The Laborites

"We are on the threshold of government. We may be called upon in the next few days to take on our shoulders the responsibilities of office. We shall take it. Not because we want it. Has anyone here been so foolish as to hasten the demise of a father who is about to leave him a bankrupt estate ? We know there are risks on every side, but if there are risks there is also a cause." Thus spake Ramsay MacDonald at the Royal Albert Hall in London at a Labor rally.

The Labor Leader, who is allegedly so close to being Premier that he can "claim the right of sitting on the steps of No. 10 Downing Street," said that if capital flees from the country "it will be the panic mongers who are responsible, not the Labor Party." Mr. MacDonald then cataloged the aims of the Labor Party: To establish European peace on "an understanding of humane" men and women, "who have no cause for war, no cause for enmity"; to use the League of Nations "without reserve as the main instrument of securing international justice"; to recognize Russia and so end "the pompous folly of standing aloof from the Russian Government"; to encourage trade "from the coasts of Japan to the coasts of Ireland"; to deal with unemployment by creating a Labor Department "staffed by men and women of labor experience; experience, aye, and knowledge, the spirit, insight and capacity to put themselves in the shoes of the unemployed and of the children--for the first time an administrative will consider the problem of unemployment from a human point of view"; to break any trusts which he found increasing the cost of building material and so hampering a solution of the housing problem. He could not understand, he said, "how people could go to bed and pray to a common Father with the knowledge that in the East End of London men, women, young men and maidens, are all huddled together in one room tonight, while there are homes, socalled, that have no cheery, comfortable, fireside; while there are places in which young men and women just married and in whose minds the glorious glow of love was still undimmed, had to face poverty, degradation, dirt and sordidness." At the beginning of the meeting the Socialist Marseillaise was sung. At the end a rendition of The Red Flag was given. God Save the King was not sung.

Yet the moderate program and the lack of radicalism, for which the meeting was, on the whole, conspicuous, was well received by the press.

The general feeling throughout the country was that the Labor Party should be given fair play. The Times of London recently said: "Let us repeat, what we have often said before, that there could be no greater danger than a popular impression throughout the country that the two traditional parties, fresh from a violent General Election, were prepared to unite on no other basis than their common anxiety to balk Labor of an opportunity won by constitutional means. . . .

"What matters most is that a Government so novel, so inexperienced, so hampered by its own irresponsible programs in the past, should have the constant check of a vigilant and informed Opposition. It will, we may hope, be an Opposition which is neither factious nor unsympathetic with the blunders of mere inexperience. But it must be prompt to expose and defeat any attempt to put into practice those dangerous theories with which Labor is often associated." The following forecast was made of the Cabinet which Ramsay MacDonald is likely to form in the event of the King tendering him an invitation:

Premier, Foreign

Affairs J. Ramsay MacDonald

Exchequer Philip Snowden

Lord Privy Seal J. R. Clynes

Home Office Arthur Henderson

Board of Trade J. H. Thomas

Health Sidney Webb

Admiralty Viscount Haldane

Lord Chancellor Lord Parmoor

Education Arthur Greenwood

Attorney General Patrick Hastings

Labor Miss Margaret Bondfield

Viscount Haldane (TiME, Jan. 7) refused to become Lord Chancellor and it was not known if he would accept the portfolio of First Lord of the Admiralty. No candidate was mentioned for the War Office.