MR. AND MRS. SNOWDEN

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 744, 17 August 1929, Page 10

MR. AND MRS. SNOWDEN

TWIN SOULS IN POLITICS MIGHTIER WITH PEN THAN SWORD

Alone, a politician may be a stron man in the highest politics, but if m wife has won the right to be recor nised as his better half political!" then her husband easily shouijju come a statesman.

And this is true of the Right Hot Philip Snowden, P.C., Chancellor of the Exchequer, and his wife, who ir governor of the British Broadcasting Corporation and a member of the Ad visory Committee on Filins. In jj! turing, in journalism, and in prona gandic Socialism, the one is as gwJ as the other, and sometimes better Not unlike Lord Passfield and hi. wife, Mrs. Sidney Webb. Mr. and Mrs. Snowden are twin souls in politics and the advancement of democracy which nowadays actually includes elevation to the Peerage. Whatever one of them forgets or does not know the other remembers with ready know! ledge, so that together they an; a complete and competent whole, representing a formidable oneness.

If on no other principle than chivairy, the career of Mrs. Snowden may be looked at first. It began with the tedious work of a certificated school teacher. In 1905, a year before Mr. Snowden burst into Parliament with fiery zeal, she married a logical lover for their aims, purposes, and ambitions in public life were almost identically similar. He was a doctrinaire Socialist, hailed bitterly at that time as “the Robespierre of the concentrated and remorseless purpose.” She was a prominent and uncompromising suffragette, also a keen Temperance advocate. Later, as that revolt of women against the traditional political tyranny of men gained its first success and subsequently proved that women could scarcely be any worse politicians than the lords of the hearth, Mrs. Snowden gave her ahle mind to a study of international affairs. She became interested in food prices—the result, no doubt, of domestic experience—and was appointed a member of the Royal Commission which investigated the subject, but did not make the cost fl { living any lighter. More recently. Mrs. Snowden reported very unfavourably on Bolshevism. She has published three books on arid subjects for most women. Her recreations are music, reading, and walling. Her age may be left to the cen»L!» statisticians- There are no children in her scholarly household. THE MAN OF THE HOUR

Philip Snowden is in his sixty-sixth year, and does not enjoy good health. There is, however, no invalidism about his mentality. It is still so strong and so acutely alert that angry French critics of his firm stand at The Hague, with a temporary lack of good manners, only could tneer at his “precarious” physical health. He began his welkins life in the English Civil Service, and remained in that trap to ambition for seven years—a period probably as irksome as Jacob's slavery for Luban’s lovely daughter. He (Philip, not Jacob) retired from State service before it encrusted hi m with rusL He took up journalism and lecturing, and soon prepared himself for a call t»politics. It came from Blackburn, which first rejected him. but later accepted him, and appreciated his Parliamentary work for twelve years. There followed a spell in the wilderness. Since 1922, however, he has held easily the Labour stronghold of Colne Valley Division of Yorkshire. On several occasions during his political career he was chairman of the Independent Labour Party. He is as LL.D. of Leeds University. Twice in the past five years Mr, Snowden has been Chancellor of thl Exchequer. So far, his greatest triumph has not been that of a wisari of finance—his logic has taught him long ago that no kind of political magic will make nineteen shillings a pound—but as a statesman in the great tarn of statecraft among international diplomatists and sleek experts and bankers. This triumph has been so sound that even Mr. Winston Churchill and the “Morning Post” have praised him!

But he is still the Philip Snowden of earlier days. He is the stuff o! which revolutions, bloodless revolutions. of course, are made. A Socialist first, last and all the time, but always at heart a sturdy, loyal Yorkshireman.