Simultaneously the House of Commons was engaged upon an identically similar debate. Mr. ARTHUR HENDERSON was as lugubrious as Lord CREWE in presenting the indictment and distinctly less adroit in selecting his facts. His theory was that the Government had provoked the Sinn Fein outrages by its treatment of the people. Why, women had been prevented from taking their eggs to market! Sir HAMAR GREENWOOD spoke from the same brief as Lord CURZON, but threw far more passion and vigour into its recital. There had been some reprisals, he admitted, but they were as nothing compared to the horrors that had provoked them; and he protested against the notion that "the heroes of yesterday"--the R.I.C. is mainly recruited from ex-service men--had turned into murderers. As for the creameries, he had never seen a tittle of evidence that they had been destroyed by servants of the Crown, and he warned the House not to believe the stories put out by the propaganda bureau of the Irish Republican Army. He was still a convinced Home Ruler--an Ulster hot-gospeller had accused him of being a Sinn Feiner with a Papist wife!--but the first thing to do was to break the reign of terror and end the rule of the assassin. That they were doing, and there was no case for Mr. HENDERSON'S "insulting resolution." The Opposition for the moment seemed stunned by the CHIEF SECRETARY'S sledge-hammer speech. No one rose from the Front Bench and Lieutenant-Commander KENWORTHY had to overcome his modesty and step into the breach. Later on, Lord ROBERT CECIL, on the strength of information supplied by an American journalist, supported the demand for an inquiry. So did Mr. ASQUITH, on the ground that it would be in the interests of the Government of Ireland itself; but this argument was obviously weakened by Mr. BONAR LAW'S reminder that in 1913 and 1914 Mr. ASQUITH himself had deprecated inquiries in somewhat similar circumstances. The Government had a very good division, 346 to 79; but there were many abstentions. _Thursday, October 21st._--It was, no doubt, by way of brightening an unutterably gloomy week that Mr. L'ESTRANGE MALONE, who has not hitherto been known as a humourist, invited the Government to intercede at Washington for the release of the notorious JAMES LARKIN, now languishing in an American gaol. Inasmuch as LARKIN had been convicted for having advocated the overthrow of the United States by violence, Mr. HARMSWORTH did not think H.M. Government were called upon to intervene. Mr. MALONE understood from this that the Government had no sympathy with British subjects in foreign lands, and so he got another laugh.