GREAT BRITAIN: Parliament Opened

One day last week, the King-Emperor slipped on his silk stockings, donned regal robes and with the Queen-Empress drove from Buckingham Palace to the Palace of Westminster, where sit at their Parliamentary sessions the Lords & Commons.

Through the streets of London stirred a cold fuliginous fog. The King's coach, drawn by eight superb horses, moved gingerly. The Beefeaters from the Tower of London who marched beside it seemed like ghosts who now and again disappeared into a slowly rolling gust of fog. Ghostly, too, was the scant crowd which peered at the nearly invisible Royal procession.

At Westminster, the King retired to the Robing Room where with help of chamberlains he donned "the ermine, the purple and the crown." Then he and Queen Mary entered the great Gothic hall of the House of Lords.

Resplendently clad Peers and heavily robed bishops rose. In the galleries diamonded Peeresses stared, rustled, bowed. Lights blazed and kindled the darting iridescences of a thousand gems. No gem, however, burned more richly than the famous Cullinan Diamond which, as all could see, the Queen-Empress was wearing (see p. 50).

His Majesty strode to the Throne. His train stretched behind him, his crown flashed. Then he turned and faced his Ministers and the Lords of his Realm. The Commons were summoned and appeared. All was in readiness for the King to open Parliament with his Speech from the Throne.

What would the King say? For everyone knows that it is not really his own speech which the King reads, but Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin's speech. And everyone knew, last week, that on the previous day the great Liberal peer, Viscount Grey of Fallodon (Foreign Secretary from 1905 to 1916, had ended his long political silence, had risen like a disturbing, provoking ghost, and had bitterly flayed the Conservative British Government for concluding with France the recent and notorious naval and military agreement or Pact (TIME, Aug. 13, et seq.).

Ghost Grey reverberantly charged that, although the Pact is now defunct, it has so embittered Anglo-U. S. relations that only the most reassuring moves by the British Government can win back U. S. goodwill.

"What we want to be sure of," cried Lord Grey, "is that the Government has instructed the Admiralty that in drawing up the program of British naval requirements it should not take the United States fleet into account. Previous British Governments have never done that.

"The principle on which the Canadian boundary is secure is the only method on which Anglo-American security can be maintained. . . .

"The military as well as the naval part of the British and French bargain must be declared null and void."

What answer would the King's speech make to Ghost Grey, a Liberal whose fame recalls the bygone years when Britain's cabinet was also Liberal?

Commenced the King: "My relations with the foreign powers continue to be friendly. . . ." Ears strained to hear the bugaboo name of the Anglo-French Pact. But His Majesty in deep clear tones praised instead the Kellogg-Briand treaty renouncing war (TIME, Sept. 3), and omitted entirely to discuss that other Pact on which all thoughts were focused.