workers of the whole world in a struggle against exploitation. Mr. Tomsky's speech produced an immediate effect. Acting on a suggestion which he had thrown out, the General Council submitted to the Congress a request for authorisation "to take such steps as will bring together the different elements of the Labour movement in Europe in an effort to establish that solidarity which will make for world peace;" and this was granted by the Congress without discussion.

CHAPTER IV.

THE FALL OF THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT.

WITH the close of the London Conference political activity was suspended for a time to allow of the customary summer vacation. This year, however, the lull was much shorter than usual. The Irish situation was viewed with grave anxiety in England, and early in the recess its possible developments were being eagerly canvassed by politicians and in the Press. At the beginning of September a body of some twenty members of the House of Commons, drawn from all three parties, toured the boundary district, and on September 16 addressed a letter to the Press stating their unanimous opinion that a satisfactory settlement could best be arrived at by direct mutual agreement between the parties in Ireland, and that the negotiations should if possible be entered into before any Boundary Commission was set up. This was but one of a number of well-meant unofficial efforts to bring about a better state of feeling between the two sections of the Irish people. The Unionist leaders during the same period conferred earnestly on the best course to adopt in the emergency, and Mr. Baldwin himself visited Ireland to see Sir James Craig, the Ulster Premier. On September 9 Lord Balfour communicated to the Press a confidential letter which Lord Birkenhead, then a member of the Government, had written to him on March 3, 1922, when the Irish Treaty was under consideration, assuring him that there was no danger of a Boundary Commission making drastic alterations in the existing border between Northern and Southern Ireland. Lord Balfour added that the letter effectually allayed his doubts as to whether the Treaty had inadvertently done an injustice to Northern Ireland in respect of the boundary, thus conveying a hint to the Government there not to oppose the Commission.

The Irish question did not stand alone in keeping political interest alive during the vacation. The Russian Treaty engaged the public attention almost equally, and long before Parliament was due to meet began to be exploited by both sides for electioneering purposes. The Labour Party represented it as the sovereign cure for unemployment; the opponents of Labour saw in it a proof that Mr. MacDonald had been "captured by

the extremists." This cry was used with telling effect by Mr. MacDonald's opponents to counteract the prestige which he had won by his successful conduct of the London Conference and his general handling of the reparations problem. The extremists were certain members of the Labour Party who were known to be partial to the Russian Soviet régime, and to the economic doctrines of Karl Marx. They were charged with having unduly influenced Mr. MacDonald not only in the matter of the Russian Treaty, but also in another matter which, though of far less intrinsic importance, was pressed into equal prominence by those who wished to discredit the Premier and his administration.

The Director of Public Prosecutions had in July called the attention of the Attorney-General to an article in the Workers' Weekly, a journal which described itself as the "official organ of the Communist Party of Great Britain," exhorting soldiers, sailors, and airmen to refuse to turn their guns on their fellowworkers either in a military war or a class war. The editor in charge, R. J. Campbell, was brought to trial under the Incitement to Mutiny Act on August 5, when the preliminary hearing was taken. The next day questions were asked on the matter and protests raised against the prosecution by certain Labour members in the House of Commons. At the second hearing of the case, on August 12, counsel for the prosecution, to the general surprise, stated that no evidence would be offered against the defendant because "it had been represented that the object of the article in question was not to seduce men in the fighting forces from their allegiance, but that it was comment on armed military force being used by the State for the suppression of industrial disputes." No hint was given as to who had made this representation, but in a statement issued from the offices of the Workers' Weekly it was asserted that the editor's defence was not that suggested by the prosecution, but "justification," and that the withdrawal of the charge was made on the sole responsibility of the Labour Government under severe pressure from Labour members of Parliament, an assertion to which no official denial was forthcoming. A Unionist member of Parliament, Sir K. Wood, at once announced publicly his intention of raising the question when Parliament met, and this count was added to that of the Russian Treaty in the indictment against Mr. MacDonald of "extremism."

Thus before September was half through, it was evident that the Government would have to fight for its life as soon as Parliament reassembled, and this made all parties anxious to see the question of the Irish Boundary Commission settled as soon as possible. Any hopes which had been entertained that Ulster might after all be induced to modify its attitude were disappointed. Lord Balfour's letter was coldly received in Belfast, and had no effect on public opinion there. Shortly after its publication Sir James Craig stayed at Cleeve-on-Thames

for a few days on his return from the Continent, and there saw most of the members of his Cabinet; and on September 16 he issued from there a statement which showed him to be still uncompromisingly hostile to the idea of a Boundary Commission. The Government therefore saw itself compelled to resort to special legislation in order to secure the establishment of that body; and so, in accordance with the resolution passed by the House of Commons just before rising, the Speaker, on September 19, summoned Parliament to meet on September 30, instead of October 28, as originally intended.

Although feeling in England was still running high on the Irish question and sympathies were sharply divided, a strong and successful effort was made on both sides to keep the matter out of the arena of partisan conflict, and to make the preservation of peace in Ireland the first consideration. But the Russian Treaty was already being canvassed as an election issue, and a vigorous campaign was being conducted in the country for and against it for the express purpose of catching votes. Three views with regard to it found vigorous expression in the Press and on the platform. The Conservative Party as a body was for its rejection, not on the ground that it was in itself a bad Treaty, but that the Soviet Government was not a fit body with which to enter into an agreement of any kind. The Labour Party as a body warmly supported the Treaty as the first step towards the procuring for Russia of a loan which would enable her to become a large purchaser of British goods. Of the Liberal Party, some members inclined to the Conservative view, others to the Labour view, but the majority, while desiring an agreement with Russia, objected to the clause in the proposed Treaty respecting a loan as meaningless and misleading, and awaited further explanations when Parliament met.

Mr. Lloyd George was for a time the protagonist of the opposition to the Treaty, and he spared no effort to crystallise the opinion of his party against it. Addressing a largely attended Liberal meeting at Penmaenmawr on September 10, he defied the Government to proceed with its ratification. At a time of unexampled commercial depression like the present, he said, when they needed all their surplus cash to finance their own trade and develop their own resources, it was an act of criminal recklessness to guarantee huge sums of money to be spent in another country by a Government whose principles were predatory and destructive of all legitimate enterprise. He knew that in voting against the guarantee they should be challenging the Government on a major issue which was an integral part of their programme. The challenge, however, was theirs, deliberately thrown on the floor of the House of Commons; and if the Liberal Party were to shirk the challenge, it would forfeit the confidence and respect of the nation. In regard to the Irish

1 For text of Russian Treaty, v. under Public Documents, in Part II.

G

Boundary Commission, on the other hand, Mr. George stated that he found himself in complete accord with the Government, and that Liberals were pledged to give them all the support in their power to carry through their policy.

A week later, on September 18, Lord Grey, addressing the Liberal Summer School at Edinburgh, adopted the same attitude towards the Treaty as Mr. Lloyd George, and expressed the hope that the House of Commons would reject it. The Party as a whole, however, still refused to commit itself. Mr. Asquith remained silent, and the Liberal Press continued to be divided. Meanwhile, on September 15, the Government organised an extensive campaign throughout the country in which, though it was nominally in support of their general policy, attention was to be concentrated chiefly on the Russian Treaty and the benefits which it would bring in its train.

Mr. Asquith at length broke his silence on September 20, in a letter to a correspondent who had asked him what in his view should be the attitude of the Liberal Party to the so-called Treaty" with the Soviet Government. He associated himself without reserve with the protests of Mr. Lloyd George, Lord Grey, Sir John Simon, Sir Alfred Mond, Mr. Runciman, and other prominent Liberals, against the proposal that Parliament "should afford the countenance even of an anticipatory and contingent sanction to the guarantee by the taxpayers of Great Britain of a loan of undefined amount on unspecified conditions to the Soviet Government"—a proposal which (so far as he was aware) found no precedent in British history. It was absurd, he said, to pretend that the Liberal attitude in the matter was dictated by hostility to the present Government of Russia, or by any indisposition to arrive by negotiation at an equitable adjustment of outstanding claims, and the opening out of industrial and commercial relations. The vice of the vital part of the Draft Treaty-that which related to the loan-was that it "settled nothing, left the whole future to the chapter of accidents, and provided no security worth the name, either for the just treatment of British claims or for any advance of British credit." In conclusion he said that there was no reason to fear that British Liberals were about to enlist in an anti-Bolshevist crusade. Their object in the matter was that their relations with Russia should be put on business-like lines-an object which could not be attained by "crude experiments in nursery diplomacy."

Mr. Asquith's letter, while committing the Liberal Party to uncompromising hostility to the Treaty as it stood, conveyed a clear hint that a modified form of it might receive their support. The suggestion seemed not to be lost on the Labour Party, which hitherto had judged the attitude of the Liberals from the utterances of Mr. Lloyd George. The Cabinet held a long meeting on September 22, the very day on which Mr. Asquith's letter was published, and contrary to the general expectation, based on the speeches of Ministers during the previous week,

did not take up Mr. George's challenge to make the Treaty as it stood an issue by which it would stand or fall, but stated simply that it had considered "miscellaneous business." Mr. Clynes, speaking the next day, noted the points in which Mr. Asquith agreed with the Government, and remarked that his letter differed considerably in tone from the speeches of Mr. George. On September 24, the newly-elected General Council of the Trade Union Congress, while expressing its whole-hearted support of "the treaties and agreements discussed and accepted at the London Conference by the Russian and British Governments," decided to appoint a special delegation to visit Russia to investigate the industrial, social, and political conditions now prevailing in that country. Several members of the delegation, notably Mr. Purcell, were notoriously pro-Russian in their sympathies, but the fact of its being sent could be taken as an indication that Labour attitude towards the Treaty was still subject to revision.

The authoritative declaration of Labour's view was at length given by Mr. MacDonald at a great public meeting which he addressed at Derby on September 27. He defended the Russian Treaty with great warmth, pointing especially to the benefit which the Scottish fisheries had already derived from the improved relations with Russia. Mr. Asquith's sneer of "nursery diplomacy" he answered with a gibe at the "nursery criticism" of his opponents. But on the question of a loan he spoke in a tone considerably different from that used by Russian statesmen and by some of his own lieutenants. There was to be no question, he said, of the British Government giving Russia a loan. The Russians would have to go on the market themselves, and the Government would guarantee just as much as they could raise in this way, and no more. The only benefit of the Treaty in this matter would be to increase their credit and help to stabilise their currency. Further, he pointed out that the Government would not recommend Parliament to guarantee the loan till they had agreed to the conditions. He did not say that the Treaty itself involved the granting of a loan to Russia, or was even the first step to such a grant. Thus on the essential point, Mr. MacDonald met Mr. Asquith half-way.

About this time the public received striking proof that, whatever Mr. MacDonald might be now, he had been anything but an "extremist" three or four months previously; that in fact he had then been if anything more in sympathy with the "capitalists" than with the extremists in his own party. A new edition of his book "Socialism, Critical and Constructive,' first published in 1921, came out with a preface dated June, 1924. This proved to be little more than a vigorous attack on Socialism as conceived by the general public and as preached by some of its best-known advocates. The signatory of the Russian Treaty was found saying that "Russian Bolshevism