betrayed a desire to apply the epithets "blasphemous" and "seditious" to the teaching not only of the Communist schools, of which there were only a handful in the country, but also of the much more numerous Socialist Sunday Schools; but the Home Secretary drew a marked distinction between the two, and admitted that the latter were in the matter of doctrine quite unexceptionable.

An event of considerable importance for the Labour world was the presentation on March 10 of a unanimous report by the Committee appointed by the Ministry of Labour, with Lord Blanesburgh as chairman, to consider what changes, if any, ought to be made in the Unemployment Insurance Scheme. The principal changes recommended by the Committee were that equal contributions should be made by employers, work-people, and the State (instead of the State contributing two-sevenths); that normal contributions should be reduced to 5d. a week in respect of men and 3 d. a week in respect of women; that a single man's weekly benefit should be 17s. instead of 18s., but that the allowance for an adult dependent should be raised from 58. to 78., so that a married man would receive 24s. instead of 23s.; that a new grade of contributions and benefits, resulting in a reduction of both, should be prescribed for young persons between 18 and 21; and that extended benefit should disappear. For the purpose of extinguishing the fund's present debt of 21,000,000l., the Committee proposed that an additional contribution should be levied. of a penny a week in respect of a man and a halfpenny in respect of a woman.

On March 16 the Prime Minister made in Parliament a statement on the subject of new bridges across the Thames in London -a matter which had for some time been engaging public attention owing to the announcement by engineers that Waterloo Bridge was becoming unsafe for heavy traffic. The Government had appointed a Royal Commission to consider the question, and on the strength of its recommendations now offered to defray from 50 to 75 per cent. of the cost of various new bridges and improvements suggested by the Commission, and to expend a sum not exceeding 1,000,000l. for a number of years for this purpose.

On March 16 the Government introduced its first measure of major importance during the session in the shape of a Cinematograph Films Bill. The Imperial Conference of the previous year had deplored the failure of Britain and the Dominions to make sufficient use of the film for trade propaganda purposes, and the Bill was an attempt to remedy the evil. The President of the Board of Trade stated that the Government would have preferred the desired result to be attained by a combined voluntary effort on the part of all sections of the trade-producers, renters, and exhibitors; but as an attempt had been made by them and failed, the Government felt bound to take action to encourage the

production of British films which would give to British goods the same advertisement as foreign films gave to the goods of their country. With this object in view, it was proposed to abolish "blind booking" and put a time limit on "block booking; " and, further, to impose on both renters and exhibitors a compulsory quota of British films, commencing with 7 per cent. and rising by yearly additions of 2 per cent. to 25 per cent.

There was general agreement that the object of the Bill was a good one, but the method which it proposed for attaining its end was severely criticised. The chief ground of objection was that it did not take into account the requirements of the public, who were entitled to be shown the best quality of films, from whatever source; and one speaker who had practical experience of the business stated categorically that good films could not be produced in England in any quantity owing to the lack of sunshine. Critics of the Bill, however, failed to suggest any alternative scheme by which the required object might be secured, and the Bill was duly sent into Committee.

On March 23 the House of Commons agreed without a division to a motion brought forward by a Conservative member urging the Government to spare no effort in co-operating with the Dominions for the purpose of sending them British emigrants. It was agreed by all speakers that an increase in the British population of the Dominions would be advantageous for British trade, but Labour members warned the Government against thinking that the problem of unemployment could be solved by migration. The Secretary for the Dominions sought to reassure them by stating emphatically that the Government was not trying by its policy of Empire development to rid itself of its responsibility towards a single citizen of this country, and that they had no right to think they could get rid of that responsibility by pushing them oversea. He remarked that the debate had been full of encouragement, but he had little new to tell of the activities of the Government in this matter, and did not hold out any hope that the rate of migration would be quickened in the near future.

At a meeting of the Preparatory Commission for the Disarmament Conference of the League of Nations, which opened at Geneva on March 21, Lord Cecil, on behalf of the British Government, presented a Draft Convention for discussion. The main stipulations of the Draft were that each of the High Contracting Parties undertook to limit its land, naval, and air armaments to figures agreed on (though this was not to prevent them from increasing their armaments if engaged in a war or faced with a rebellion or other emergency, or if the increase was effected with the concurrence of the Council of the League); and that each of the High Contracting Parties should furnish the Secretary-General of the League each year with a statement of the amount proposed

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Government's Agricultural Policy.

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to be expended in the current year, and of the amount actually so expended in the preceding year. Lord Cecil, in opening the discussion, said that there would be profound disappointment throughout the world if it did not end with the prospect of a concrete reduction in armaments, and expressed himself as optimistic on the matter. His optimism was, however, not justified, and the Commission soon after separated without having accepted the British Draft Convention or come to any other agreement.

The Committee stage of the Annual Army and Air Force Bill (March 20) gave the Labour Party an opportunity of again urging the abolition of the death penalty in the Army. This time the motion brought forward to that effect contained the important reservation that the death penalty should still be retained for treachery and desertion. This compromise, however, did not satisfy either the bulk of the members of other parties or the Government, which based itself on the report of the Committee of 1924, and the motion was defeated by 259 votes to 134.

In the debate on the second reading of the Consolidated Fund Bill (March 24), the President of the Board of Education had to meet the complaint of his predecessor and other members of the Opposition that he was restricting progress in education in the interests of economy. In reply he was able to point to the fact that this year up to March 19 the provision of 64,139 additional places in elementary schools had been approved, and in 1925-26, 71,392 places, against 45,964 in 1924-25, when the Labour Government was in office. In regard to additional secondary school places, the numbers were: 1924-25, 15,622; 1925-26, 16,283; 1926-27, 15,274. He held that this did not look like reaction, or even marking time.

In the third reading debate of the Consolidated Fund Bill, an attempt was made by Liberal and Labour members to stimulate the Government into a more vigorous policy for assisting agriculture, but without success. Mr. Runciman found new proof of the parlous state of the industry in the report just issued of a partial survey conducted by an official of the Ministry of Agriculture, which showed that tillage was gradually giving way to pasturage. Conservative members expressed the view that if the Government could not assist the industry with a subsidy or protection, it would do best to leave it alone, and the Minister of Agriculture inclined to this opinion. The Government, he said, was driven to giving indirect assistance to agriculture (through the sugar subsidy) by the attitude of the Opposition, which precluded any agreed policy of direct assistance. It would therefore adhere to the modest programme laid down in the White Paper of last year, under which, however, it expected to grant 2000 small holdings a year, which was more than the Liberals had achieved before the war.

On the next day (March 30) the Labour Party sought to arraign

the conduct of the Minister of Health for having superseded, on August 30 last, the Guardians of Chester-le-Street, a Durham mining town, in accordance with the then recently passed Board of Guardians' Default Act (vide ANNUAL REGISTER, 1926, p. 90). A motion was brought forward charging him with administering the Act in a partisan and bureaucratic spirit, and some speakers in the debate attempted to make out that the only offence of the superseded Guardians was that they were not stingy enough in giving relief. Mr. Chamberlain, in reply, made a spirited defence of his action. He pointed out that in the previous July and August he had warned the Guardians of Chester-le-Street repeatedly that they were breaking the law, and the only reason why he had waited as long as he did before superseding them was that he was extremely reluctant to avail himself of the powers of the Act, which he regarded as something to be used only in the last extremity. The Labour Party had said nothing for seven months about the supersession, and they would have remained silent had it not been that a report had lately been published bringing against the old Guardians of Chester-le-Street charges which they were unable to deny. The Minister went on to make some remark about the secretiveness of the Labour Party, which so irritated Labour members that they created an uproar and rendered the conclusion of his speech inaudible.

The relations between the Trade Union Congress and the Russian trade unions, which had become strained owing to the events of the previous September, were at least in outward appearance-restored to a footing of friendship by a meeting of the Anglo-Russian Committee held in Berlin at the end of March and beginning of April, at which both Mr. Hicks and Mr. Tomsky were present. The proceedings, according to the official report, were marked by an appreciation of the need for maintaining and still further strengthening the fraternal ties between the trade union movements of Great Britain and the U.S.S.R." With this end in view the Russians deferred completely to the views of the British delegates, and accepted resolutions postponing any action on the union question which would involve dissension in the Amsterdam International, and ruling out any interference by the unions of one country in the domestic concerns of those of another. The resolutions were endorsed by the General Council of the Trade Union Congress a fortnight later.

Replying to a question in the House of Commons at this time, the Premier stated that, apart from certain minor and consequential amendments in the electoral machinery, it was not the intention of the Government to undertake any reform of the electoral system. The defects in the existing system were strongly criticised in a debate in the House of Lords on March 30, but it was pointed out on the other side, that the systems of second ballot and proportional representation had proved far from satisfactory in the

countries where they had been tried. The remedy for the unrepresentative character of Parliament, it was held, was to get back to the two party system, and this seemed to be the real desire of those Conservative peers who complained of the existing system, in spite of the advantage which it gave their own party. In the course of the debate complaints were made of the persistent rowdyism to which Conservative and Liberal candidates were subjected at elections, but the Government did not see fit to take any steps in the matter.

In one of the debates on the Estimates (April 4) the Labour Party once more raised the question of unemployment, and once more Parliament had to confess itself helpless in face of the problem. The Minister of Labour did not pretend to have a solution, and Labour speakers also were less concerned to make constructive, even if impracticable, suggestions than to criticise the Minister for his administration of the Unemployment Insurance Fund and other shortcomings. The Minister maintained that the administration was humane, denying that refusals of extended benefit were more numerous than they had been in the period before the Ministerial discretion was restored in 1925.

On March 25 grave news arrived from China, where in the preceding weeks the Southern Nationalists had continued their triumphant advance. Having effected the capture of Shanghai, on March 24 they entered Nanking as it was being evacuated by Chang Tso-lin's troops, and on the same day the British residents in that city were subjected to severe mishandling, their property being plundered, and at least two of their number being killed, while the rest were only saved from the same fate by the timely action of British warships in shelling the district where the rioting was taking place. In giving an account of these events in the House of Commons on March 28, Sir A. Chamberlain stated that according to the information derived from British and American sources, the outrages were the work of the Cantonese troops, and not of the Northern Chinese troops, as asserted by the Cantonese leader. Questioned as to the future policy of the Government in China, he stated that no negotiations were in progress in regard to the international settlement in Shanghai, and that it was not possible to negotiate fruitfully in the anarchical conditions prevailing. The situation at Hankow, where the Chinese authorities had failed to provide adequate protection for British residents, did not encourage them to make a similar surrender of British rights and property at Shanghai.

Two days later (Mar. 30) Sir A. Chamberlain gave, in the House of Commons, a detailed account of the outrages in Nanking based on sworn statements of the British and American Consuls and of the wife of the British Consul, which seemed to place it beyond doubt that the offenders belonged to the incoming Cantonese troops and not to the retiring Northerners. In answer to a question, he gave