steel houses in Scotland, the first 2,000 having proved a success. The extra expenditure of the Board of Health had been caused by an increase in the claims made on certain approved societies in the past year, especially in the coal-mining areas. Labour mem

bers ascribed this to "malnutrition resulting from the coal stoppage," but the Minister of Health adduced evidence to show that it was due in large part, if not entirely, to greater laxity on the part of the doctors in granting certificates.

The financial aftermath of the coal stoppage was further considered in the House of Commons the next day (Feb. 22), when the Lord Advocate brought forward a Bill for legalising expenditure incurred by Scottish Parish Councils in relief to miners' dependents in the previous year. This expenditure, though legal in England, had, strangely enough, been declared illegal by the courts in Scotland; but as the Government had itself advised the councils to spend the money, it now sought not only to legalise the act, but to obtain permission to refund to the councils up to 40 per cent. of their outlay on this object. Labour members found fault with the proposed limitation of the expenditure, and their objections were successful to the extent of extorting from the Government an undertaking to make the figure of 40 per cent. the standard and not a maximum. Soon afterwards (March 1) a motion was brought forward by a Labour member urging the Government "to come to the relief of necessitous areas in England." Sir K. Wood informed the House that there had already been an improvement in the position of many of these areas since the end of the coal stoppage, and he asked it to wait till the Government brought forward its new system of local government. The motion was thereupon rejected by 221 votes

to 128.

On February 15 the Government received a reminder, in the shape of a private member's motion, that a large section of its followers was anxious for legislation which should make the House of Lords a more effective political body. The Labour Party put down an amendment declaring that such legislation was not required, and that the Government had no mandate for it. The Home Secretary reminded the Opposition that the preamble of the Parliament Act of 1911 placed it as an obligation on the House of Commons to define the powers of the House of Lords, and Lord Oxford, who was Prime Minister at that time, had often said that it was an obligation which would brook no delay. The Government, he added, was glad that a debate on the subject had taken place, as it intended to carry out fully the pledges which it had given to the country, since it appreciated the gravity of the situation and the desirability of restoring to the other Chamber some of the powers of which it was deprived in 1911.

A debate arose on the next day (Feb. 16) on the Report just

issued by the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education, which recommended that the school age should be raised to fifteen. A Labour motion was brought forward urging the Government to act on this recommendation without delay; but the Minister of Education declared that this was impossible, owing to dearth of accommodation. The supporters of the Government treated the matter with so much indifference that they allowed its majority to sink to eighteen.

In their impatience to come to grips with the trade unions, the more extreme section of the Conservative Party were not content to wait for the legislation on the subject promised by the Government, and one of their number, Mr. Marshall Banks, having been lucky in the private members' ballot, on February 18, moved the second reading of a Bill to make it illegal for trade unions or their members to invite, accept, or use funds from foreign sources for the furtherance or maintenance of industrial disputes in Great Britain. The Government left the proposal to a free vote of the House, but the Home Secretary, speaking on their behalf, opposed it no less vigorously than the Labour Party. He pointed out that in the previous year, in the exercise of the discretion allowed him by the Emergency Regulations, he had prohibited the entry of money sent from foreign sources in aid of the general strike, but had laid no embargo on that sent to the coal miners. The reason was that he drew a sharp distinction between a strike for political and a strike for industrial purposes. He put it to his fellow-Conservatives-much as the Prime Minister had done two years previously in dealing with Mr. Macquisten's Bill—whether, if they passed this proposal, they would not justfy the accusation brought by the Labour Party against the Government, that in spite of its professions it was the enemy of the trade unions and meant to strike a blow at their existence; and he emphasised the necessity of adhering to the declaration of the Conservative Party, that it would always distinguish between industrial and revolutionary action, and would do nothing to harm the industrial development of the trade unions. In spite of this appeal the motion was carried to a division, and 75 voted for it to 193 against.

On February 22 the Government threw over the report of the Committee which it had appointed in the autumn to inquire into the advisability of forming co-operative agencies for the selling of coal, and which had strongly recommended such a step in the interests of the coal industry. A Labour motion was now brought forward calling upon the Mines Department to take steps to promote a system of co-operative agencies for the sale of coal, but the President of the Board of Trade set his face against it on various grounds, the chief of which was that the Government could not bring pressure to bear on the coal-owners. In consequence, the cut-throat competition between the coal-owners,

especially in the export trade, went on unrestricted, and, as had been predicted, soon led to a heavy fall in the price of British coal, with consequent loss of profits and reduction of wages.

One untoward result of the trouble in China had been to strain to breaking-point the none too friendly relations of the British Government with Russia. The part played by Russians in fomenting anti-British feeling in China was well known and perhaps exaggerated in England, and was seized on by a section of the Conservative Party as a decisive reason for breaking off AngloRussian relations. Their demand at length became so insistent that the Government could no longer ignore it. In deference, therefore, to the clamour of its supporters, the Foreign Secretary on February 23 addressed a lengthy Note to the Russian Chargé d'Affaires in London, M. Rosengolsz, complaining that the Soviet Government was systematically violating the clause of the Trade Agreement of 1923, providing that each side should abstain from hostile propaganda against the other. The Note cited passages from speeches of Russian Ministers and Ambassadors, and from articles in the official Soviet organ, the Isvestiya, on the one hand glorifying the British miners' strike and the Chinese Nationalist victories as harbingers of the coming world revolution, and on the other hand, accusing Britain, without any foundation, of working to create an anti-Bolshevist orientation in Persia and the Baltic States. The Note demanded peremptorily that such language should cease, under penalty of the Trade Agreement being rescinded, or even of relations between Britain and Russia being broken off altogether.

The Government's Note did not produce the slightest change, either for better or for worse, in the attitude of the Soviet Government towards England. On February 26 a Note was received in London from M. Litvinoff, the Soviet Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, pointing out that all the speeches and articles of which complaint was made in the British Note were delivered or written in Russia, and therefore did not constitute a breach of the Trade Agreement, which only forbade hostile propaganda in foreign countries. M. Litvinoff pointed out that the language habitually used about Russia by some of the organs and some of the responsible leaders of the Conservative Party in England-especially Lord Birkenhead and Mr. Churchill-was at least as bad as anything said in Russia about England, and he made no promise to interfere with freedom of expression in his own country. He deplored the fact that relations between the two countries were unsatisfactory, and warned England not to make them worse by abrogating the Trade Agreement.

On the publication of the Russian Note, the Foreign Secretary had announced that the Government intended to take no notice of it. There was, however, a widespread feeling in Parliament that matters could not be allowed to rest where they were; both the

B

Labour Party and the Conservative "die-hards" desired to see a change, though in opposite directions. The initiative in raising the question was, however, taken by neither of these, but by the Liberal Party, one of whose members, Sir A. Sinclair, opened a debate on the subject on March 3. While on the whole expressing approval of the British Note and condemnation of the Russian, Sir A. Sinclair, on the practical issue, took up the Labour standpoint, and urged the Government to treat as sincere the desire expressed by the Soviet Government at the end of its Note of establishing more friendly relations with Britain, and to meet it in a similar spirit. Sir R. Horne advocated the diametrically opposite course, and while welcoming the British Note, said that it would have been better for it not to have been written unless it was going to be followed up by practical steps, the first of which would, of course, be to terminate the Trade Agreement. Speaking as the author of the original Trade Agreement of 1921, he was now of opinion that that experiment had been a failure, and that it was useless to continue it, or to try the experiment again in a new form. Mr. MacDonald supported the first speaker, and urged specifically that a further conference should be held between representatives of Britain and Russia in order to thrash out all matters of complaint between the two countries.

Thus pulled in two directions, the Foreign Secretary failed to maintain his footing, and moved decidedly to the side of the "die-hards," though not yet as far as they desired. He said that he would have sent his Note long before, only he was restrained by the fear that it might have international repercussions which would be dangerous to the peace of Europe. He therefore felt impelled to wait till the whole world should be able to see what was the provocation, and so place the responsibility on the right shoulders. Now, however, he thought the evidence was clear, and he warned the Soviet Government that the limit of Britain's patience had been reached. The Government reserved to itself the right to take further action, but before proceeding to extremity it thought it right to call the world to witness the serious nature of its complaints, and to give the Soviet Government one more opportunity to conform its conduct to the ordinary rules of international life and comity.

In the further course of the debate, Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Snowden urged the Government to enter into fresh negotiations with the Soviet Government, while Commander LockerLampson, the leader of the anti-Russian section in the Conservative Party, confessed himself to be deeply disappointed with the Note, which, in his opinion, had announced to the world the degree of humiliation which the British Empire was ready to swallow. But although in the debate the Government received the highest commendation from its opponents and the severest censure from its supporters, the voting followed strictly party

lines, and the Government's action was upheld by 271 votes to 146.

In the House of Lords the question was raised by a Conservative peer, Lord Newton, who urged the Government to break off relations with Russia on the ground that "it had been returned to power more for the purpose of ridding the country of Russian interference than for any other reason. The Liberal peers, Lord Reading and Lord Grey, while agreeing that England had every justification for taking such a step, gave weighty reasons for thinking that it would be inexpedient at the present juncture. Lord Salisbury, speaking on behalf of the Government, on the whole agreed with them. He did not rate very high the consideration of trade with Russia, but to break off diplomatic relations with that country was a step which might have serious consequences for the peace of Europe, and which therefore should not be undertaken out of pique or on the ground of offended dignity. At the same time, he joined with the Foreign Secretary in warning Russia that the limit of their patience had been reached.

While attending the League of Nations meeting at Geneva, Sir Austen Chamberlain, on March 8, made a statement to the press with the object of dispelling the belief, which was somewhat widely held on the Continent, that Great Britain was engaged in engineering some kind of coalition against the Soviet Government. He declared that British policy had remained unchanged since Locarno, and could be summed up in one word-peace. It aimed at making real the peace which had only been partially secured by the treaties. The British Government had never sought to promote its own interests by making trouble between other countries; it had encouraged every movement towards a better understanding between conflicting countries, and had always assured them that, so long as they sought peace, they could count on British sympathy and goodwill. He denied specifically that he had ever tried to form an anti-Soviet League, or that he had interfered with any efforts of the Soviet Government to form a pact of non-aggression with Latvia.

At the same time that it disappointed the "die-hards " among its followers, the Government gave equal cause of complaint, though in an opposite sense, to the more progressive section of the Conservative Party. In a debate on the Civil Service Estimates on February 28, a Labour member moved a reduction in the vote on the ground that the Government had not yet ratified the Washington Convention on hours of labour. He was strongly supported by some Conservative speakers, who held that England should have been the first country to take such a step, instead of waiting on all the others. The Minister of Labour excused the Government's delay on the ground that it was unsafe for one country to ratify unless it were sure that all the rest would follow suit. This reason entirely failed to satisfy his Conservative critics,