Break with Reds

At Edinburgh, capital of Scotland, met, last week, the British Trades Union Congress. Its most important act was to break off relations with the All-Russian Council of Trades Unions, a course recommended by its General Council. By this action Bolshevist activities in the British Isles were dealt a deadly blow.

Walter Citrine, Secretary of the Congress, explained the reason for the break with acid simplicity. Said he: "Two years of patient striving to bring about an under-standing between the Russian and British movements. . . have now convinced the General Council, that it is impossible to go on under present conditions. The Rus-sian idea is that the labor movement is played on the Moscow stage and that all other labor organizations are merely spectators in the auditorium."

Rt. Hon. John Robert Clynes, shockheaded, beady-eyed, a leading Laborite of the moderate wing, thought the only element of surprise in the decision was that it had come so late. Added he: "Some of us have expressed our horror at the shooting of 20 Russians [in Russia] as an act of inexcusable murder. I cannot understand the mentality of those who denounce acts committed in one country and gloss them over when committed in another country. Murder is murder the whole world over."

Rt. Hon. James Henry Thomas, chubby-faced, excoriated the Russians for "publishing to the world a lying statement that Ramsay MacDonald, M. P., shammed illness and went to America [TIME, May 30] to escape participating in the discussion of the Trades Union bill." Then, raising his voice, he ejaculated: "I say that such con-duct is damnable, mean and con-temptible!"

One Casey, representative of the American Federation of Labor, much impressed, said, pandering: "We in America boast of our great republic and our great democracy, but we must come to England, Scotland and Ireland to observe pure democracy and to sit down to quench our thirst with anything we like."

Significance. The decision to break off relations indicates that the British Labor movement is once again under the undisputed leadership of moderates such as one-time Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald and his trusty aides, John Clynes, "Jimmy" Thomas and others. The reason for this is probably the General Strike, undertaken against the ad- vice of the moderates, which not only dealt them a hard blow in the sense that it gave industry an unparalleled set-back and robbed them of full-time employment, but virtually bankrupted the Trades Union organizations throughout the country.

--After all, old fellow, they are only boys--anything might happen. And so the first aid stations went up.