Evening Post. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1930. THE CODE OF HONOUR

Evening Post, Issue 113, 10 November 1930, Page 8

Evening Post. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1930. THE CODE OF HONOUR

One of the most perplexing and distressing items in last week's news was the "pencil note signed 'Jimmy'," of which, without a word of comment beyond what was necessary to explain the occasion, the text was cabled to us on Wednesday. As the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs Mr. J. H. Thomas had been invited, to the South African dinner given to General Hertzog and his colleagues attending the Imperial Conference, and he was to have proposed the toast of "the chairman, Mr. C. T. de Water. Finding himself at the last moment unable to' attend, Mr. Thomas sent a note .in .which he asked Mr. Amery to take , his place. This note, which was evidently handed to Mr. Amery at the dinner, was read by him. to the meeting with the ostensible purpose of explaining how it was that he instead of Mr. Thomas had taken charge of the toast. Here is what he read: . Dear old boy,—Do get me out of a — — hole. You know -I will take a free dinner anywhere at the call of duty. It isn't the Conference that keeps me away. They'll stand another of my after-dinner speeches without busting up the Conference, but the last time I went to South Africa my colleagues got into an expurgated mess. If I attended the dinner I fear they would do something that "would put you in my place before breakfast. You love our country too well, therefore say what I think about te- Water. I'll look after .Ramsay and Philip. This strange document was surpassed in-strangeness by the manner in which Mr. Amery treated it, but it is perhaps stranger still that the incident should have been reported to us without a single word to illustrate the reception that it had been given by the Press and the public. It was in the expectation of some samples of the comments which it must surely have provoked that we withheld our own, but by this time it is quite clear that no light of the kind is to be provided. ; It is in the first place very pleasant ( to see that leading men in the parties which represent the two extremes in British politics can be on such intimate terms of personal friendship as are represented by "Jimmy's" note. ! Such' intimacies were natural enough when a .fewgreat families on either side supplied the leaders in b«th society and politics and the parties of a Duchess were of real political importance. Writing only two or two years before the War, the then Mr. Arthur Ponsonby said: Conservatives in polities are not sorry to have aristocrats and rich gentlemen as opponents because it presents cleavage being sharp' and defined between the ''haves", and "the havenots.'' The conflict now is one of principle, and not of caste and class. But the advent of Labour has brought the latter sort of class, conflict more within the range of probability. The kind of class conflict to \ which Mr. Ponsonby referred in 1912 has advanced far since- then, and he himself has become a peer in a Labour Government. But the new class war has -fortunately not entirely eliminated the reconciling '•■ influence of personal intimacies among the leaders to qualify the bitterness of the "eh masse" fighting. And not only among the leaders but among the rank and file of the House of Commons there is an amount of personal goodwill and camaraderie which would surprise those who are accustomed. %q take all their public recriminations at'their face value.It is, however, probable that among the Labour leaders Mr. Thomas, by his geniality, his humour, and his breadth of mind,, invites trie confidence of opponents to an extent that neither Mr. Snowden nor anybody else can equal. His relations with another of the Conservatives' strong fighting men—not to say the strongest of all—Mr. Winston Churchill, were well illustrated by an interchange at the Mansion House Dinner of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, which, was held last year, a few weeks after the present Government had taken office. ' I get consolation from this gathering, said Mr. Thomas. We have the Government of the moment. We live from hand to mouth,. We justify our expenditure on the goodwill of the Opposition.. Now Winston told me he was going to Canada. I calculated Trow long it would take him to get there and how long it would be- to get back, and I said to myself, "Jim, there is six weeks' salary certain for you." When Mr. Churchill's turn came he spoke with due gravity of the speeches of the Prince of Wales, who was in. the chair, and of Lord Grey of Fallodon, and then dealt with Mr. Thomas as follows:— AYe have had the jovial, genial, sagacious, breezy speech of the Lord Privy Seal. I don't know whether I am in order in referring to him in such a formal manner} I probably ought to retaliate by calling him Jim. But the pleasantness of' "Jim" Thomas's relations with the Conservative leaders and the completeness of the confidence which his note shows him to have placed in Mr. Amery only serve to emphasise the deplorable fashion with which on this occasion it has been treated. What can have been in Mr. Amery's mind when he betrayed his friend's confidence in this cruel way? The most charitable hypothesis seems to be that his mind was wandering or

temporarily obscured when he was moved to raise a good laugh by reading to his audience what Avas undoubtedly a very funny letter in entire disregard of the serious side of the matter. He doubtless got his laugh, but those who laughed were probably ashamed of it before the evening was over. For Mr. Amery at any rate it was a serious matter, for the price of his laugh was the publication not only to the meeting but to the world of what had obviously been submitted to him under the seal of strict confidence, and the causing of pain and perhaps serious political embarrassment to the friend who had trusted him. It is obvious that Mr. Thomas would never have dreamt of writing of his colleagues as he has written in this letter if he had supposed that there was the faintest risk of publication. When he refers to the "expurgated mess" into which they got during his visit to South Africa in 1924, he implies that he could have saved them from the mistakes which precipitated the General Election in that year if he had stayed at home. It was doubtless meant as a joke, but it was not the kind of joke he could afford to make in public, and probably the publication of it may Avell have got him into trouble with his colleagues and his party. For many of them the fact that the remark, Avhether serious or jocular, was made to a political opponent may be taken to have aggravated the offence. The second of Mr. Thomas's references to his colleagues would be much more difficult to explain aWay as a joke. If I attended the dinner, he writes, I fear they would do something that would put you in my place before breakfast. As tHe Cabinet is notoriously divided on Imperial preference, unemployment relief, and other things, it may be assumed that there was some solid foundation for this remark. Mr. Thomas's loyalty to his colleagues Avould, of course, have prevented him from speaking in this way in public of his colleagues, and it is astonishing that Mr. Amery's loyalty to his friend did not prevent his compelling him to dp so against his will. Such a breach of the political code of honour is fortunately rare. If the Labour man had been in the wrong we should possibly have heard more about it. _" '