Gnome in Ermine

England's aristocratically somnolent House of Lords last week swallowed up another British Socialist,* Rt. Hon. Sidney Webb, hale septuagenarian, world-famed political economist (Fabianism). Statesmen, educators, students who for almost 40 years have known the plain name of Sidney Webb as a synonym for scholarly and philosophically radical Socialism, will not soon be accustomed to his new Socialist title, "Baron Passfield of Passfield Corner" (after his estate in Hampshire). Unfamiliar with his new position and decidedly uncomfortable in it seemed Sidney Webb, last week, as he entered the House of Lords and went through the ceremony of becoming a peer. It made him feel even more uncomfortable than the silk knee-breeches he used to have to wear when, as President of the Board of Trade (1924), he waited on King George. A heavy scarlet robe covered his gnomelike figure. An ermine collar, seeming to grow out of his greyish-white Vandyke beard, lay hot and moist about his neck. A black cocked hat sat strangely above his shaggy, quizzical eyebrows. The usually cool and comfortable philosopher of the Labor movement who was for seven years an M. P. in the House of Commons, a member of the faculty of the University of London and is now for the second time a British Cabinet Minister, fidgeted nervously between his sponsors, Lord Parmoor and Lord Ashfield, who introduced him to the assembled Peers. After his sponsors he quickly mumbled the Peers' oath into his beard, was glad to start back to his seat. His nervousness was so contagious that all three Lords got lost among the benches, had to be rescued by the colorful Garter King of Arms, who looks like the Jack of Hearts.

Those who saw Baron Passfield glance occasionally at the Peeresses' Gallery, wondered what he was thinking, how much of his nervousness might derive from a gracious lady of 71 who sat there calmly watching the ceremony. She, Mrs. Beatrice Webb, last week proved again that she is the same independent, energetic person who, even before her marriage in 1892 to Sidney Webb, was an authority on economics. She has collaborated with him since on more than 30 books and tracts. In 1923 after 30 years as active members of the Labor and Socialist movement they framed their first indictment of capital in The Decay of Capitalist Civilization. Though she is now automatically Lady Passfield, Beatrice Webb last week An nounced she would never use her title. Books written by them will be signed "Lord Passfield and Beatrice Webb." Unique is Mrs. Webb's decision. Other authors, including John Galsworthy, Rudyard Kipling, have refused titles. But there is no record of a peer-author's wife refusing to become a Lady. U. S. observers compared Mrs. Webb's renunciation to the self-effacement of Mrs. Alfred Emanuel Smith of the U. S. Friends said that one of her motives was to keep visible the famed name of Webb. Friends also said that modest Mr. Webb's acceptance of his title was his second sacrifice of the month for the Labor Party. Because his attainments made it a necessity that he be a member of the new MacDonald Cabinet, he relinquished his plan to retire after his 70th birthday, which occurs this month, and became Secretary of State for the Colonies & Dominions. Not having entered the recent election he holds no seat in the House of Commons and had perforce to become a peer because the English Parliamentary system demands that a Cabinet Minister sit in one House or the other. Also announced last week were the customary "dissolution honors," bestowed by King George at the request of the outgoing Conservative ministry. Sir William ("Jix") Joynson-Hicks, fussy Home Secretary in the Baldwin Cabinet, whose battles against Prayer Book revision and sex novels have made him a national caricature, became Viscount Brentford. Viscount Peel (Rt. Hon. William Robert Wellesley Peel), onetime Secretary of State for India, was gazetted an earl.

*Against 495 Conservative and 89 Liberal Peers ten Socialists plus Sidney Webb now sit in the Lords: Earls Russell De La Warr and Kimberley; Lords Parmoor Thomson, Olivier, Arnold, Sankey, Gorell, Muir-Mackenzie. Four are hereditary peers; the other seven rose from commoners. Five have heirs to succeed to their titles.