Political moves are carried on in these days with so
fierce a spotlight turned on them that not many revelations are left to see the light in the memoirs of the dead. Among the few is Mr. Lloyd George's attempt, in collaboration with Lord Birkenhead and Lord Balfour (though neither was a peer at that date), to form an all-party Coalition Government in 191o. Mrs. Hamilton in her life of Arthur Henderson, which was published on Monday, mentions that a place in the prospective Cabinet was offered to Mr. Ramsay MacDonald and that he accepted. (No Labour man had, of course, been in sight of Cabinet rank at that date, for John Burns was a Liberal.) That, I think; is new, and therefore news. So is the statement that on the fall of the first Labour Government in 1924, under MacDonald's premiership, Lord Snowden and other ex-Ministers approached Henderson and asked him to accept nomination to the leadership of the party, which would have meant his holding the first place in the next Labour administration. Henderson, however, would not stand—which is what might be expected, for though he had no great love 'for MacDonald he was always loyal to him.
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