As I thought, the General Election is on us at once. Mr. Bonar Law has constituted his Cabinet all right, but it is not a striking one, and were it not for certain well known Peers with overseas experience, like Lord Derby, the Duke of Devonshire and Lord Novar, who used to be Mr. Munro Fergusson, but whom no one recognizes under his new name, it would not be particularly strong. It is not a Ministry which is capable of carrying the House with it, and if the Conservatives come back, they will have to remodel it drastically. In fact, the paucity of the material at Mr. Bonar Law's disposal is shown by his inability to obtain an Attorney-General and Lord Advocate who are actually in the House at all. Mr. Bonar Law had, of course, to publish his Cabinet, but it would have been very much better not to have done so, if it could have been avoided, since it is not the sort of volloction of Ministers which will inspire confidence.
In the meantime, manifestos are hurtling through the air. Labour, very cockahoop before Newport, where it was badly defeated, much to its surprise, is breathing menaces against everybody.and everything. and Mr. Henderson came out remarked in phrases which will become historic, as follows:—'Let me make it unmistakeably clear—against the organization of industry and society that now obtains, called private enterprise, with all its insecurity, with all its demoralization, and with all its degradation, Labour has declared war by every constitutional means at its command. We are convinced in the Labour Party that we need great changes both in the organization of society and of industry; changes of wide and comprehensible social If any leader could have said anything more stupid on the eve of an election, I have yet to discover it. War on private industry means the elimination of every shopkeeper in the world, and his substitution by a State official. It wipes out of existence every barrow-trader, and it means the creation of myriads of State officials, all having a great time at the expense of in dustry. Labour is not so obtuse that it did not at once see the red light, and before 2% hours had elapsed, Mr. Clynes was hurriedly trying to explain to the British public that Mr. Henderson had been improperly quoted, and that really Labour had no such scheme in ite mind. This is, of course, tosh, because the Labour Party has passed resolutions voicing the exact idea which Mr. Henderson umbedied in his speech, only he was foolish enough not to recognize that in sweeping proposals of this nature, ably this affectation will die out} it is risky to dot the "'i's" and cross the "ts."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.