7 NOVEMBER 1931, Page 3

Mr. A. J. Cook Mr. Arthur Cook can only be

adequately characterized through a flagrant mixture of metaphors. He was a firebrand who was steadily mellowing. Trained like so many Labour leaders, particularly of the last generation, for local preaching, he turned his gifts of speech to use rather on the platform than in the pulpit. In early days, the days of " The Miners' Next Step " and the public confession of discipleship to Lenin, he found his ideals at Moscow. Later he discovered Geneva and acquired a remarkable faith in the possibilities of the International Labour Organization. The Cook of the last two or three years was a different man from the incendiary strike-leader the public had supposed him, with some justice, to be. He came to care more for settle- ments than strikes, and if he had lived he might well have taken an effective part in schemes of reconstruction in the mining industry. * * * *