Belly-Bribe, Cont'd

Red as a harvest moon, the round face of Tory Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill rose in the House of Commons seven weeks ago to demand a parliamentary investigation. To wreck the Indian Reform Bill he had counted heavily on a report of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce on Japanese dumping and the fall of British cotton exports to India. The final report was mild as milk. Tory Churchill roundly insisted that it had been changed from its original draft after the Manchester cotton men had been feted, fed & flattered by Sir Samuel Hoare. a Secretary of State for India, and Lord Derby at the latter's home (TIME. April 30). According to House of Commons rules, tampering with a witness or exerting pressure to change testimony is a High Crime and Misdemeanor. The House listened gravely to Tory Churchill's charge of bribery-by-belly. instructed its committee on privilege, including Ramsay MacDonald and Stanley Baldwin, to hear the charge.

After solemn meetings, the committee last week published its report: acquittal of Sir Samuel and Lord Derby.

"What was called pressure," read the report, "was no more than advice or persuasion. That persuasion did not change the Chamber's opinions which were changed by other causes, notably by advices received from a mission sent to India by the Chamber. . . . The conversations at the dinner were evidently of an informal nature."

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