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>When the war began Britain's two big parties, Labor and Conservative, called a halt in politics, each party agreeing not to oppose the other in by-elections. If there were a Parliamentary vacancy of a seat formerly held by a Conservative, the Laborites agreed not to put up a candidate and vice versa. Last week, at a by-election in Glasgow, this idyllic state of affairs was impaired when Pacifist Andrew Stewart entered the race independently on a "Stop the War" platform against Laborite Arthur Woodburn, who supported the war. True to their pledge, the Conservatives did not put up a candidate. Result: Candidate Woodburn, 15,645; Candidate Stewart, 1,060. Candidate Stewart's comment: "The people are quite mod."
> David Lloyd George, 76-year-old "Welsh wizard" who directed most of Britain's last war from Whitehall, listened to the Prime Minister's answer to Führer Hitler, then summoned his Council of Action for Peace to a closed meeting. After a 40-minute speech by Mr. Lloyd George the Council found the Prime Minister's statement "quite inadequate," called upon the Government to draw up a fuller statement of Britain's war aims.
> Ever since Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler signed their non-aggression pact in late August, Communists outside Russia have performed one verbal trapeze act after another. Particularly embarrassed by the Stalin-Hitler handshaking was British Communist Party Secretary Harry Pollitt, a stocky 48-year-old man long known as the British Party's "ablest propagandist and spokesman." Although he had long praised the Soviet Union, defended Dictator Stalin's frequent purges and written powerful pieces against Fascist aggressions, Secretary Pollitt could not see his way to follow the new "party line."
In late August he wrote a pamphlet How to Win the War. He was primarily responsible for a Sept. 2 manifesto declaring British Communists were ready to join the war against German Fascism. But that pamphlet was later withdrawn, and on Oct. 7 the Party's Central Committee printed a "correction" of the September manifesto. Britain, France and Poland were blamed equally with Germany for starting an "imperialist war." Last week Secretary Pollitt lost his job, although not his Party membership.
Meanwhile Willie Gallacher, lone Communist M.P., suddenly dropped his bellicose anti-Hitler baiting and became, along with Shaw, Sir Oswald Mosley, Haldane and Lloyd George, a plugger for peace. By last week London's Daily Worker had obviously re-established its pipeline to Moscow and instead of wild conjectures about the new Party line, was again dishing out the straight official Comintern dope. It front-paged an editorial about "imperialist statesmen" still "bargaining hard," continued :
"The ruling class of this country are on the horns of an historical dilemma. The millionaires of Britain are afraid of peace and are afraid of war. . . . They fear the growing strength of the peaceful Soviet Union which remains outside the imperialist war camp."