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Otago Daily Times, Issue 20743, 14 June 1929, Page 9

GREAT WELCOME HOME

BRITISH PRIME MINISTER. SHORT VISIT TO LOSSIEMOUTH (British Official Wireless.) (United Press Association.! (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) RUGBY, June 12. Mr Ramsay MacDonald’s journey to Lossiemouth was something of a triumphal procession. At Aberdeen, where he changed trains at 7.30 this morning, hundreds ■of people on the platform cheered him,, and at every station from Aberdeen to Lossiemouth 'people raised cheers which Mr MacDonald acknowledged through the window of his carriage.

The everyday life of Lossiemouth was suspended. The whole town turned out to give a rousing welcome to the new Prime Minister. Political opinions were forgotten in the general desire to honour the man who had risen to the highest office in the State, yet retained his love his native shore and kept his old friendships alive. Amid cheering by the school children, the Prime Minister alighted from the train and was immediately surrounded by a throng of friends, among them being old fishermen and their wives, whose handshakes were hearty. An official reception was held outside the station. In a speech of welcome the Provost said: “ May your name go down to posterity as a great Prime Minister, who made peace possible among the nations of the earth.” At the end of his holiday at Lossiemouth Mr MacDonald proposes to return to London by aeroplane. THE CONSERVATIVE DEFEAT. i MKs CHURCHILL’S OPINION. LONDON, Juno 12. “ Was the slogan, ‘ Safety First,’ well chosen?” asks Mr Winston Churchill in course of an article in John Bull, entitled “ Why We Lost.” He attributes the Conservative defeat to three causes—first, a natural desire for a change after four and a-half years of steady but unexciting administration; second, the prolonged campaign of disparagement of the Baldwin Government by the popular press; third, the coldblooded use of the Lloyd George fund for the sabotage of many Conservative scats, possibly irrespective of the immediate interests of Liberalism. He adds: ” I set forth these reasons, not in complaint or recrimination, but as matters of indisputable and historical' fact.”— Australian Press Association—United Service.