"Appearance of Evil"

COMMONWEALTH (British Commonwealth of Nations)

iBritish Laborites have been accused of flirting with the capitalists, accepting hospitality from the King and Queen and what not. To all these accusations they have had a ready and satisfactory answer. But last week the diligent Rothermere press discovered proof positive that socialist Ramsay Mac-Donald was a capitalist.

The Daily Mail noted that Premier MacDonald had been registered in Edinburgh as the owner of 30,000 preferred shares in McVitie and Price, biscuit manufacturers. The value of the shares was at about $150,000.

The Evening Standard, Beaverbrook journal, printed the story of MacDonald's lifelong friendship with Sir Alexander Grant, Chairman of the biscuit company. Grant's father and Mac-Donald's uncle had been fellow guards on the Highland Railway and the two boys had to a certain extent grown up together. The Standard also pointed out that Grant had only recently received a baronetcy. The implication was that the Premier had sold Grant a baronetcy for $150,000.

The Premier gave the following explanation :

"I am sick at heart to have to talk of this, but I must protect my dear old friend in the enjoyment of the honor which the King so worthily bestowed upon him and with which this act of personal kindness to myself had as much to do as the man in the moon."

He went on to explain that the shares had been left to him for life in order to endow a Daimler automobile. "I did not fancy myself as the owner of a motor car," continued the Prime Minister. "It was against the simplicity of my habits. It took a long time to be persuaded and letters are in existence which reveal our minds. In the end I agreed with this arrangement. A sum of money was to be invested in my name and the income I am to enjoy during my lifetime so long as I keep the car, and at my death it is to revert to Sir Alexander Grant or his heirs."

Sir Alexander had this to say:

"Shortly after being appointed Prime Minister, MacDonald stayed with me at Edinburgh and was looking very ill. He had been in bad health because he was working so hard, and all the newspapers were speaking about how ill he was. And when I learned he was traveling about on the underground railway I felt he was taking too much exercise. For instance, on the night he went to the Pilgrims' dinner and delivered a fine speech, after he left the hall he had to take a train to Baker St., then out to near Chequers, where there was an old Ford waiting for him."

Said The Morning Post:

"We certainly would lay no stress on the possibility which lies open to a malicious mind. On the contrary, we would like to agree with the Prime Minister. They may have had no more to do with each other than 'the man in the moon' but we feel bound to say that Ramsay MacDonald and Sir Alexander Grant, with their Scottish upbringing should have remembered the sagacious apostolic injunction to avoid even the appearance of evil."

The Evening Standard remarked that $150,000 was a handsome endowment for an automobile, the upkeep of which could not possibly cost more than a third of the income to be supplied by the sale of biscuits.