The Week in Parliament Our Parliamentary correspondent writes: The House
is suffering from a form of nervous depression. Even the more sanguine forecast another crisis before the end of the summer; but they believe that Hitler will not fight and, after a test of nerves in which we are victorious, the first steps towards genuine appeasement may be taken, and incidentally a General Election held with the triumphant return of the Peacemaker. The less sanguine predict a crisis almost imme- diately. The psychological effect of a Soviet agreement has already, they argue, been thrown away ; our own people have been allowed to relapse again into a feeling of security, which the slightest knowledge of the position of our arms, vis-a-vis the Axis Powers, would dispel; while reports from Berlin tell of Hitler and von Ribbentrop in their most truculent mood. Many people seem to have changed their opinions recently about the inevitability of war. There are few advocates of surrender ; the overwhelming majority of the House would fight for Danzig or anywhere else against German aggression. But, Members ask, would the Cabinet? They give the impression of lacking virility ; they have been proved wrong so often that all their statements are received with scepticism, while, as Mr. Harold Macmillan wittily observed the other day, their conversion in recent months must have produced a traffic problem on the road to Damascus.
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