The Prime Minister's preface to the new edition of his
book on Socialism is getting him into trouble as was only to be expected. Yet he has only stated truths which are obvious and which simply must be faced if the country is to reach security and sanity under any political creed whatever. Mr. MacDonald writes : " Public doles,. Poplarism, strikes for increased wages, limitation of out- put, not only are not Socialism, but may mislead the spirit and the policy of the Socialist movement." Mr. A. J. Cook, Secretary of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, said in an interview with a representative of the Daily News : " Mr. MacDonald may be a good. Parliamentarian, but he. knows very little about trade. unions. I have been a Socialist and Labour man all my life and I am, beginning to wonder what the Prime Minister, who claims to be a Socialist, really stands for. . . . - The Prime Minister's criticism is, I think, very offensive and unjust to the British Trade Union movement:" On the other hand, an official at the Labour Party's Headquarters in Eccleston Square remarked that the Prime Minister's words were just plain common sense, since strikes, doles and so on were obviously not expressions of Socialism but were rather to be regarded as mitigations of the Capitalistic system.
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