Party Alignments It will take some time for the dust
to clear. The National Government is to some extent an unknown quantity. Its leaders are familiar enough, for not even the most gravely menaced seat fell. The Prime Minister and Mr. Thomas, Sir Herbert Samuel and Sir Donald Maclean, all got safely, and some of them triumphantly, home. But on the back benches will be a hundred or more of new and untried men. Whether more of them gravitate to the Right or the Left wing of the Con- servative Party may make all the difference to the Government's fortunes. Of the constitution of the new Cabinet—for changes there arc bound to be— nothing is known yet, but it is idle to imagine that Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Chamberlain arc going to be able to make common cause on the one hand with Mr. Mac- Donald and Sir Herbert Samuel and on the other with' Mr. Churchill and Mr. Amery and Sir Henry Page Croft.' The only question is how--soon. the rifts appear and how deep they go. But there ought • to be one deciding' factor. The pull in one direction will be towards inter- party co-operation, in the other towards a party policy and party ends. Mr. Baldwin is too honest a politician to forget on what explicit understanding he and his- colleagues were returned. It cannot be Country First at the polls and Party First after that. Liberals and National Labour men will presumably form a kind of Left wing of the Government coalition and out of that sonic new party alignment may gradually emerge.
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