THROUGH GERMAN EYES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 13 July 1929, Page 11

THROUGH GERMAN EYES

BRITISH LABOUR LEADERS JOURNALIST GIVES OPINION LONDON, 25th June. “A portrait of the Labour Party” by Jlerr Egon Wertheimer, the London correspondent of Germany’s Labour press, contains frank studies of the Cabinet Ministers. Herr Wertheimer asserts that the Prime Minister, Mr Ramsay MacDonald, is personally unpopular, and adds: “Ilis colleagues complain of his inaccessibility and his deliberate isolation from those on whose loyalty and devotion the success of the Government depends; of his schoolmaster’s condescension, hyper-sensitiveness and vanity. “He moves in a personal vacuum almost painful to behold. His entourage does not always consist of disinterested friends, but often of men and women who hope to sec their loyalty rewarded by Ministerial posts. Nevertheless, Mr MacDonald sits more firmly in the saddle than over. He is the personification of all the thousands of down-trodden men and women, who hope, dream and desire.”

“The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Philip Snowden,” says the correspondent. “stands a head higher than his party leader, hut lie seems condemned to walk in Mr MacDonald’s shadow, lie is a crystal-clear political thinker, with a warm, human heart. “The Lord Privy Seal, Mr J. H. Thomas, has created an atmosphere of vulgar cordiality and a hail-fellow-well-met manner, which appears to have taken in the whole Empire, except a dozen Communists. Yet he possesses the rare quality of civil courage, and also loyalty to Mr MacDonald's skilful leadership. “The Foreign Secretary, Mr Arthur Henderson, and the Homo Secretary, Mr J R. Clynes, are safe, homely men, in whose hands the continuity of- the party as a working-class organisation is assured.” Among the -Labour women "Miss Susan Lawrence, Parliamentary Undersecretary for Health, possesses the strongest, if most blinkered, intellect The Minister for Labour, Miss Bondfield. is politically most expert, while Miss Ellen Wilkinson is most human and sympathetic. “The temperaments of the three party leaders seem to oppose their political views. The Socialist leader is a Conservative. the Conservative is a Liberal, and the Liberal a typical Socialist.”