Mandate to Bomb?

Until a few minutes before nominations closed last week for a by-election for Parliament in King's Norton, Birmingham, the election looked as if it would be just another local pushover for the Government candidates. But at the last moment an independent candidate rushed in with his nomination papers, signed by women only: Dr. Alfred William Lumsden Smith, who called himself an Independent Reprisal Candidate. His one-plank platform: Bomb Berlin.

All week long the Luftwaffe did some dark electioneering for Candidate Smith --by striking, night after shrieking night, at Britain's port towns. Candidate Smith's cause did not suffer by the fact that Birmingham was comparatively spared, that the pattern for the moment was a new and ominous one: Southampton, Portsmouth, Portland, Devonport (Plymouth), Milford Haven, Pembroke--all the stations and installations of Britain's most important weapon in Britain's most important battle.

All of Reprisalist Smith's political hopes were based on unhappy, grim phenomena. Not the least was the fact that morale in the repeatedly bombed naval ports was slipping. Portsmouth and Plymouth got theirs so badly last week that the people began fleeing town. An Associated Press correspondent reported after a tour through Plymouth: "One heard the cry, 'We can take it,' but one also heard the understandable question, 'What's the use?' "

Confident of success, Candidate Smith said: "For many years I've worked to cure. I now come before the people to ask them to kill, so that the war shall end, and end quickly."

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