Teatime Switch
(See front cover)
In the crowded knickknack splendor of Buckingham Palace one day last week Queen Mary's costly phalanx" of long case clocks marked a fateful teatime. James Ramsay MacDonald's last hour as Prime Minister was striking.
Imperceptibly the silver-haired, silver-tongued Evangelist-politician's popularity has ebbed away. The throng which gathered to see him quit No. 10 Downing St. after a longer tenure of power than any other Prime Minister since Mr. Asquith consisted last week of exactly ten frumpy women—the type that can be seen in London waiting for the emergence of any celebrity from Princess Marina to Polly Moran. Thin indeed was their cheer, but, fortunately for himself, James Ramsay MacDonald is a Scotsman. His inner light has always burned brighter than adversity, criticism or contempt. Like all Scots he is the captain of his soul. Last week, knowing perfectly well that the Empire considers him a traitor to the Labor friends of his youth and a mealymouthed, vain, vaporing shadow at Peace Conferences, Mr. MacDonald looked as he left No. 10 not downcast but happy at the prospect of declining years of ease.
As the Prime Minister's purring Daimler slid into Whitehall, then turned for Buckingham Palace, Mr. MacDonald could scarcely have failed to recall his short, fateful ride to the same destination in 1931. The King, on his own initiative, had rushed down from the royal country seat in Scotland, and it was His Majesty's pleasure that Laborite MacDonald should break with his Labor friends—the men who had raised him from a $3.25 per week clerk to be Prime Minister—and form a so-called "National Government." That master stroke has given Britain a Cabinet Conservative in fact which has carried on for nearly four years under the pretense that Mr. MacDonald, having ditched his Labor friends, yet remained a "National Laborite," and somehow represented Britain's proletariat. Because this political façade must soon crumble before the reality of a general election, Conservative Party Leader "Honest" Stanley Baldwin was ready last week to step out candidly as Prime Minister. He has lived all this while at No. 11 Downing St., next door to Prime Minister MacDonald. Holding the sinecure called Lord President of the Council, he has in fact made the National Government's most vital pronouncements, such as his famed "The Rhine—that is where our frontier lies!" (TIME, Aug. 13). Last week Mr. Baldwin, arrayed by his valet for audience with the King-Emperor, waited serenely while George V in Buckingham Palace had a nice long tea with James Ramsay MacDonald.
The monarch and Subject MacDonald can be said to owe each other much. Warm friends, they took their time, a whole hour of tea. Then the Prime Minister kissed hands and was Prime Minister no more. Driving away down the Mall, he passed Stanley Baldwin driving toward the Palace, and silk hat was gravely raised to silk hat. Mr. Baldwin, seated far back in the depths of his Daimler, was unnoticed by passers-by until he alighted to step on the red carpet of Buckingham Palace. In a hurry, he kissed hands and became Prime Minister about four minutes after Mr. MacDonald ceased to hold that office.