"Cheap-Jack"

In the pre-election welter and hubbub of British politics the figure of bob-haired David Lloyd George grows daily clearer. Sunk into comparative obscurity six months ago, his theatrically effective plans for the relief of unemployment (TIME, March 11) may win enough seats for the despised Liberals to give them the balance of power in parliamentary debates between Conservatives and Laborites, both numerically more potent.

Tory speakers, depressed by this possibility, last week devoted as much time to the agile Welshman as to their Socialist opponents. Bland, moonfaced Winston Churchill, Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose modest suggestion of a fourpenny (8-c-) reduction in the tax on tea has been received by the electorate as very cold pie indeed compared to the Liberal mouth-watering promises of Lloyd George, was particularly bitter.

"Lloyd George seems unduly hurt," said Chancellor Churchill, "because I advise the electors not to be taken in by quackery, charlatanism and thimble-rigging.* I am always anxious not to irritate people unnecessarily, so I hereby announce that I will, for the future, in this election, drop the word charlatan and use instead the word 'cheapjack' as applied to Lloyd George's scheme."

Despite Chancellor Churchill, thousands of Britons daily continued putting down thousands of sixpence to buy copies of Mr. Lloyd George's Orange Book, a pamphlet explaining how the Liberals hope to end unemployment by putting the unemployed to work on a great state program of road building and other public works. "We mobilized for war, let us mobilize for prosperity!" reads the cover of the Orange Book. Above is a cut showing a huge, smiling Lloyd George, arms outstretched in a gesture suggestive of showering gold-pieces upon gladsome, marching files of tiny soldiers and workmen.

*Thimblerig = the Shell Game, with three thimble-like cups, a pea, a sleight-of-hand, a gullible bettor.