Election in the Soup

Feverish bustle, anxious conjecture filled Buckingham Palace on election day this week. Outside, London wallowed in a yellow pea-soup fog. Below stairs, Royal scullery, parlor and chamber maids made no secret of their voting intentions as they hustled into bonnet and wrap, groped in a body out the fogbound back gate. Two footmen, the Palace womenfolk considered, were the only possible waverers. They had expressed Socialist opinions at the height of a servants' ball last year, but not since. One of these very footmen brought to the Royal study the latest newspapers for which George V repeatedly buzzed. Compared to His Majesty, Her Majesty is no reader in times of crisis. Queen Mary preferred to hear what was happening.

The Church of England was on the side of the National Government, indiscreetly so. Village parsons, safe in their obscurity, were not more rash in dragging the Church into politics than the Rt. Rev. and Rt. Hon. Arthur Foley Winnington Ingram, Bishop of London. Knowing and hoping that his words would carry weight all over England, he warned the London Diocesan Congress thus: "The credit of the country is so much shaken that if the verdict of the country goes wrong . . . the pound will fall to five shillings within 24 hours, to a shilling within a week and to a penny within a month."

"Monstrous!" protested a shocked layman. "This is politics!"

"It is not politics!" weasled the resourceful Anglican Bishop. "It is spiritual guidance."

Physical guidance of voters to polls through England's election soup was the frantic problem of candidates. Ding-donging down the city streets and even country lanes party workers cried, "Follow the bell!" Hastily posted paper arrows on sidewalks pointed pollwards. But fog effects could not be defeated. Voting was the slowest in years.

Dribbling returns early showed the expected trend. In numerous constituencies where the Labor candidate won two years ago because a Conservative and a Liberal candidate split each other's votes, the Labor man faced this week only a single National Government candidate and lost to him. First big Laborite to lose his seat thus was famed Ben Tillett, onetime chairman of the potent Trade Union Council.

Defeat faced Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald at Seaham (see below) where the vote was cruelly close, and Opposition Leader Arthur Henderson lost his seat at Burnley. But neither could be irrevocably "defeated." When the leader of a British party fails to win, some henchman who has won a "safe seat" resigns, turns it over to the leader at a cut-and-dried by-election.

Stock exchange betting and the rates for insurance against a Labor victory by Lloyd's continued to prophesy a landslide majority for the National Government of more than 200 seats in the new House of Commons.

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