GREAT BRITAIN: Doctor’s Advice

While Neville Chamberlain was delivering himself of speeches which, at any other time, would have been reserved for the head of the state, Britain’s forgotten Prime Minister. James Ramsay MacDonald, suddenly emerged from his voluntary exile in Newfoundland, hurried back to London, brown and healthy-looking, to take up his residence again at No. 10 Downing Street. His reappearance sent whispering through the galleries of a score of clubs a story that has been making headway ever since June. The story:

The three men who steer the National Government, “Acting Prime Minister” Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain, and the nominally Laborite J. H. Thomas, decided that their work would not be finished for several years yet, that they must take steps to prevent a parliamentary upset. Faced with a general election in 1936, none of the trio felt that the National (mainly Tory) Government was sure of reelection. Their scheme was to use Scot MacDonald as a decoy, then to make him resign immediately after election for reasons of health.

The years have mellowed Ramsay MacDonald from a burning pacifist and Socialist to a very handsome, sentimental old gentleman who is one of King George’s intimate friends. But on the record he is still a Laborite—and probably the most popular politician in Britain.

The two doctors that tend Ramsay MacDonald are King George’s own physician, Baron Dawson of Penn, and the Prince of Wales’s Baron Horder of Ashford. Ramsay MacDonald had had a serious eye operation, seemed very nervous. Naturally, Messrs. Baldwin, Chamberlain & Thomas wanted to know just exactly what the condition of the Prime Minister’s health was. To their surprise they discovered that Ramsay MacDonald was a far sicker man than anyone had suspected. Lord Horder had no objection to their plan but told them bluntly that if they wanted to have a Prime Minister to elect in 1936, they would have to send Scot MacDonald off on a long vacation at once. And then, says the story, wise old Lord Horder made a shrewd point. If the trio expected Stanley Baldwin to take over the Government in 1936 there was no time like the present for getting the British public used to the idea of living under an Acting Prime Minister. Ramsay MacDonald promptly packed himself off to Newfoundland.