GREAT BRITAIN: General Election

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To Seaham hurried Eldest Daughter Ishbel MacDonald, no candidate herself, to organize her father's campaign in advance of his arrival. On his 65th birthday the tall, tired, silver-haired Scot breakfasted at No. 10 Downing Street, then dashed to Seaham, began the bitterest campaign of his life. "Blackleg!"', a few hostile Laborites shouted at him (equivalent to U. S. union men crying "Scab!").

"Shadow Cabinet." Left to cook up their own campaign, Conservative M. P.'s staged a cheery London rally at which Party Leader Stanley Baldwin received back into his "Shadow Cabinet" (board of strategy) obstreperous Winston Churchill. Stanley broke with "Winnie" over Conservative policy respecting India (TIME, Feb. 9); but with battles to be fought phlegmatic Stanley seemed overjoyed to have pugnacious Winnie back at his right hand. Son Randolph Churchill, Hearst reporter,* reported favorably. Manifestoed bumbling Mr. Baldwin, "I believe a great part will be played by those I am proud to lead." Cautiously Leader Baldwin pledged the Conservative Party to reduce imports and increase exports, adding this daring (for him) statement: "In my view a tariff is the quickest and most effective weapon ... to reduce imports."

Once before Leader Baldwin went to the polls with a tariff platform, sustained heavy losses (TIME, Dec. 17, 1924), but Conservative Churchill and the entire fighting wing of the party are convinced that British voters (traditionally free traders) see tariffs today as the only cure for depression.

"Most Wanton Election!" David Lloyd George, nominal Leader of the Liberal Party from which so many Liberals have split off, stormed from his sickbed last week: "This election is the most wanton and unpatriotic into which this country has ever been plunged!" (i. e. Scot MacDonald has broken and ruined the Welshman's party).

Some thirty Liberal M. P.'s led by Sir John Simon founded the National Liberal Party last week "to give firm support to the Prime Minister as head of the National Government and for the purpose of fighting in a general election." Major Gwilym Lloyd George, M. P. (loyal son) promptly resigned his minor post in the Government (Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade) in protest. Miss Megan Lloyd George M. P. (loyal daughter) began her campaign for re-election with this shrill cry: "I shall fight on as a Liberal—under the same leader—Lloyd George!" Invalid Lloyd George himself called Labor Leader Henderson to his bedside at Churt. They talked for an hour, presumably about joining forces, have long been expected to do so.

Oliver Baldwin, M. P. (disloyal Red son of Conservative Leader Stanley Baldwin) onetime Laborite, onetime Mosleyite, announced that he will not stand for reelection, denounced Labor Leader Arthur Henderson as "a Kerensky," explained morosely: "I must have Lenin."