''National" Fight?

Miss Rose Rosenberg would not say where the Prime Minister had gone. Faithful secretary, she kept his secret for two days last week. He was not at Lossiemouth. not at Chequers, not at "No. 10" (Downing Street). To be quite alone, to escape even from familiar furniture and beloved books, James Ramsay MacDonald went secretly to a country house placed at his disposal by Earl De La Warr. There with awful Scotch solemnity he searched his soul, faced a decision which if taken would mean a final break with

Philip Snowden, a final throwing overboard of his last Socialist principles, a break with countless friends.

The issue, personal and national: should Scot MacDonald. who up to last week had done no more than leave his Labor friends in the lurch (TIME, Sept. 31), now decree an immediate general election and fight Labor (i.e. Socialism) up & down the land as leader of a new "National Party," this to consist of the Conservatives and Liberals supporting the Prime Minister's "National" Government?

Led by Minister of Health Neville Chamberlain, militant Conservatives have been pounding Scot MacDonald to decree an immediate election. Their reasons: 1) The National Government's 10% cut in the dole will be felt increasingly as time goes on, discontent meaning more & more Labor votes the longer an election is delayed. 2) The rise in internal prices due to the National Government's taking the pound off gold means that Britons will soon pay more for bread and meat, may swing toward Labor in their wrath. 3) Conservative strategists think present days of crisis are the ideal time to convince British voters that they need a protective tariff.

Tariffs of any kind are anathema to a Socialist. Squarely last week the harassed Prime Minister had to answer to himself: "Am I still a Socialist? Am I still a Laborite? Am I anything that I was?"

The two days in Earl De La Warr's house passed. Pale, unsmiling. Mr. MacDonald returned to Downing Street, had nothing to say. His doctor admitted the Prime Minister's "extreme nervous fatigue" but called his health satisfactory. Still torn by alternatives. Scot MacDonald week-ended at Chequers, returned to London still pale, still silent.

At Conservative headquarters party workers gathered, talked of Oct. 28 as the "dead cert." election date. Opinion hardened that the hesitant P.M. must decide for an election soon. Suddenly to cap Scot MacDonald's woes came an ultimatum from Mahatma Gandhi. Impatient of delay by the Indian Round Table Conference, Mr. Gandhi said that a month of further delay because of a General Election would be intolerable, would make it necessary for him to return to India. King George, too. was said last week to be opposing an election, fearful perhaps of social upheaval.

What to decide? Friends, while expecting James Ramsay MacDonald to emerge from his extreme nervous fatigue with some decision, pointed out that he might escape into the Peerage or to Washington as Ambassador. In Labor circles reconciliation between "Ramsay Mac" and "Uncle Arthur" Henderson, the new Party Leader, was held impossible. Laborite wiseacres agreed with Conservatives that an election now would do Labor no good. To a Laborite audience at Burnley, "Uncle Arthur" denounced Conservative wiles, declared that crisis-wracked Great Britain must not be overstrained by an election now. "I am amazed." lied "Uncle Arthur." "that the Conservatives should believe it right at this juncture to have an election!"

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