The Election

To most U.S. citizens, not deeply versed in British politics, the big shock was the news that Winston Churchill had been turned out by the people he had led through to victory (see FOREIGN NEWS). Americans had not been thoroughly apprised of the situation in Britain: that the people desperately wanted a change in government, that they had their eyes mainly on reconstruction.

In Kansas City, Saloonkeeper Ben Brock summed up the first reaction of thousands, in typical American terms. Said he: “England was hanging on the ropes when Winnie took over. He got them back into the fight. So what happens? The people kick him out. A hell of a note, I say.”

In Emporia, Kans., Mrs. William Allen White exclaimed: “Kansans had grown to depend upon the tremendous courage and vitality of this big Englishman. And now zowie. . . .”

The fact that the winning party was also a socialist party had its shock, too. Said Mayor J. A. Horger of Hondo, Tex. (pop. 2,500): “I was disappointed. I think they should have kept him in office. I don’t favor this socialism and such.” The New York Daily News, which has no love for socialists, interpreted it all as an unseemly British bender (see cut).

There were other reactions. Typical in its own way was that of the lion-baiting Chicago Tribune, which commented: “Those of us who do not share the socialist outlook can at least rejoice that the election marks a wholesome reduction in the influence of the aristocracy in government.” U.S. labor, to a man, sent its congratulations.

Whether U.S. citizens liked the new British Government or thought it a political menace, they had to face the fact of its existence. For the time being at least, the U.S. would be the only capitalist country among the great powers. Americans could now watch socialism in one of its mildest forms in action in a country which was most nearly like their own, under the direction of responsible men. Whether this would cause a revision in the U.S. way of doing things was a question for the future.