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He ended with a ringing quotation from "England, an Ode," by a resonant rhymester even smaller than Philip Snowden, the late great Algernon Charles Swinburne:
All our past proclaims our future;
Shakespeare's voice and Nelson's hand,
Milton's faith, and Wordsworth's trust in this
Our chosen and chainless land.
Bear us witness: come the world against her,
England yet shall stand.
The little Chancellor sank back exhausted. Conservatives and Liberals were on their feet waving papers, cheering till the sound reached rainy Parliament Square outside.
Orders In Council. There was little that the Opposition could do, but Scot MacDonald and his National Cabinet took no chances. Having tried their strength and received a majority vote of 94 they made themselves a dictatorship so far as economy measures and financial bills are concerned. They slammed through a measure to put all emergency economy measures into effect by orders in council signed by King George without the necessity of formal legislative approval.
Laborites raged. Scot MacDonald's little old friend John Robert ("Johnny") Clynes turned to the Labor benches:
"I deny in anything he has said that he was speaking for Labor. We have known him until recently as a House of Commons man. He is now an Orders in Council man. This is more than an economy bill. It is a bill to suppress the Opposition, silence the minority and make a mere mockery of Parliamentary Government."
Seethings. Not all Britons took their new burdens as quietly as Chancellor Snowden suggested. Outside the Houses of Parliament little groups collected under their ringleaders shouting in unison "One, two three— HANDS OFF THE DOLE!" and "One, two, three—WE STAND FOR THE WORKING CLASSES, DOWN WITH THE RULING CLASSES!" British bobbies did not charge but nudged them out of the square.
"The King Is So Generous!" King George and Edward of Wales's gestures of cutting $242,500 and $48,600, respectively, off their incomes (TIME, Sept. 14) were not entirely successful from the point of view of the Nationalist Government. They were warmly applauded by thoughtful people but the gesture called the attention of angry Socialists to the vast sums of money paid annually to the Crown.* In Scotland the news provoked something almost unheard of in British journalism, a personal attack on the royal family. Even more shocking to conservative Britons is the fact that Forward, the paper in which it appeared, is edited by one of His Majesty's former Ministers, Tom Johnson, late Lord Privy Seal, in the Laborite Cabinet. Excerpts:
Thank God
We have all been saved
From ruin
For the King
God bless him
Has once again
Come to our rescue
Like he did
In the Great War
When he fought
Fifty thousand Germans
At the back of the front
Single handed
He is so brave
And so thoughtful
He is going to do without
Fifty thousand pounds a year
And tighten his belt
Just to show
The unemployed
(They are so thriftless)
How to make sacrifices. . . .
The unemployed
Are so thoughtless
They do not think
That when the King dies