The House "Kitchen Committee" was back from France with orders for postwar wines and promises of better food. The sacrosanct smoking room had a new carpet, its lackeys new black uniforms with green lapel pipings. A new room was open where M.P.s—who sometimes have had to dictate to secretaries on hall benches—could transact their business. Even the mace, symbol of authority, had been regilded.
Thus, amid new comforts, Britain's M.P.s, tanned and bright-eyed from a two-month recess, last week rolled up their sleeves for the fagend of the 1946 parliamentary session.
But the new...