Edinburgh Conferences

On a vital point of policy tousle-haired, impulsive Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald last week shifted from shy to bold.

It was Shy Scot MacDonald who retired to his country home at Lossiemouth and took a hands-off attitude fortnight ago, when half-a-million Lancashire cotton operatives struck (TIME, Aug. 12), thus crippling Britain's largest export industry.

It was Bold Scot MacDonald who suddenly changed front, last week, ordered an airplane and flew from Lossiemouth to Edinburgh, where strike conciliation efforts were in progress. Arbitration seemed overnight to have become his goal. After a morning of high pressure secret conferences with cotton folk the "Flying Scot" hinted to correspondents that a basis of arbitration had been laid, would divulge no detail.

After lunch Mum Scot MacDonald sat down to an even more closely hushed conference with Governor of the Bank of England Montagu Collet Norman and Wall Street's dynamic, cosmopolitan Thomas William Lamont.

Since Mr. Norman is known to have viewed the cotton crisis with utmost concern, he doubtless asked and received details of Mr. MacDonald's morning's work of mediation. The real subject of the Norman-MacDonald-Lamont conference, however, was the reparations situation at The Hague where fiery Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Snowden seemed intent on bending or breaking the Young Plan. In making up his mind whether to back Battler Snowden to the limit the Prime Minister must know the attitude of the fiscal powers in Manhattan and London. None could inform him better than Tycoons Lamont and Norman. After hearing their views Mr. MacDonald flew back to Lossiemouth, cogitated through the night, finally issued a startling manifestation in support of Chancellor Snowden's demand that the Empire receive a larger slice of the reparations "sponge cake."