Humbug Between Friends

Tense though relations were last week between George V and Australia's Prime Minister Scullin (see p. 17), they were tenser still between the MacDonald Government and Canada's Richard Bedford Bennett. The Canadian Prime Minister returned to London last week from Paris where he had been feted (TIME, Dec. 8). During his absence the word "humbug" had been applied in the House of Commons by Secretary of State for the Dominions James Henry ("Jim") Thomas to the proposals which Mr. Bennett made at the opening of the Imperial Conference (TIME, Oct. 20). Back in London, Canada's Bennett, a devout and wealthy bachelor, maintained silence for several days. When it became plain that His Majesty's Government in Great Britain had no intention of offering voluntary apology to His Majesty's Government in Canada for the use by a responsible Minister of the Crown of the word "hum-bug," Mr. Bennett issued an official statement. The silence of the MacDonald Government, he declared "must be construed as an endorsement . . ." of Mr. Thomas' "condemnation in terms, unusual as they are injurious, of a proposal made by myself, on behalf of the Government of Canada, and which we sincerely believe contains the best solution of the urgent problem of closer Empire economic association." * Thoroughly angry, Mr. Bennett went on to accuse the MacDonald Government of "contemptuously rejecting" his plan, providing no alternative at the secret sessions of the Imperial Conference, and finally of adopting in advance an attitude of prejudice against reexamination of the plan at the Empire Economic Conference scheduled to meet at Ottawa in 1931.

Throughout England Conservative papers called the Bennett statement a "crushing document," flayed Laborites Thomas and MacDonald for "insulting and estranging" Canada. Fortunately the blood of Britons is not hot. When Bachelor Bennett and his sister-hostess left their London hotel to take the boat-train for Liverpool (en route to Canada) they were accompanied by bluff, expansive, jovial Jim Thomas.

The MacDonald Government had not even yet disavowed the term "humbug," but Prime Minister Bennett with appropriate forbearance shook Mr. Thomas' hand at parting with a tight little smile. As the train chuffed out, Jim fairly carolled to correspondents:

"Mr.. Bennett left as he came, a very close personal friend of mine. We parted closer friends, if possible, than ever."

* The Bennett proposal was twofold: 1) To put a high tariff wall around the Empire, thus ensuring that the Mother Country would buy more raw materials and foodstuffs from her dominions; 2) To leave untouched the low tariff walls erected by dominions to protect their infant industries even from the Mother Country's competition, though giving her through "Imperial preference" an advantage over countries outside the Empire.

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