A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK " W HAT a spectacle was presented to
the nation of the Conservative party machine working frantically night and day, its wealth, its wire-pulling, Ministers of the Crown in shoals, agents by the dozen, all employed to prevent a young man of 23 making his way as a Conserva- tive into Parliament where for so many generations his forbears had borne their part." Mr. Winston Churchill has talked a good deal of nonsense in his time (as well as a good deal of sound sense), but this particular utterance takes some beating. The Conservative party machine is working, as it always does work, for the Conservative candidate chosen by the local organization, and against the Labour and Liberal candidates—and incidentally against the young man of 23 who is being urged on by Lord Rothermere and the India Defence League to split the Conservative vote. But no sooner, it seems, does a Churchill come carpet-bagging along from nowhere than the local organization, the party machine and the party leaders are to fling aside every allegiance and prostrate themselves before the young man of 23. Mr. Churchill, of course, knows something about allegiance, and one rather salient question about the young man of 23—in the light of the reminder about the part his forbears have borne—is what party colours he may be sporting when he is 24.
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