"Oh, Ramsay, Dear"

Oct. 27 is the date of Great Britain's General Election, but 65 candidates automatically became members of the House of Commons last week when no other candidate appeared in any of their constituencies to make them fight. Thus popped back into the House were slim, aristocratic Speaker of the House Edward Algernon Fitzroy (proud of his Royal bastard ancestry) and Stanley Baldwin, pudgy, bumbling Conservative leader. Other lucky candidates made up the following skeleton House:

Conservatives 47

Pro-MacDonald Liberals 7

Pro-Lloyd George Liberals 5

Laborites 6

Election deposits of -L-150 each (forfeit if the candidate receives less than ^ of the votes in his division) were made by 1,286 candidates; by James Ramsay MacDonald in extraordinary fashion. Proffering three 20,000 mark pre-War German banknotes, the Prime Minister called out loudly: "Each of these notes was once worth a thousand pounds--one thousand pounds! Will you take them all as my deposit?"

"Afraid I can't, Sir," demurred the official.

"But pounds Sterling, Bank of England notes!" cried Mr. MacDonald. "You'll take them, I know! Here are three notes, each of -L-50."

The official took the notes. Candidate MacDonald seemed to feel that he had proved something, something having to do with the fact that in his Prime Ministry the pound was forced off gold (TIME, Sept. 28). Fighting later in Seaham, his constituency, Candidate MacDonald faced crowds of chalky-faced, peak-nosed miners, some of whom sang insultingly:

Oh, Ramsay dear,

And did you hear

The news that's going round?

The Frenchmen and the Yankees,

They are flying from the pound;

So drop the Russian bogey,

Let the clarion call resound-- We must cut the workers' wages

For the saving of the pound.

Once, fiercely booed for 15 minutes, Mr. MacDonald left a Seaham platform without speaking while hundreds chorused, "You're a liar!" But more often Mac-Donald "platform magic" worked. The dignified, silver-haired Prime Minister won votes and wrung hearts by solemn sob-stuff. He dragged in his long dead wife: "In the old days, the first days, my wife and I had to pay for the postage of the Labor Party! We bought out of our own pockets--my wife and I--the very notepaper on which Labor's work was done. . . . Labor is in my blood and in my bones! I was Labor at my birth and I shall be Labor at my death."

Spectre of Bankruptcy. Two hours before Liberal Candidate David Lloyd

George was to radio an appeal for British votes the British Broadcasting Corporation cancelled arrangements to broadcast his words through the U. S. Britons heard him say, "There is more actual privation through unemployment in one American city than in the whole of Britain! . . . Spectre of bankruptcy stalking through . . . America. . . . 2,000 banks have crashed!" Most of these U. S. catastrophes Free Trader Lloyd George blamed on the U. S. Republican tariff, exhorted Britons to vote Free Trade (i. e. for the small wing of the Liberal Party still led by Mr. Lloyd George, other Liberals having rallied to support the MacDonald "National Government").

"Bolshevism Run Mad," Bitterest in the fight was Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Snowden who has "retired from the House of Commons," was not campaigning last week, but poured the bile and venom of his scorn gratuitously on the head of his former friend & colleague Arthur Henderson, late Foreign Secretary in the MacDonald Cabinet, now leader of the Labor Party.

Flaying Mr. Henderson's recently announced Labor platform (TIME, Oct. 19) as "the most fantastic and impractical ever," Slasher Snowden attacked & summarized it thus: "All derelict industries are to.be taken over by the state and the taxpayers are to shoulder the losses. Banks and financial houses are to be placed under national ownership and control. Your investments are to be ordered by some board, and your foreign investments are to be mobilized to finance this madcap policy. This is not Socialism. It is Bolshevism run mad."

Mild Mr. Henderson, who has no stomach for some of the "Bolshevism" which extremists in his Party have made him swallow, campaigned bleatingly last week, dazzled Burnley audiences with an account of how the League chose him (when British Foreign Secretary) as Chairman of the World Disarmament Conference that will meet next February (TIME, June i).

"I was appointed to that position in a personal capacity," said Mr. Henderson. He vowed he will not surrender the plum, added enticingly, "It rests with your electors of Burnley whether I shall preside as your representative."

Cut 6 Dried, In The City, London's "Wall Street," quiet confidence existed all week that the National Government of Prime Minister MacDonald will return to Parliament with a strong majority (perhaps 150) of Conservatives, "National Liberals" and "National Laborites."

The City's prediction was based on the fact that this year Labor candidates in 444 constituencies out of the entire 615 will have a straight fight against a single ("Nationalist") opponent who will receive all non-Labor and anti-Labor votes. Two years ago, when Labor, barely "won the election (TIME, June 10, 1929), one-third of all Labor candidates were victorious for no other reason than that each had two or more opponents who cut each other's throats. This year such throat- cutting has been reduced to a scientific minimum by broad agreement among all parties supporting the National Government not to run rival candidates (though they did this in a few cases).

So cut & dried seemed the probable result last week that Britons who hoped for a Labor victory were forced to paint a lurid picture: they saw the vast grey host of the unemployed, the discontented and Depression-ridden rising in a tidal wave of dumb resentment, sweeping "Uncle Arthur" Henderson on to glorious Victory and distasteful Bolshevism.

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