James Ramsay Macdonald

GEORGE GERHARD

A pen portrait of Britain's Prime Minister who has deserted the Labor Party to confront the national crisis

Peace is to James Ramsay Macdonald what a pipe is to Charles G. Dawes.

Paradoxically, however, Macdonald is at heart a fighter, the descendant of a long line of warriors of the Scottish clan that was cut to pieces in the massacre of Glencoe, many hundreds of years ago. For the greater part of his life he has been fighting for peace— thirty years ago, for the peace of the struggling labor class; fifteen years ago for world peace; and now for the peace of the British Empire.

But he is upholding single-handed the traditional pride and prowess of his clan. The Labor Party which he formed and lifted from its cradle to second place in power in the House of Commons disavowed him when he subordinated the principle of organized labor, for which he struggled for forty years, to the demands of a national crisis, leaving him a man alone—a leader without a party. In spite of war, party splits, national emergencies, and the threat of disrepute and open hatred, however, whenever the curtain rises on a new political scene, Macdonald is seen sitting modestly and securely on the Parliamentary throne of England.

He is neither a Mussolini nor a Gandhi. He has not the will of the former, nor the fanaticism of the latter. Where the Duce's ambition and autocracy soar to the sky, where Gandhi links his fate with that of the miserable peasant of the Indian soil, Macdonald spins the cloth of his power from the threads of diplomacy and political skill.

His unequalled gift of compromise has rewarded him four times with the Premiership—the first two times as the representative of the Labor Party, and the last two as the leader of the nation. In the art of duelling with words he is second to none; there is only one contemporary whose skill in diplomatic parries and thrusts equals that of Macdonald, and he is the apostle of Pan-Europe—Aristide Briand.

But whereas the French wizard resorts only too gladly to the magic expedients of muscatel and crepes suzettes to open a pathway through political obstacles, Macdonald's most formidable weapon is his tremendous strength of character. When Great Britain was first in world power and supreme on the seven seas, he devoted his whole energy to the cause of labor. But when the world-wide economic depression, unemployment, an unbalanced budget and the suspended gold standard endangered England's welfare, he unhesitatingly subordinated labor interests to those of national importance, much as Abraham Lincoln was willing to forego immediate emancipation of the negroes in order to preserve American national unity.

When, at length, Macdonald's political career is over, he will probably retire to the two-room thatched cottage at Lossiemouth, a colony of fisherfolk on the shores of Moray Firth, where he was born sixty-four years ago, and where he walked barefoot as a boy. Today he still holds his own among the best of walkers. Gladstone boasted of hiking twentyfour miles at the age of fifty-two; but Ramsay Macdonald never looses a word about walking an even thirty miles at the even riper age of sixty-five.

Apparently he has learned more from the athletes of our time than one would be prepared to concede to a Prime Minister. He seldom drinks anything but water; and he will give up smoking altogether during Parliamentary sessions. Unlike the average athlete, however, he is fond of reading, and admits readily that the Waverley novels of Scott, and the works of Hugh Miller, have made him a Socialist. One of his favorite recreations, while on a holiday at Lossiemouth, is to read one of Scott's novels aloud to his family.

The son of a poor school teacher, Ramsay Macdonald started life in London at the age of eighteen, as an invoice clerk in the warehouse of Cooper, Box & Company, where he was the recipient of the princely salary of twelve shillings and sixpence a week.

These early years were dreary ones, but his native doggedness stood him in good stead, and soon a political opening, as secretary for Mr. Lough, then the Liberal candidate for West Islington, elevated him from penury to comparative affluence, for Lough gave him an initial salary of seventy-five pounds a year, which was soon raised to a hundred.

His debut as an orator came when he made his first speech at an open air meeting in Regent's Park one Sunday; and chroniclers have handed it down to us that so eloquently did he hold forth that he was asked to speak again the following Sunday. Since then, public talks have become part of his daily routine, and it is estimated that the number of speeches he has made runs well into the hundreds.

It was about this time that Macdonald married Margaret Gladstone, a niece of Lord Kelvin, and a relative of the famous statesman whose name she bore. Wealthy, brilliant and popular, she became his "governess" in social amenities, and her untimely death ended a life which had done much for welfare work in a day when woman's rightful place was firmly believed to reside solely in her home. After her death, Macdonald published a memorable pamphlet in which he said that it was really she, rather than his popular Sunday speeches, who had given the initial impetus to his career.

Following their marriage, the young Macdonalds settled in exclusive Lincoln's Inn, and for many years their home was a gathering place for politicians, suffragettes, social reformers, pacifists, poets, writers, artists and other celebrities of the day.

The outbreak of the World War challenged the sincerity of this little group's heated discussions, and demanded an open declaration on one of their chief tenets. The circle was adamant, however, and Macdonald, in punishment for the defense of his convictions, was subjected to the most humiliating indignity that a Scotchman can possibly suffer. He was asked to resign from his golf club. It was not until ten years later, when he first assumed the Premiership, that he was invited to return; but he was broadminded enough to cherish no grudge, and to swing his mashies and niblicks once again on the Moray Firth fairways.

Back in 1897, Macdonald was known as an irreconcilable Labor adherent, when he stubbornly tried to convince the workers, and especially the Trade-Unionists, that they needed a political party of their own. It was he who fathered that party, and nine years later it was Macdonald again who was elected a Member of Parliament on the Labor ticket and made secretary of the new party in the House of Commons.

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By the end of the war, in 1918, he was the most unpopular man in England, because of his anti-war activities. Though he lost his seat in the Commons, however, he held grimly to the Labor class principle, fought back tenaciously, and finally regained his seat, four years later, thus making the Labor Party the second strongest in the nation.

He was still a Labor politician when he launched the first Labor Government, in 1924. But from then on his name has no place on the list of unyielding champions of the rights of Labor; it belongs, instead, in the roll of politicians who have placed national above party interests. He has achieved little for the Laborites who raised him to the pinnacle of the Premiership, and for whom he was to have done so much.

And the split in the Labor Party actually dates from the inauguration of Macdonald's Labor Government. It left in its wake two groups—the "Irreconcilables," who refuse to be separated from the doctrine of Socialism (they have just received the most crushing defeat in their history from the hands of a disappointed nation) ; and the "National Laborites," loyal supporters of the Prime Minister, and the proud recipients of a vote of confidence in the recent British elections.

In the field of international affairs and foreign relations, he has proved himself a statesman to be ranked with Britain's greatest. Disraeli, the archaristocrat, made Queen Victoria the Empress of India; and Macdonald, the Laborite-democrat, has retained the title of that sovereignty for Victoria's Twentieth Century descendants.

He has achieved the seemingly impossible by breaking down Britain's age-old traditions and evolving a treaty for the limitation of naval armaments, thereby stripping England of her time-honoured supremacy on the high seas.

He has bridged the gap between Italy and France and, for a few years at least, spared Europe the threat of war that invariably follows in the wake of naval rivalry. He has brought Great Britain and America closer together than ever before in all their history.

But measured by the yardstick of actual domestic accomplishment, the British Prime Minister has failed in almost every respect. He has not succeeded in effecting a single item on the Socialistic legislative program, which he fostered when he sought office, and for which his followers have clamoured so long and so loudly.

He has failed to solve the problem of unemployment. Prosperity has eluded his grasp. Government ownership of mines and railways remains a Socialistic chimera. The legalization of general strikes, one of the chief items on his program, Macdonald dropped hastily in deference to Liberal opposition.

There have been greater men in the history of Great Britain. Disraeli, under similar circumstances, would have dominated Parliament with the skilled hand of a magician; but he would have done so by means of a somewhat dubious sort of diplomacy, of intrigue and clandestine deals and privileges. Macdonald, in spite of strong opposition and open hostility, has emerged time and again Britain's master—not through concessions and favors, but merely by following the honest and sincere dictates of his own character. It is this inner strength that elevates Macdonald above the majority of Britain's great men, and that accounts, in large degree, for his success.

There are two factors that keep Macdonald at the helm of a government which has an overwhelming Conservative majority in Parliament: one is his personal friendship with the Conservative leader, Stanley Baldwin; the other, the will of the electorate to have, not party rule, but a national government under these two men. It is possible that the tremendous Conservative majority will, sooner or later, force the Labor leader out of the government, when, if he can reconcile his embittered partisans, he may take his place once again as the opposition leader of the Labor Party. His Socialist doctrines will probably prevent Macdonald from ever receiving a title.

As a prophet of peace, however, he may turn his energies to the broad field of international problems, among which disarmament, a pacified Europe and the League of Nations are closest to his heart. Or, again, he may retire to the haven of his Lossiemouth cottage, reverting once more to agitation on behalf of social legislation.