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This was difficult, since British editors felt they had to print and British news agencies felt they had to distribute such information as that in the House of Commons last week Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin's Cabinet was shouted at by War-time Prime Minister David Lloyd George in words which could scarcely fail to vex Il Duce. "Stand up to Mussolini!", roared the Welshman. "Earn some respect for Britain! ... I'd rather have Italy's anger than Italy's contempt." As they left town for England's long Easter holiday, rusticating members of His Majesty's Government ignored a Laborite M. P. who attempted the role of Cassandra. "The most dreaded contingency is near—a German attack on Czechoslovakia," cried Independent Miss Eleanor Rathbone.
¶ Royal Navy strengthened the grog* served to tars last week from "three-water-rum" to "two-water-rum"—a measure to stimulate recruiting at once contrasted with the Army's recent issuance of extra milk (TIME, March 29).
¶The Lord Chamberlain's Office, official censors of the British stage, were asked to pass on "an American burlesque strip-tease artiste" last week, decorously replied that they have preliminary jurisdiction only over spoken lines, whereas it is the understanding of the Lord Chamberlain's Office that strip-teasers say nothing. Instead of reassuring the British producer who was about to give the Kingdom its first taste of striptease, this official attitude of pointed refusal to censor caused him to cancel the act and he declared: "I guess it's too hot for England!"
Meanwhile Oxford undergraduates, celebrating their first crew race victory over Cambridge in 14 years, rampaged through London's show district, invading theatres in some of which they climbed on the stage and "took over the show." Rightly suspecting that the young gentlemen would want to finish up by stealing the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus, police had it swiftly boarded up and a hollow square of burly Bobbies easily withstood charge after tipsy Oxonian charge. Old Oxonian A. P. Herbert, famed Punch funster and Member of Parliament, attended the fray for hours, ready according to his wisecracks to testify as an M. P. in behalf of any student who might be arrested. Legislator Herbert kept calling to the police: "We are making no trouble at all!"
¶The King's yearly duty of distributing coppers to the poor on Maundy Thursday at Westminster Abbey, now boarded up in preparation for the Coronation, was discharged last week by the Archbishop of Canterbury at St. Paul's Cathedral, for His Majesty is being spared "fatiguing public appearances." Chicago Tribune's David Darrah and United Press's Dan Rogers broke stories that the Archbishop of Canterbury is slashing the Coronation Service right & left in efforts to get it as short and unfatiguing as possible, has decided to omit the sermon, hopes to telescope the ritual from a service normally of about four hours' duration into one, starting at the Abbey at 11 a. m., with the King out of the Abbey by 1:30 and back in Buckingham Palace by 4 p. m.