From Lossiemouth to London

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1034, 26 July 1930, Page 6

From Lossiemouth to London

Life Story of Britain’s Ps ime Minister

A Scots Lad\ Rise to Fame

-(By

Mary Agnes Hamilton.)

THE SUN has secured the rights of this interesting biography of Mr Ramsay MacDonald, Prime Minister of England. The seventh instalment appears below.

G n October 25, the Saturday before the poll, all the newspapers gave pride of place to what they mostly called “An Election Bombshell.” It took the form of a letter, signed, or purporting to be signed, by Zinoviev, President of the Third (Communist) International. This letter urged that the fate of the treaties depended on the pressure already brought to bear on the unwilling MacDonald Government being increased, the proletariat being roused, being convinced of the folly of “the peaceful extermination of Capitalism,” and being brought to the point of insurrection in Army and Navy by propaganda. “Agitation propaganda,” as conducted by the British Communist Party, to whom the letter, countersigned by McManus, its president (and a member of the Third International Executive) was addressed, is described as "unsatisfactory.” In all this, of course, the letter expressed views again and again put out from the Third International. if authentic, however, it was certainly a formidable document. With it was published a Foreign Office Note to M. Rakovsky, signed by Mr. J. D. Gregory, “in the absence ol’ the Secretary of State,” which “invited attention” to the letter and its insurrectionary propaganda, and, in its opening paragraphs, said some very harsh things as to the impossibility of dealing with a Government run by a body of the character and aims disclosed in it. To most people the whole thing came as a bolt from the blue. Not to all. however. “It is understood that certain officials at the Foreign Office.” wrote the London correspondent of the “Man Chester Evening Chronicle,” “had been pressing for the publication of the document, and the reply to it, fo£ at least a fortnight', but it was agreed that nothing could be done until the most exhaustive Inquiries had been

completed. By 5 o’clock on Friday afternoon, apparently, the Foreign Secretary and the Foreign Office had been convinced of the authenticity of the document, and the order to make the document and the reply public was then given, it is stated on good auth ority that the Prime Minister, though not in London, was kept informed of every development, and that he approved the action vhich had been taken at the Foreign Office.” Evidently some people knew a good deal about the bombshell before it exploded. Without waiting to hear anything from Mr. MacDonald, or paying any attention to M. Rakovsky’s prompt denial of the authenticity of the letter, prominent leaders in the Tory and Liberal parties rushed into the field with praise for the “Daily Mail,” which claimed credit for the “exposure,” and stories, no doubt derived from the same reliable source, that the letter had bsen lying about for a month hidden, and intended to be kept hidden, by the Prime Minister and his colleagues. The letter was published on Saturday, the 25th. One word may be added on the question of the authenticity of the letter. Mr. MacDonald's own position, as put in this same speech, is "authenticity not proved.” Here, indeed, the darkness is as thick as ever. The Foreign Office, from the first, had a copy, not the original. The officials were convinced of its genuineness. Mr. MacDonald was not convinced, either on the 16th when he first saw the letter, or on the 23rd, when he returned the trial draft of the Note. During that time, he has said, “I never had a particle of evidence, one way or the other, presented to me.” The Labour Government handed over the seals on November 6; the few days between that and the declarations of the polls were occupied with a Cabinet inquiry into the letter, barren of results. The new Tory Government set up another committee; and Mr. Chamberlain has declared himself satisfied that the letter was genuine. The evidence, however, has not been made public. Not having seen it, Mr. MacDonald remains (anyone whose convictions depend upon proof must remain) unconvinced either that the letter was

genuine, or that it was a forgery. Suspicion is not proof, but: "When the newspaper that had the letter kept it back very cleverly until the period of the election, when it could create a maximum psychological efTect, without giving an opportunity for a rational dissipation of that effect, my suspicions of its authenticity deepen.” » How short are political memories, none has better grounds for realising than Mr. MacDonald; not once, but twice, he might have made the reply, credited to Mark Twain. “Report of death grossly exaggerated.” In 1911 it looked as though his political career were ended, and 1918 seemed amply to confirm that verdict. For a man of less iron will, it would have done so. But he said "No,” and “No” it was. In 1924 his fall was more spectacular, and to all appearance, more complete. As the height was greater, so the repercussions of the fall were louder and longer, and the difficulty of recovery more severe. Moreover, his party was involved, as well as himself, in a cloud of mystification and ambiguity, which represents the type of emer gency with which he is constitutionally least fitted to deal. His subtlety is intellectual, not emotional; for moods, other than his own, he has never evinced much interest or understanding. His inclination was to wipe the slate of the Red Letter; but the party was eager to probe it, and some suspected him of designedly baulking their efforts to that end, and of sheltering Foreign Office officials by whom he had been captured. From this malign atmosphere, the House of Commons, his natural sphere, afforded no sufficient escape. The position there, with Labour in a hopeless minority, gave small scope for anything but the showy and ineffective demonstrations. which he despised, presented him, in fact, with conditions of functioning almost ideally bad. The work done by his Government for peace—its major contribution —was assiduously being undone by his successor, and there was no means open to him of countering that undoing. Industrially, the sky was dark, and the clouds that burst from time to time were pregnant only with Communist opportunities. The whole complex of 1926 events, for example, presented a constitutionalist political leader with a bed of thistles from which there seemed no chance of extracting the smallest fig. Disaster, accumulating over the mining areas, promoted the kind of extremism with which he has little intellectual and not much emotional sympathy. No help in these circumstances; nothing on which to build back. The old tactics of silence and under-reporting of his speeches was resumed; sombre hostility, not confined to the Capitalist newspapers, but sharply echoed in the “New Leader" week by week, while the apologetic and explanatory tone of the “Daily Herald" was. hardly more helpful. In addition, right down to the latter part of 1928, reports had kept appearing that his health was not what it ought to be. The strain of the 1924 experi-

ment had told on him; a severe iiincontracted during his American v in 1927, took long to shake off Not o',! his return from his Canadian trin t the autumn of 1928 did he seen 11 tirely his own vigorous self. The pianation was probably mainly sa? chological; the election in sight tL war-horse sniffed Joyously the A" preaching battle, which is its element Mr. MacDonald knew, whatever mtoibe written or spoken, that he was ing to win through, because he of tended to do so. That firm, that unshakeable w, tion of his is. of course, the 4:.' explanation of the amazing phenow enon represented by the black white contrast between the. four of cloud and the l right light of Gm ernment. Everybody else might s» T " “Mac is finished." Not so the iua» himself. And his will prevailed Very truly did Mr. A. G. Garuinerhi an article in the “Daily News” of jLj 25. 1929, which it is most instructive to compare with his earlier artklei on the same subject, say of hia* “In his genius for recovery, his dependence is entirely on * himself Success is a great revealer: hardly b 1924 would Mr. Gardiner have spokes of Mr. MacDonald s “possession of . ; force, sincerity and courage that will I not be denied,” or say that “he i< made of a metal that has been tried j in the fiercest fires of adversity and has only hardened and strengthened in j the process.” Now he can argue from results —results denied from all the 1 premises of 1924-29, except the personality of the man concerned. ]j. deed, the more fully the circumstances of the transformation are interrogated, the clearer is the r demonstratfan at the tensile strength of will, unbending tenacity of purpose, and unswerving loyalty to idea required to endnm what Mr. MacDonald had to endgre and wring victory out of the matertni of apparently irretrievable defeat. This is not the side of himself that he personally obtrudes. For instance to judge from the photographs that he allows to be used for reproduction, he prefers to present the gentler milder, and more humane aspects They are there; they are operative : but, so are others, and it is the other* that create his “genius for recovery’’ and have enabled him to survive, in the portrait by Mr. McEvoy, published in the Royal Academy, his countenance wears a gentleness almost pathetic, as of one mourning over a mistaken world: if the other side is stylised with undue harshness in the Epstein bust, that nevertheless is mors truly revealing, and not least in it* presentation of essential stamina and something almost of tiger-like strength and swiftness; a core of fierce driving and holding energy. And with the lightning fierceness (which perhaps helps to explain his delight in swift travel by air), he has the esdles* patience of the jungle king: a patience that can hide everything bnt his own unsleeping purpose J ’ (To he concluded next week.)