"Positives of Action!"

(See Front Cover)

Hair-trigger nerves. A dark toothbrush mustache. Youth. The gift of gab. Ambition. A decent War record. IDEAS: how to shrug the burden of War debts off one's country's shoulder; how to recapture prosperity; how to become GREAT.

Put all this hodge-podge together and it makes:

Either Herr Adolf Hitler, Austrian-born, ex-streetsweeper whose young Fascist party has won 6,000,000 German votes (TIME, Sept. 22).

Or Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Bart., the "Millionaire Socialist" who founded in England fortnight ago "The New Party" (TIME, March 9), promptly caught influenza, lay all last week between sheets while his beauteous wife went out to fight the party's first battles.

Two Kings, Two Queens. Adolf Hitler has no wife and only what money he can collect (German Magnaten have been generous). But Lady Cynthia Blanche Mosley, daughter of the late, great Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, brings to her husband many of the golden millions left by her Jewish grandfather, Levi Zeigler Leiter of Chicago.*

In 1599 one of Sir Oswald's ancestors was Lord Mayor of London. In 1920 Lord Curzon obtained from George V for his daughter's wedding the loan of the Chapel Royal at St. James's Palace, London.

To the nuptials came not only Their Britannic Majesties, but also King Albert and Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians, she arriving by air from Brussels. Just four years after the smartest bride & groom in England left the altar of the Chapel Royal, he entered the House of Commons as a Laborite (i. e., a Socialist). Five years later she did the same (TIME, Nov. 11, 1929).

Mosley campaign methods are brazen, breezy and effective. They electioneer from a limousine, confounding tattered hecklers with the question: "Why shouldn't we be comfortable?" She kisses babies without bothering to doff her pearls. The only downright campaign lie he tells is this:

"Beer is my drink! I have always liked beer."/-

Sir Oswald's Record: Educated for the army at Sandhurst; fought in France with the 16th Lancers, later with the Royal Flying Corps; first returned to Parliament as a Conservative in the "Khaki Election" of 1918; returned as an Independent in 1922 and 1923; returned as a Laborite in 1926 by beer-loving Smethwick.

One ministry Sir Oswald has held: Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (1929-30). In this post he helped Lord Privy Seal "Jim" Thomas explore schemes for relieving unemployment, quarreled violently with Mr. Thomas' laissez faire conclusions, resigned from "the do-nothing MacDonald Cabinet" (TIME, June 2).

"Our Only Hope!" As he lay abed snuffling last week, several portents appeared to please Sir Oswald Mosley:

No man of cabinet rank had yet resigned to join his New Party; but from the cabinet there did resign last week his friend Sir Charles Trevelyan, president of the board of education.

If Sir Charles is not about to join Sir Oswald he at least parroted New Party doctrines in a letter to the press. For example Sir Oswald has said: "The Government runs to and fro like a chicken in front of a motorcar, cackling economy slogans to their opponents. The way to meet this nation's difficulties is not by negatives of panic but by positives of action!"

Wrote Sir Charles, parrotwise: "The Government instead of undertaking painful and ineffective economies should be occupied in demonstrating to the country that Socialism is an alternative to economy. In the present depressed condition of trade, great constructive Socialist measures are our only hope."

Such measures are precisely the Mosley program: The New Party will march to the polls demanding that a limited dictatorship or "Cabinet of Five" be set up with extraordinary powers in the economic and social realm. In foreign policy and traditional "affairs of state" (in the Victorian sense) the British Cabinet would remain in status quo.

Party Program. The definitive program of the New Party is the so-called Mosley Manifesto of last December. With such ringing phrases as "we surrender nothing of our Socialist faith!" it angles for the Labor vote. But Capitalists find comfort in the manifesto's explicit postponement of a decision whether British industry is to continue the possession of rich men or become property of a Socialist State.

The immediate question is not a question of the ownership but of the SURVIVAL of British industry!" cries the manifesto. "Let us put through [our] emergency program. . . . Afterward the political debate on the fundamental principle can be resumed."

Obviously so loose a phrase as "emergency measures" can be reshaped to any pattern as the New Party takes form. As a sample idea, "export trade" is to be "promoted" by "reorganization and by trade agreements with all nations" especially the Dominions.

"A national economic planning organization" plus "an import control board" and "a commodity board" are to "aim at building within the Commonwealth a civilization high enough to absorb the production of modern machinery," thus restoring Prosperity.

There will then be enough money in hand to pay Britain's debt to the U. S. with ease; but in the meantime the manifesto demands "some postponement of the [present] precipitate attempt to repay the War debt from taxation of this generation."

In the House last week Scot MacDonald interrupted a bickering debate with this cry of despair: "What is the use! What is the use of members watching the clock go round and getting up to indulge in talk, talk, talk? It is bringing this House into contempt--this listless, lifeless talk, talk, talk."

Lay-dee-day-dee Cynthia. For Lady Cynthia Mosley, fighting the New Party's battles last week meant standing up at mass meetings, giving as good as she got from hecklers of all the big parties, keeping her temper, sharpening her wit, pleading. . . .

"Your husband wants to be Prime Minister!" taunted a heckler.

"As my husband says," flashed Lady Mosley, "it is no longer a case of England muddling through! If the present crisis is not solved England goes under."

Heckled another, "I suppose you and him think you're Socialist! You in your black silk lay-dee-day-dee's gown this minit!"

"My God!" retorted the daughter of Lord Curzon, "if you had sat in the House of Commons for the last 18 months you would be here on the platform beside me! If you want to find the betrayers of Socialism, go to the Labor Government Cabinet."

B. Y. P. Among London's Bright Young People (particularly the females) Lady Cynthia and Sir Oswald are considered delightful, their panaceas adorable.

Among Jewish friends of Lady Cynthia who take Sir Oswald seriously is Frau Gustav Stresemann, widow of the late, great German Foreign Minister. A few months before Dr. Stresemann died, a few weeks before the present British cabinet was formed, the Stresemanns and the Mosleys went on a light-hearted German bummel.

Perhaps even the Great Man was taken in. Incredible as it may seem, Frau Stresemann went about telling her German friends confidentially (after the bummel) that there was a chance, a real chance that George V would call Sir Oswald to the prime ministry instead of Ramsay MacDonald!

In the lobbies of the House of Commons, last week, M. P.'s professed to take the New Party as a huge joke. But one prominent Labor statesman said (off the record) : "I think they are mistaken in pooh-poohing Mosley. They ought to watch him. He's a persistent little terrier. Smart, too!"

Everyone was repeating to everyone else a very solemn joke: "Have you heard the news? Ramsay has resigned, and Mosley has sent for the King."

A check-up on Sir Oswald's personal cars revealed last week that his Bentley speedster is in a French garage, smashed up. His roaring Mercedes is ready for him the moment he hops out of bed. Herr Adolf Hitler also rides a Mercedes.

* Lady Mosley's uncle, Joseph Leiter of Chicago, still relates with gusto in the pages of Who's Who how in 1897 he cornered the wheat market for his father "to such an extent as to make him, at the beginning of 1898, the largest individual holder of wheat in the history of the grain trade."

/- A workman's challenge to down a pint of "bitter" almost proved the candidate's undoing. Champagne is, in fact, his drink. Shrewd, he sidestepped the challenge temporarily, practiced at home by gargling bitter beer until he could down the horrid stuff publicly without making a wry face. In Smethwick, his constituency, beer is almost an article of the workingman's faith.

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