Battle Royal

George is the name of the King. St. George is the patron saint. And St. George's, Westminster, is the Parliamentary constituency in which Buckingham Palace stands. Last week two rival Conservative candidates, a regular and an irregular, contested St. George's in a by-election of the first importance. The real issue, dwarfing both candidates, was the fitness of former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to remain leader of the Conservative Party. St. George's is so utterly Conservative that there was no Liberal, no Laborite candidate.

Enter the Press. Battling to oust Leader Baldwin are the two mightiest newslords in the empire. For sheer bawling blatancy, for staggering reversals of editorial policy overnight at the publishers' whim, for colossal nerve in pouring millions of pounds into the boldest circulation-grabbing schemes and for boundless ambition to rule the British Empire from the press rooms of Fleet Street, the newspaper chains of Baron Beaverbrook and Viscount Rothermere are unique.

All this power was suddenly switched like a high-voltage current into St. George's some weeks ago, the object being to elect one Sir Ernest Willoughby Petter. This inoffensive knight, the irregular Conservative candidate, was not originally the presslords' mannikin. He entered the lists at St. George's supported by a dignified group of manufacturers who wanted to air the issue of high protective tariffs v. low protective tariff or "safeguarding." Sir Ernest Petter was to advocate high tariffs, and the regular Conservative candidate. Captain Alfred Duff Cooper, husband of beauteous Lady Diana Manners, would of course support "safeguarding," the official party policy. In this way some very instructive debate would be had, and in time regular Conservatives might think better of high tariffs, which would please the manufacturers.

Petter's Bombshell. With a single blow of his hard Canadian fist, Baron Beaverbrook shattered the idyllic calm of poor Sir Ernest Willoughby Petter. Sir Ernest was told that he could either get up on his feet and fight the presslords' battle against Stanley Baldwin or they would smash his candidacy by putting up a third Conservative candidate. What could he do but accept the aid of two such very rich men?

In some 6,000,000 morning and evening papers white-haired, drab-mustached Sir Ernest Willoughby Petter's picture promptly appeared. Said the Rothermere Daily Mail: "Sir Ernest Petter, one of the country's foremost business men, threw a bombshell into official Conservative circles last night. . . .

"His object is to make the Conservative Party leadership the issue of the by-election on account of Mr. Baldwin's--

" 'Lack of power and ability to lead the country out of its present difficulties. "

" 'Capitulation to the Socialist Party with regard to India.' "

High powered slogans were coined by the presslords and plastered up, one so lyrically absurd that it soon sifted into London music-hall patter. Slogan:

Gandhi Has His Eye

Upon St. George's!

As the campaign waxed hot, Sir Ernest Willoughby Petter was shoved about in his own hustings as though he scarcely existed. One day he made a "manufacturer's speech," urged wage cuts throughout the Empire. Then he had to sit down and listen meekly while Baron Beaverbrook roared from the same platform a plea for Petter and "wages as high as any in America!"

Dislikes Women? Stanley Baldwin might have left the Baron and the Viscount to stew in the latter's fiery juice. He need only have stood upon the precedent that the leader of a British party never campaigns in a by-election.

But the Conservative leader was mad clean through at the presslords, and St. George's is a peculiar constituency. The King does not vote, the Queen does not vote, but their 80 domestics vote. The svelte ladies, the smart gentlemen of Belgravia and Mayfair may or may not vote in St. George's; but their butlers, cooks, ladies' maids, valets, parlor maids, footmen, kitchen wenches and chauffeurs have, in any case, the deciding vote.

As a gentleman, Mr. Baldwin was afraid that the servant class would follow the pied piping of the presslords. Last week he scrapped precedent, jumped down into the dirty cockpit where his candidate, Lady Diana Manners' husband, had already struck such verbal blows as his famed: "Lord Rothermere hasn't got the guts of a louse!" (TIME, March 23).

Squire Baldwin was soon calling the presslords "liars" and "cads" who fight with "half truths . . . misrepresentation . . . and direct falsehoods!" In his rage Mr. Baldwin even found occasion to use the name of Mrs. Baldwin. He said that her recent appeal for funds to aid women in the maternity wards of public hospitals had been printed by every paper in the realm except those of the presslords. "Lord Rothermere," sneered Mr. Baldwin and raised the squealing titters of servant girls, "Lord Rothermere must be a man who dislikes women!"

Nine of London's most highly respected journalists, including John Ceilings Squire, Henry Wickham Steed, A. G. Gardiner, J. Alfred Spender and Viscountess Rhondda who edits London's Time & Tide,* signed last week a manifesto supporting Mr. Baldwin without distinction or party to the extent that they flayed his opponents as "irresponsible amateur politicians" trying to "mislead their readers by weapons of distortion and suppression" constituting "a menace to our treasured political institutions, the gravity of which it is impossible to overstate."

Returns. Servants do not always love a lord. But servants nearly always recognize a gentleman, even if he be only a well-meaning, honest, muddleheaded gentle man like Mr. Baldwin.

Sir Ernest Petter lost St. George's for the presslords last week by receiving only 11,532 votes to Captain Alfred Duff Cooper's 17,242.

Confirmed by St. George's in his leader ship, Stanley Baldwin stands to be further strengthened, perhaps this week, by the rumored decision of Sir John Simon to quit the Liberal Party and join the Con servative. Next to David Lloyd George, Sir John is the leading Liberal. Should he desert, Mr. Lloyd George was expected last week to throw in his lot with James Ramsay MacDonald, enter a formal "Lib-Lab Coalition Cabinet." Mr. MacDonald, for obvious reasons, was understood to want Mr. Lloyd George to take the minis try concerned with unemployment. But the Welshman continues to fancy his old job as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and last week Chancellor Snowden was still suffering in bed with cystitis.

*No kin.

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