A Spectator 's Notebook
IT is hard to suppose that anything can turn up in the domestic sphere comparable in importance .with the immediate problems thit face the Government in
the foreign field. There is Manchuria ; there is dis-. armament ; there arc the American debt negotiations ; there is the World Economic Conference. The whole trend of world history may turn on the decisions taken, and the question raised is not so much what British policy will be as who will be chosen to voice that policy in the various centres. The demand .for the Prime Minister will be insistent. America obviously wants him to go and talk to Mr. ROoseyelt as man to man, a role in which Mr. MacDonald is at his best. At the same time he will naturally be looked to if the conversations which led to Germany's return to the Disarmament Conference are to be resumed. He is to be chairman of the World Economic Conference, which means, inciden- tally, that the conference must be held in LeMdon. He is badly needed in connexion with the Manchurian question. What it comes to, in short, is that a vast amount depends. at this moment on one man's rather precarious health.. Not merely in the national, but the international interest. Mr. MacDonald, though he has no doubt benefited from his holiday, may reasonably be appealed to to devolve every lesser task on to other shoulders for the next few months, and reserve himself for the imperative calls that may be made on him. abroad.
Previous page
