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The Congress, pushing Leader MacDonald's theory to its logical conclusion soon formally resolved that if returned to power the Party will restore diplomatic relations between Great Britain and Soviet Russia. Lastly the Congress voted that all Communists shall be rigorously excluded from the Party.
Thus British Labor now stands for a broad, fraternal pacifism, embracing all nations; and for a strict exclusion from its doctrines of all tenets more advanced than those of Socialism.
A comic incident of the week was the inexplicable leaking out of an old, secret Scotland Yard "Report on the Activities of James Ramsay MacDonald from 1916 to 1921." In the expert opinion of detectives who prepared the report, "Mr. MacDonald is a Constitutional Socialist and by no means a Bolshevist."
Aside from platform pegging, the Con ference notably concerned itself, last week, with a placid, woolly-whiskered oldster called "Ben," and with another "Ben," whose mien is hard-bitten and acidulous.
Old "Ben" Turner received the rousing cheer to which he was entitled as retiring Chairman of the General Council of the British Trade Union Congress. Hard-bitten "Ben" Tillett was then elected Chairman.
His Grace the Duke of Northumberland has good reason to remember that Benjamin ("Ben") Tillett once said: "So Percy* don't approve of the dole,† don't he? Why his dole for doing nothing is £20,000 ($97,200) a week!"
"Ben" Tillett, originally a bricklayer, progressed through shoemaking and sailoring to become General Secretary of the Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Workers' Union, from its inception in 1887 until 1922. Latterly, as a Member of Parliament and lecturer, he has twice toured the Empire, and repeatedly visited the U. S. and Soviet Russia. The title of his favorite lecture, Christ and Labor! might be called the slogan wherewith hard-bitten "Ben" Tillett has sold himself to pious toilers' everywhere.
New Tales in Old Clubs
As they drifted back from bagging grouse in Scotland, London clubmen heard three new tales, current last week in four old clubs:
The Garrick Club, since 1831 a mecca for footlight folk, burbled with chuckles at an anecdote from the tongue of sprightly Lady Peel ("Beatrice Lillie").
"On my last tour of the States," said she, "they seemed more impressed by my title in Detroit than anywhere else. When I walked onto the stage and bowed in the usual way, what d'you suppose happened?—the whole audience rose and bowed back. Jolly polite of the Middle Westerners, what?"
The Carlton Club (founded a year later than the Garrick, but centuries older in Conservatism) seethed with indignation, last week, over the unseemly marriage of the young Earl of Bective to Lady Clarke of Rupertswood, in Brompton Oratory.
"Actually!" stormed one Carlton Club peer to another, "Actually, I saw them with my very eyes, chattering like two tomtits!"
Lord Bective and his bride, in short, had left the altar not in customary reverent silence but chattering and chortling gaily to one another.