London, May 3.
Labour still adheres to what is now the present system of celebrat: ing May Day as the Anniversary of the new era in our social life. Hitherto, so far as London is concerned, it has mostly meant an outing for the children in the parks who turn up attired in red. and with red caps of the French Revolution type, and when they are not taking refreshments sing "'The Red Flag." I think it is very unkind that this year the Communists came on the scene with a procession of their own. There were about 900 of them and they headed the con+ tingent with a numaer of cheery poster-inscriptions carried sandwich fashion, of which. the chief and most amusing was the generous sentiment:—''To h—with Butcher. Sir John Butcher has introduced al Bill to suppress the Proletarian Sunday Schools; hence their annoyance, The 200 demonstrators were the most appalling collection of aliens I have ever seen, from every conceivable country, the majority of whom had evidently been "fired out" by their respective Governments as the result of disillusionment on close acquaintance. very little of this sort of thing takes the gilt off the purely Labour gingerbread, and indeed, the Labour procession itself was poor. Tt was also marred by the fact that "there were a number of wagonloads if drowsy-looking females, very drunk, who would insist on trying to danes as the vehicles went along. You cannot very well expect much dignity or impres-sivaness under these conditions. There was the usual meeting in the Park and the usual speech. People are so accustomed to them nowadays that on one goes to listen, though they may still pose as spectators, since these functions have their humorous side.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.