"Not Cricket"

Just two votes kept James Ramsay MacDonald from motoring over to Buckingham Palace to offer his resignation to King George last week. By a curious paradox the result of his narrow escape left him more firmly in power than he had been for a month. Several Liberals, darkly muttering "dirty practice" and "not cricket," announced their intention of voting regularly with the Laborites, at least for the immediate future.

For many weeks Scot MacDonald has realized that while the more cautious Conservative leaders were far from anxious for a general election, young Conservative hotheads were eager for the first opportunity to throw out the Labor Government.

"I must warn you gentlemen," he said recently, "that we must expect to go to the country [hold a general election] before Christmas."

Last week, darkly, like so many Guy Fawkeses, the Conservative conspirators sprang their plot. Scheduled on the evening's calendar were three thoroughly unimportant bills. Seeing that only a handful of somnolent numbers dotted the Conservative benches, several Liberals crept off to bed. An uncomfortable premonition made Prime Minister MacDonald instruct Labor whips to excuse no Labor M. P.'s until the evening's business was finished.

He was right. The Conservatives were not in Parliament, but they were not far away. Proud and comfortable possession of the Conservative Party, the party of British Gentlemen, is St. Stephen's Club, across the way from the Parliament buildings. Some 140 Conservatives were crowded in their Club, excited as Freshmen about to paint the campus flagpole.

In complete ignorance of the plot, Dr. Edward Leslie Burgin, Liberal M. P., had just moved an amendment to the Income Tax Law exempting from tax corporation profits spent for repairs or the mechanical expansion of plants. Cried tricky David Lloyd George, Liberal leader:

"I call upon high heaven to witness the absence of my desire to defeat the Labor Government but ..." and he trailed off into ambiguous remarks. The bell for division (voting), which rings three times, rang once, twice, and M. P.'s began to trickle into the division lobbies. At this moment, barely ahead of the third bell, up sneaked some 140 Conservatives by a backstair's route to vote.

When the count showed that Scot MacDonald's cabinet had been saved by three votes (later corrected to two), the sneaking 140 chorused "Resign! Resign!"

Next morning, in all but the ultra-conservative press, the defeated conspiracy was bitterly assailed as "un-British trickery" and, even more scathingly, as "not cricket." Despite his fervent protests of innocence, editors refused to believe Mr. Lloyd George entirely guiltless. Commented the Labor Daily Herald:

"He [Lloyd George] has now received an ultimatum from a substantial and influential section of his party, that, whatever he does, they mean to keep Labor in office. The 'Chameleon of Criccieth' has dealt a heavy blow at the unity of his own party."

Added the sober Times: "Mr. Lloyd George has to that extent diminished his power to dictate to the Government in the Commons. It is a paradoxical end to what was meant for a free-spirited episode. He has given the Government a firmer hold on life by proving its hold is precarious."

*Modest and cozy is the National Labor Club, mostly social, but nearest Labor approach to the "Political Club" of the older parties, veritable strongholds and bulwarks of high policy.

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