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Office, President Wilson used to say, made the man. Let him leave the office, for good reason or bad, and four times out of five he relapses into obscurity. That is probably over-stating the case, but of no one was it ever more true than of Mr. J. H. Thomas. From the moment when he became Colonial Secretary in the short-lived Labour Government in 1923 he remained one of the foremost political figures of the day, as he had long been one of the foremost trade union figures. In 1929 he was in office again, this time as captain of the strangely assorted trio consisting of himself, George Lansbury and Sir Oswald Mosley, who between them were going to conquer unemployment—and didn't. In 1931 Thomas followed MacDonald into the Coalition Government and stayed on the Front Bench till an indiscretion about the Budget ended his political career. From that time all anyone knew about Jimmy Thomas was that he had got something or other in the City. He published an auto- biography, which made no great stir. And now he is gone. On the industrial side he-was of the stature of men like Smillie, and almost always a moderating force. He knew well what dangerous roads the unions were capable of taking. I remember walking through Parlia- ment Square with him one day in the unrestful early twenties, and his summing up the situation with the assertion " I tell you, 'Arris [an alias I sometimes assume], I'm terrified." It was a good deal better than being complacent, and it kept him with his hand always nearer the brake than the throttle.
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