9 DECEMBER 1925
The Bill confirming the Irish agreement was approved by the House of Commons.
The Government of India (Civil Services) Bill, which had passed the House of Lords, was read a second time in the Commons. A money resolution under the Land Settlement Facilities Act, 1919, was agreed to, fulfilling, it was explained, a promise made to Local Authorities that the State would hand over to them small holdings which were bought for the settlement of ex-Service men, on a self-supporting basis.
The Rating and Valuation Bill passed second reading in the House of Lords.
An “agreed” document on the question of rural land policy was issued by the Liberal and Radical Candidates’ Association. Mr Lloyd George expressed satisfaction with the scheme.
Lord Oxford, speaking at Liverpool, said if he had to try to condense into three words the policy of the present Government in regard to the coal industry, he did not think it could have been expressed in more concentrated and accurate form than “wait and see.”
Mr Ramsay MacDonald, touring his constituency, told his hearers that peace in Ireland would be cheap at the price of a million or two.
The costliness of the present system of transport was brought out at the sitting of the Coal Commission by a witness. The private ownership of waggons was a survival of the early days of the railway, and one for which no parallel could be found in any other country.
Details are now available of the disaster at Fenny Stratford level crossing, in which a charabanc that had crashed through the crossing gates was struck by a train. A survivor gives a graphic story of her terrifying experience, while the signalman on duty near the scene tells what he saw. Seven people are dead, and five are in a critical condition.
A Geneva telegram states that the Council of the League unanimously adopted the Hague Court’s advisory opinion regarding the procedure to be followed in deciding the Mosul question.
According to a Teheran correspondent, a secret agreement is being negotiated between Turkey and Russia.