions. Alarmed at the prospect Mr. LAW decided not to admit the thin end of the WEDGWOOD.