Spartan, Stoic

COMMONWEALTH (British Commonwealth of Nations)

Ensconced at home, whirring through the Underground, or sipping their office tea, British men of civil power chuckled, grew grave, and finally expressed satisfaction last week at the doings of James Henry Thomas, M. P., Secretary of the Railwaymen's Union, famed "Balance Wheel of British Labor."

While swimming off Weymouth, Dorsetshire, clad only in bathing trunks, accompanied only by his daughter, "Honest Jim" Thomas felt suddenly the plash of wavelets where he had sensed protecting wool an instant sooner. As his toes writhed to catch the slipping garment, Mr. Thomas turned, thrashed, grabbed, dived -- without success.

Miss Thomas, discreet, resourceful, swam ashore and back, brought fresh bathing trunks, strove vainly to assist her father into them.

Pert wavelets proved upsetting. Lolling combers buffeted. At last -- sterling, Spartan, Stoic Mr. Thomas took his trunks in his teeth, swam to a life raft, stood with his back to cheering bathers while he clothed himself.

Railway Union Conference. Later that same day Mr. Thomas faced his worker-peers of the Railwaymen's Union, burly delegates, oilers, firemen, engineers, assembled in convention at Weymouth. They had heard charges that James Henry Thomas had "groveled for peace" during the great "general strike" (TIME, May 10 et seq.) when he represented them on the Trade Union Council which called, directed and called off the strike. "What about yer Jim?" was shouted sloganwise about the hall. Tempers grew short, shorter. "Honest Jim" Thomas stood up to reply at last. "Certainly I groveled," he said. "I groveled for peace because I knew what general strike war meant. A general strike must fail. It is doomed to failure from the moment it is declared because it is a brutal attempt to punish the innocent as well as the guilty. The more successful it becomes the more it impoverishes our own people and forces them to make any kind of settlement. . . . Moreover there is no use pretending that a general strike is not illegal. . . . I am not ashamed to admit that I did all I could to terminate the brutal, illadvised, illegal general strike. . . ."

Through two days of riotous debate, Communist delegates called for Mr. Thomas's secretarial head. Even President Dobbie of the Railwaymen's Union waxed so raucous as to refer once to Premier Baldwin as "that Hell-stinking hypocrite." Then, defending himself at length, Mr. Thomas revealed that the Trade Union Council did not call off the general strike until it was convinced that the coal strikers (for whose benefit the general strike was called) had taken a position so uncompromising that their demands could never be fulfilled. "They wanted us all to starve for their slogans," said Mr. Thomas. "Well, we wouldn't! It was not common sense."

By an all but unanimous vote Mr. Thomas was confirmed in his secretaryship.