U. S. Relations

Scene. A dinner of the Pilgrims in London.

Premier. Ramsay Macdonald was a guest whose presence aroused much interest. It was his first public address since assuming office (TIME, Feb. 4). In his speech he touched upon:

Wilson. Ex-President Wilson was then dying, said the Premier: "There is one very serious thought in the minds of everyone gathered here . . . that is the news we have had of the serious state of the health of ex-President Wilson. At such a moment partisanship and questions of party allegiance sink into insignificance. The whole English nation tonight awaits, with held breath, further news."

Friendship. Continued the Premier : "America and ourselves--we want no alliance, we want no document--Amer-ica and ourselves are in the position of two peoples that in spirit, by reason of those great moral and spiritual forces that are demeaned and narrowed by being written down on paper--are prepared to stand side by side, not in political alliance, but in human fellowships to help each other." Turning to Ambassador Kellogg the Premier said: "We will take His Excellency generously into our social life. He is a cousin. He belongs to the family. If we take him to the graveyard where our forefathers lie he has his tomb. If we speak together, we speak in our own mother tongue. He is more than an Ambassador. He is a representative of an absent branch of our family."

Ambassadors. Concluded Premier Macdonald: "Foreign secretaries are human. Ambassadors are divine. They belong to the category of men which is most magnificently and worthily represented here tonight in the person of His Royal Highness [The Prince of Wales]. There are some ambassadors who are going to give me trouble. There are others whose visits to the Foreign Office always will fill my heart with joy, because they will have nothing whatever to say to me. My honorable friend. His Excellency [the U. S. Ambassador], I am glad to say, and I am sure he is glad to say, belongs in the latter category."