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25 5 Arthur Henderson and Other Labour and Radical Leaders. MARCH 21 I walked down at noon through the park to Victoria Street and had a most interesting hour’s talk with Arthur Henderson, the foremost Labour leader in England. He is now much in the public eye. A square-shouldered, square-headed, blue-eyed, ruddy-faced Scotchman, he was treated as an iron moulder and became a lay Methodist preacher. He is a natural-born politician . He is a “tee-totaler.” His face, at first sight, is singularly impassive, and he seems heavy and slow. While he has a touch of self-consciousness, which is lacking in the born leader in England, he is a man of shrewd intelligence and common sense. It is well known that Sidney Webb wrote the “war aims” and the “remarkable program of reconstruction,” which he has fathered. Henderson uses the brains of Webb and Ramsay MacDonald, and supplies the gift of leadership, the ability to sway audiences and guide human beings. He is even accused of being a “boss” and, while honest and loyal to his friends, of driving his program relentlessly through the interminable labor conferences of which we in America also know. While I was there, his second son, a lieutenant in the army, came in. He wore on his sleeve the yellow stripes of one who had been wounded, and one eye was drawn down and heavily scarred. He was just going back to France. Henderson lost an older son earlier in the war, and a third has now entered the service. These human aspects of the war go deep, and make for bitterness we do not yet know. The most interesting thing that Henderson said concerned the need of real liberal representation in the war conferences. He wished Wilson might come over and confer with the European premiers, but, failing that, that he would send a strong man to represent the democratic point of view. It needed 26 | Reporting on Public Opinion in Great Britain, France, and Italy guidance before the event. He spoke of Wilson as the great leader of democratic opinion in the world and said that little could be hoped for while Lloyd George was dominating the government. He divided England as regards the war into three groups. 1. The pacifists, who are willing to take peace on almost any terms. A very small number. Among these he included the group of Tories who would be willing to make a “business peace”—that is, a peace by arrangement and trading of territory. 2. The “bitter-enders,” a strong body of the population, led at present by the government and Lloyd George. 3. The Labour and “sanely-liberal group,” supporting the war but anxious to seize every opportunity of supplementing (he said the Tory papers when they quoted him printed “supplant” for “supplement”—but he meant supplement) military effort by moral, political, and diplomatic efforts. This general division is corroborated by a number of members of the House of Commons with whom I have talked, but they all agree that there is a very large body of doubtful opinion in England that may be easily thrown one way or another by a sharp turn in events. England is under very great strain— anxiety permeates every home in a way that we cannot yet realize—and a great German victory in France, with the prospect of an interminable continuation of the war, might plump a large body of opinion in favor of a peace that would give Germany her way in the East, restore France and Belgium— “that’s all we really went to war for,” as one of them said to me—and give England colonies in Africa, and rights in Mesopotamia and Palestine. A friend of mine, an Englishman, who lives in a small hotel, where there are only English people, told me of a discussion they had the other night at the dinner table. About fifteen were there and this policy of settlement “before civilization was entirely destroyed” was discussed and quite generally approved. My friend finally said, “But Mr. Wilson—” He was instantly interrupted, “There, I knew you would bring in Mr. Wilson . If we go on fighting for his terms, we’ll never get out of this war.” On the other hand, if the British succeed in holding the Germans within reasonable bounds, there will be strong support of the government to “hold on,” “settle the whole fundamental question now,” “sit tight...

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