"Nigger Election"

In the chaste, cream-paneled Cabinet Room at No. 10 Downing St. last week His Majesty's Government met jovially to plan what some of them called their "nigger election."

The war in Ethiopia had just driven from Leadership of Britain's Labor Party that uncompromising pacifist, "Old George" Lansbury. With invincible stubbornness Mr. Lansbury remained unmoved by the frantic pleas of practical Labor politicians of the old guard. Said they, in effect: "Don't you see, George, that the Government has whipped people up into such a lather against Italy that Labor daren't oppose sanctions, even if they mean war?" This Mr. Lansbury could see clearly enough. Several hundred London stockbrokers and clerks last week mobbed Sir Oswald Mosley's British Fascist news-youths in Throgmorton Street, seized their papers and burned them, knocked off the helmets of London bobbies who tried to intervene. At Cardiff the captain and crew of an Italian steamer were driven below decks by brawny longshoremen who swarmed aboard and plastered every door and hatchway with posters reading "Down With The Fascists! Hands Off Ethiopia!" Between the strata of middle-class stockbrokers and dock workers a great section of Britons had been more or less aroused last week to one of their characteristic hates. But the ruling class, "the families," remained serene for the time being and, as represented in His Majesty's Government, alert to seize their political opportunity.

It was time to hold a snap election. The Labor Party split with a loud crack last week when Pacifist Lansbury resigned as Leader, declaring: "I personally cannot see any difference between mass murder organized by the League of Nations and mass murder. ... I have passed my seventy-sixth year, and younger men may carry on." In, as Leader of Labor pro tern, stepped colorless, unimaginative Major Clement Attlee, an acceptable parliamentary wheelhorse, just the man to lose a General Election. In disgust left-wing British Laborites, the small but vigorous Independent Labor Party, manifestoed: "The real issue lies solely between two imperialisms in Africa--British Imperialism and Italian Imperialism. Workers, beware! Sanctions may develop into war and a conflict between imperialisms is not worth the life of a single worker."

Millions for Sanctions-- This was quite above most British voters' heads, and the Cabinet knew it. By the time His Majesty's Government had risen last week, as usual without intimating to the public any of their august decisions, leading correspondents, who had been sucking on their Cabinet pipe lines, were flashing crisp dispatches:

New York Herald Tribune's Joseph Driscoll: "The general election will be held about Nov. 28. ... It is probable that thereafter Winston Churchill will return to the Cabinet in connection with the intended rebuilding of the British Navy."*

New York Times's Charles A. Selden: "A general election before Christmas, probably at the end of next month. . . . The election campaign will consist of maneuvering to win those 11,000,000 voters who went on record this year in the peace ballot referendum in favor of sup porting the League of Nations. Incident ally . . . 6,000,000 voted for military sanctions. . . . There is no other question of British politics, domestic or foreign, on which the will of the people is so definitely known by the politicians. The number of these Britons who have declared for the League exceeds the normal voting strength of either the Conservative or the Labor Party. . . . The Labor Party ... has never been more unprepared for a contest than now. It has no effective leadership and cannot consistently fight the Govern ment on sanctions, which will be one of the chief issues of the campaign, because the Laborites themselves at their recent party conference voted almost unanimously in favor of sanctions". (TIME, Oct. 14).

Salutes & Insults. All that His Majesty's Government would say publicly last week was that Parliament will be convened a week early, on Oct. 22, "in the public interest.'' Playing politics, in which all is fair, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin remained in discreet contact with Dictator Benito Mussolini and appeared to believe last week that war will be confined to the colonial sphere, with the League of Nations making peace after the British general election, by which time the extent of Italian conquest should have satisfied Il Duce.

Greatest danger of an incident touching off a European war lay in the daily increasing irritability of Englishmen and Italians as their war boats and trade vessels elbowed each other in the Mediterranean. With the tone of reporting an Italian atrocity, the British steamer Cairo City radioed London papers that her flag-salutes to Italian war boats were not being returned "although there is still a rigid rule of the sea requiring the salute."

Mad as the stockbrokers of Throgmorton Street, the officers of the Cairo City relayed a rumor extremely offensive to touchy Italian honor, to wit: "Recently an Italian ship which failed on entering Alexandria to salute British warships was forced to return to the sea and re-enter the port with the proper salute." If British admirals in non-British ports were thus humiliating Italian sea captains last week in the manner of traffic policemen, then Europe was indeed at the mercy of an incident.

Cunning Fidelity. Declared hoary War-time Prime Minister David Lloyd George in the weightiest British analysis of last week: "The League offered Mussolini nothing which he could have accepted without being laughed off the Italian stage--and as for talk of sanctions, II Duce knew the exact weight of the brain and fist of every man with whom he was dealing, and having carefully scanned the figures on the balance, he decided it was a safe chance to defy them all.

"He knew that if sanctions were applied they would be negligible. I am not the only one to suspect that he has already negotiated these sanctions with the French Premier. They are arranged sanctions to preserve the respectability of the League and its authority for future use. . . . Britain will not act without France, and the French Government is in honor bound not to apply effective sanctions. . . . There can be no doubt that M. Laval agreed early this year to accord to Signer Mussolini a free hand with Abyssinia. The Italians claim that they paid France a high price for that freedom. They surrendered all those Italian claims to Tunis, which had accounted a good deal for the recent frigidity of Franco-Italian relations, and they degarrisoned their French frontiers. . . .

"The bargain is being kept with cunning fidelity. . . . But are the Italians likely to submit tamely to arrangements made for the rearmament and re-equipment of a nation with whom they are at war? A few cargoes of machine guns, rifles and ammunition might prolong the war for years. The Boers kept going for many months on ammunition captured from the British. . . . Every lunar month in which the conflict is protracted will be 28 days and nights of possibilities sinister for world peace."

*Irrepressible "Winnie," whose career is strewn with his political near-suicides, committed his last attempt by leading the die-hard Tory group against Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin's new Indian Constitution (TIME, Feb. 9, 1931 et seq.). Recently Mr. Churchill deserted the die-hards (TIME, Sept. 2) and hopes to resume First Lordship of the Admiralty which he held in 1914. Last week the deserted diehards, now led by peppery Lieut.-Colonel Leopold Stennett Amery, reached paradoxically the same conclusion in the present crisis as their extreme political opposites, the Labor extremists. With Independent Laborites and Tories both opposing sanctions, observant George Bernard Shaw shrewdly quipped, more in earnest than in jest: "When Signer Mussolini, like the village blacksmith, looked the whole world in the face and told it to go to Hell, he split it into irreconcilable factions in which pacifists, always the most ferocious of sects, clamor for blood and iron, and militarists, always terrified, declare we must keep out of it at all costs. Our foreign policy is controlled by gentlemanly thugs with the fullest popular approval. . . . We shall arm ourselves to the teeth with all possible haste. Vickers and Sir Basil Zaharoff will flourish, employment will increase and I shall get doubled interest on my little savings."

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