CALLS TO RESIGN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 137, 10 May 1940, Page 7

CALLS TO RESIGN.

VOTING ANNOUNCED. LONDON, May 8. The division in the House of Commons on the Government’s war policy which favoured the Government by 281 votes to 200 was made not on a Labour motion but on a Government motion for the adjournment of the House. 'I he vote was announced amid intense excitement. With the Minsterial and Opposition cheers there were shouts of “Resign!” from the Labour benches, and then concerted Opposition cries of “Go! Go!” A few Labour members, with their eyes on Mr Churchill, sang the opening bars of “Rule Britannia.” Forty-four members of the Government voted against the Government. One hundred and thirty members of the House of Commons were absent for various causes, including over 30 who are on service abroad. Members of the Government voting against the Government included Mr Duff-Cooper, Mr L. C. M. S. Amery, Lord Winterton, Mr It. J. Boothby, Mr Hore-Belisha, Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, and Lady Astor. The present state of the parties is: Government, 414; Opposition, 191; Independent. 10. SPEECHES IN LORDS. In the course of the debate in the House of Lords, the Opposition Leader (Lord Snell) said that no nation except Britain would select the present Government to fight its enemies. “It is something like a sleepwalker who always goes slowly and never knows where he is going,” Lord Snell went on. Mr Chamberlain had said that the country did not realise its danger. It was the Prime Minister who did not realise the danger. | Lord Salisbury said there was much jj in the Prime Minister’s speech which was encouraging. He saw signs of j initiative, of decision and of a demand f lor" national union. I The' Foreign Secretary (Lord HaliI fax) spoke of Lord Snell’s sharp attack on the Prime Minister. He said he was in no way disposed to appear with the apologetic gesture of a defendant. It was possible to look back and say that some other action might have been better, but that would never bo proved. One decisive factor was that the Germans 'denied to the British air bases in Trondheim. He was under no temp--5 tation to minimise the damage brought to the Allied cause as a whole, but the war was going to be won by hard facts and not by prestige. He thought it true to say that the damage effected by the withdrawal was largely due to. exaggerated expectations. He insisted that criticism by neutrals and of a neutral should be seen in the proper perspective, emphasising the extremely difficult position in which the neutral States were placed in the great whirlpool of war. Lord Halifax added: “When the effect of criticism is to suggest to the country that its war effort is misconceived and misapplied by those responsible for its direction, then I think the criticism defeats its own end and can only add unnecessarily and nnprofitably ' to the inevitable strain of the war.”