In all the conflicting currents of political rumour only one
certain fact emerges. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald will shortly resign the Premiership, if he has not already done so. He made a hard fight to remain, but unfortunately for him he appears to have promised six months ago to retire with the Jubilee celebrations. Of late his health has considerably improved and a successful speech on the last Foreign. Affairs debate gave him renewed confidence. He wanted to withdraw his promised resignation, but his Conservative colleagues have held him to it. All efforts to shift Sir John Simon have as yet failed. One of the main difficulties is that there is no post to which he could retire with dignity except the Lord Chancellorship, and to that Lord Hailsham has a prescriptive right. There seems, therefore, no reason to suppose, as has been suggested, that a reconstruction of the Cabinet is just a matter of days. An altogether wrong interpretation has been put upon the recent visits of Ministers to the Palace. I understand that they were concerned, not with changes in the Ministry, but with the state of the national defences, with which the King was anxious to make himself fully acquainted.
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