Debit

The Home Secretary, Sir William ("Jix") Joynson-Hicks, announced sepulchrally last week that the British Coal Strike (TIME, May 10 et seq.) has cost more than the Boer War.

Costs. The budget has been thrown out of balance and the Government's expenses for the year were last week $421,345,000 in excess of revenue.* As an example, the cost of poor relief mounted $29,000,000 beyond expectations. The miners themselves lost $325,000,000 in wages; and are now forced to accept $12 a week and less per man. The loss on curtailed coal production was $480,000,000. Of losses to allied industries the leading railroads suffered $125,000,000, shipping $50,000,000 more; and the steel industry was so hard hit that of the 147 furnaces in blast last May only five were in blast this December. Of the adding up of such costs there is no end, but the Wall Street Journal conservatively placed the grand total at "well over a billion dollars."

Political Reaction. Onetime Premier Ramsay Macdonald, Leader of the Labor Party, accused Premier Stanley Baldwin and his ministers in the House last week of "retiring with the beautiful airs of a parcel of Vestal Virgins" during the strike, and letting the country go to smash. Choleric, Mr. Macdonald moved a motion of censure which was defeated 339 to 131. Nettled, he shouted: "We want to test by the ballot box whether the nation would like to carry our motion. Parliament should be dissolved!"

When Premier Baldwin rose to reply it was with that somehow pat irrelevance which makes his casual remarks so deadly. "One thing that troubles me," he said placidly, "is that such loyalty and fortitude as the 1,000,000 miners have shown every day during the strike should have been exploited by incompetent leadership.... We shall go to the pollslabby utterance is the crux. The House need not ipso facto be dissolved until 1929. Were it dissolved tomorrow, recent by-elections show that the Labor party could count substantial gains; but much may happen while Mr. Baldwin takes his own good time. Labor considers that he betrayed the strikers and is against him tooth and nail as never before; but he has "muddled through" with the good will if not the admiration of the non-laboring class. The party leadership of Mr. Macdonald is unshaken, perhaps strengthened; but the trade union leaders are tarnished heroes. One hundred percent Communists, like A. J. Cook, were frankly turning last week toward the creation of a new British proletarian movement.

*Largest tax returns come in at the end of the British fiscal year so that this figure, while abnormal and excessive, will decrease.