BLACK IS WHITE

If the vote on a minor issue in the Commons Tuesday is a reliable barometer mark of a coming political storm, Ramsay MacDonald's Labor ministry may fall. Although the London Conference might capsize in the wake of such an upheaval, there will also result a strengthening of the incipient coalition between Liberals and Conservatives. Lloyd George, since the war powerless to act upon his own, has, with his followers, been a constantly vacillating figure in English policies. The dignified Parlementarians have thrown aside their supposedly ingrained convictions and have turned to the pleasant game of free-lancing. That she has a Liberal Party which is also conservative, and a Conservative Party which is also liberal is England's boast. The two have joined hands in an opportunistic camaraderie.

An even greater anomaly than a union of such theoretic opposites as Liberals and Conservatives is apparent, in the defeat of the Labor Party. The latter's origin three or four decades back was inspired by the desire on the part of enlightened socialists to relieve the working classes and to bring government more closely in line with the performance of services directly to the people's benefit. Now, with defeat looming up, MacDonald's party is attacked on its most vulnerable flank, the unemployment problem. The Laborites, in short, are being ejected from the Treasury Bench for not sufficiently aiding the laborers. Fortune's wheel swings round and round, but the politicians, dodging under elaborate nomenclature, are still up to their old tricks.