The Commons—
The House was advised that $892,960 was the cost in 1936 of the British Secret Service. This was "less than had been expected," and the ever-efficient Secret Service, far from having overrun its budget as Government departments are inclined to do, reported a tidy little surplus of $7,035. In so far as any British public man has to carry off the honors of being called ''head of John Bull's Secret Service" by such careful newsorgans as Manhattan's Herald Tribune, this duty is discharged by Sir Robert Gilbert Van-ittart, brilliant permanent Undersecretary of the British Foreign Office.* Last week Sir Robert's brother-in-law, vigorous British Ambassador to Germany Sir Eric Phipps, was appointed Ambassador to France, and heaved by the Nazis were sighs of relief. After Dictator Hitler took power, two diplomats Der Führer found too hard and smart for his Nazis were the then U. S. Charge d'Affaires George Anderson Gordon, now U. S. Minister to Haiti, and Sir Eric Phipps.
"John Bull's Secret Service," said the Herald Tribune last November, "is catching and jailing at a record rate spies with German contracts, and worrying the Nazi war staff and diplomatic chieftains by an uncanny knowledge of things which the Nazis thought were impenetrable secrets. . . . Vansittart is the only man living who knows all the Number Ones of the British Secret Service. Even the Prime Minister is denied that knowledge. But one other man is let in on the money side. He is Sir Warren Fisher, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury and Head of the Civil Service; and he does the auditing job himself.
¶ The Regency Bill, under which the Duke of Gloucester is to become permanent understudy of King George VI and Regent in the event of His Majesty's "incapacitation" or death (TIME, Feb. 8) was urged with dignity in the House last week by Home Secretary Sir John Simon. As England's greatest lawyer, Sir John recalled how the insanity of King George III prevented that unfortunate monarch from assenting to the Regency Act made necessary by his madness. The present Regency Bill, proposed by King George VI in "a message signed by His Majesty's own hand," should obviate Regency Act difficulties for all time, according to Sir John Simon, and overwhelmingly the House was with him.
Unfortunately the Home Secretary had opened, by mentioning King George III, direct access of attack upon King George VI by the few republican M.P.'s and the lone Communist M.P. last week. Speaker the Rt. Hon. Edward Algernon Fitzroy, a congenitally stanch Monarchist usually quick to choke off belittlers of the Royal Family, was obliged to let them have their say.