Gentle Juggle

As a mark of special favor, the King commanded to Buckingham Palace last week the discouraged Scot who lost his House of Commons seat in the General Election and is called "Judas" by the entire British working class, James Ramsay MacDonald.

Not without courage His Majesty thus made evident the satisfaction no Briton doubts that he feels at the current confusion and defeat of his working class subjects. Two red rags were next offered from Buckingham Palace to the hamstrung Labor Bull when, despite the defeat of Mr. MacDonald and his son Malcolm, the King approved a revised Cabinet in which both were included by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.

As made by Squire Baldwin the revision was a gentle juggle. Dropped out of the Cabinet and out of public life was the Marquess of Londonderry, whose political career was the reward for having launched socially in London, with magnificent banquets and balls at Londonderry House, silver-haired, distinguished "Judas" MacDonald "who looks more like a Lord than do most Lords."

Some thought was needed to know what to do about Dominions Secretary James Henry ("Jim") Thomas. He has proved more unpopular in the Dominions than any other man who ever held his post and President Eamon de Valera of the Irish Free State suffers acutely from Jimophobia. All the same "Jim" Thomas was the only National Labor and former Labor member of the National Government not to lose his seat in the General Election. Jim felt last week that he could demand a Cabinet promotion because of his value to Prime Minister Baldwin in keeping up the front of "National Government." Jim had the grotesque ambition of seeing himself, a onetime engine greaser, as the War Minister of George V.

Squire Baldwin elected instead to deflate the ego of Mr. Thomas, pulled him out of Dominion Affairs last week and demoted him to Secretary of State for Colonies, which are generally unable to make their dislikes articulate. Simultaneously Son Malcolm MacDonald was promoted from the Ministry to which "Jim" Thomas was demoted and made Secretary of State for Dominions. Father Ramsay remains in his sinecure of Lord President of the Council. Thus the "front" of the National Government, so far as the working class is concerned, remains a flimsy affair in which only young Malcolm MacDonald is not hotly hated.

Exceedingly cool Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, Third Viscount Halifax and "collaborator with Mahatma Gandhi" when he was Viceroy of India, stepped out from his unwelcome post of Secretary for War last week and in marched the perfect antithesis of Jim Thomas.

Eton, Oxford and the War, in which he won the Distinguished Service Order, have all set their mark on the brisk new War Minister, Alfred Duff Cooper. So too has the fact that Max Reinhardt cast for the Virgin in The Miracle Alfred Duff Cooper's wife, Lady Diana Manners. Under this 45-year-old scion of swank Mayfair, and not under a onetime engine greaser, the Army will be snapped into higher gear with Squire Baldwin's vast program of Rearmament. Lord Halifax received last week the sinecure of Lord Privy Seal.

Although a new World Naval Conference convenes Dec. 6 in London (see p. 9), Britons last week so thoroughly expected its failure due to Rearmament that they scarcely bothered to note that the First Lord of the Admiralty remains Sir Bolton Eyres-Monsell. His formula for the Conference is not limitation, much less reduction of naval armaments, but "pooled programs." By this Sir Bolton means not that the great naval powers will be asked to pool their Might for any high-minded purpose, but merely that they will be asked to pool with each other non-binding statements relating how many ships of what tonnages they expect to have by 1942.

With their British political careers ripening as uneventfully as grain, Sir Bolton and Secretary for Air Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister had Viscountcies conferred upon them by George V last week. By accepting them they signified that neither has any ambition to become Prime Minister, considered impossible today for a member of the House of Lords.

David Lloyd-George, having utterly failed during the general election to promote a Liberal revival or coalition of his few supporters with Labor, announced last week with unquenchable Welsh vigor: "I am taking a six-months' holiday from politics to complete my memoirs. I have a greater accumulation of stuff on the World War than any other living man. You would be amazed!"

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