18 FEBRUARY 1938, Page 6

Someone has been showing me an interesting booklet by Lenin

called "Left Wing" Communism. What is most interesting about it is the dedication, which runs as follows : "I dedicate this pamphlet to the Right Honourable Mr. Lloyd George as a token of my gratitude for his speech on March ath, 1920, which was almost Marxist and in any case exceedingly useful for Communists and Bolshevists throughout the world."

I have looked up the speech in question. It was delivered by Mr. Lloyd George to the Liberal wing of his Coalition supporters in the House of Commons. The Times observed of it that " the Prime Minister seized the opportunity to pick another quarrel with the Labour Party." He remarked, inter alia, that the party's doctrine was common ownership— what was known in France as Communism, in Germany as Socialism, in Russia as Bolshevism. Yet those were the days when the dominant figure in the party was Arthur Henderson.

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