Sulphurous Ghost

Rip-snorting out of retirement last week went wizened Philip Snowden, sulphurous First Viscount Snowden of Ickornshaw and in his day the Labor Party's great Chancellor of the Exchequer (1924 & 1929-31). As a campaign orator, the noble Viscount has no peer in scathing invective and corrosive scorn. He quit the Labor Party four years ago to campaign for his old friend James Ramsay MacDonald so that the National Government formed at the behest of King George (TIME, Aug. 31, 1931) could triumph at the polls. Last week Viscount Snowden proved that his heart in Britain's next general election is with Labor.

Lashing out at Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and the present National Government, Lord Snowden railed: "If they had been firmer before this year, Italy never would have started her Ethiopian conquest. . . . Their policy was lukewarm and wavering. . . . If Sir John Simon had any sense of the pitiable failure he made of the office he held [Foreign Secretary] . . . he would, instead of appearing so much on public platforms nowadays, hide his head in some place of suitable obscurity in the hope that his miserable record would be forgotten."

According to Viscount Snowden, the National Government's present alarums & excursions in Geneva diplomacy are a belated effort to distract the British public from their miserable record. To advise His Majesty to dissolve the House of Commons and order a general election at this time, Viscount Snowden called a "spurious appeal to patriotism, a mean and partisan act." Stoutly he predicted that Britons will not be fooled, that the Conservative majority of the so-called National Government will lose 200 seats.

In one word, this Snowden outburst was pathetic. Labor's leaders in Britain are such colorless characters today that for the Party even to flash in the pan last week ghostly Philip Snowden had to rise from his political grave. Reporting on his prophecy, London correspondents canvassed political wiseacres, cabled that the National Government are expected to lose not 200 seats but perhaps 100, which would renew their lease on Power for another five years with an ample majority.

Flim-Flam? Indications were that Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin may advise His Majesty to spring the election even sooner than has been expected, perhaps on Nov. 14. In this connection astute "Augur" (Vladimir Poliakoff), a correspondent close to Mr. Baldwin, cabled with remarkable candor:

"Experts in domestic politics have for some time been anxious to have the [election] safely over before public opinion understands the extent of the failure of the policy pursued at Geneva. . . . The spectacular activities of Anthony Eden, Minister for League Affairs, may impress public opinion for a time, yet the Government know that the impression is unstable unless it is borne out by facts, which are not forthcoming. Therefore haste is imperative before the partial failure of the plan for collective security through Geneva stands revealed."

For a reputable correspondent to cable openly from London that His Majesty's Government are engaged in flim-flamming the British public with a Geneva sideshow which the Government already consider a failure, was enough to make all right-thinking Anglo-Saxons hope fervently that "Augur" may be wrong.

Jeers at Seaham. A piquant interlude last week was James Ramsay MacDonald's expression of a will to fight again for his seat in Seaham. This coal-mining constituency four years ago returned him to Parliament after he deserted the Labor Party and formed the National Government only because he was unopposed in Seaham by a Conservative candidate and because the Laborite coal miners' wives voted for silver-haired, throbbing-voiced Ramsay while their husbands called him a traitor blackleg, and worse.

Roared a Seaham miner at Lord Privy Seal MacDonald last week: "After 40 years of public life telling funny stories, aren't you sick and tired of it?"

"I shall not be tired," came the indomitable old spellbinder's retort, "I shall not be tired, my friends, until I have redeemed such a person as the one who put that question."

Anyone of less character than Scot MacDonald would never have fought Seaham four years ago, and last week his friends said they hoped his present visit was merely an exploring expedition.

No longer the Pacifist or Socialist he once was, Mr. MacDonald is honestly Conservative in mind today. When he told Seaham last week that the Government must win in order to pursue their welfare work and social services, there were jeers, shouts of "The Government wants to be returned so as to build battleships!"

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