Bullfrog Booms

Blunt, bullfrog-voiced Tom Shaw began his career as a half-time hand in a cotton mill. He became the most ruggedly potent figure in British textile trade unionism. He recently turned up in the Empire's new Labor cabinet as His Majesty's Right Honorable Secretary of State for War. Last week generals fumed, colonels smarted, and subalterns rolled out rich round oaths--all because War Minister Shaw, at a rally of Socialist constituents, had bellowed what they considered mollycoddle sentiments respecting Egypt. To a British fighting man Egypt is the last country on earth which the Empire can afford to mollycoddle. Egypt with her Suez Canal is the road to India, and British soldiers have been guarding that road for decades, right or wrong. It was gall and wormwood, it was bitter hemlock, last week, for British officers to stomach what was shouted to cheering, pacifistic socialists by War Minister Tom Shaw. "A few more years!" came the bullfrog bellow, "A few more years of Tory [Conservative] misrule and Great Britain would lose India just as surely as she lost the American states! Labor is changing all that. Take Egypt, for example! I say and I know that The Labor government is going to give independence to Egypt on terms that will establish happy relations between both countries and will make our communications with India, safe for all time!" Later at the War Office an apoplectic general said, controlling himself nobly, "My attitude toward Mr. Tom Shaw's opinions is indifference, sir, indifference."