Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1922-10-02
MAY DEFEAT
LLOYD GEORGE FOR
WARL|KE ATTITUDE
Unions More Powerful Than
Parliament, Says College
Professor.
BY NORMAN II. MATSON
Special Correspondent Of The Great Falls Tribune.
Copyright, 1922, BY The Great Falls Tribune.

Special Correspondent OF The Great taHs ifiouhe'
Copyright, 1922. By The Great Falls Tribune.
London, Oct. British labor
unions are now more powerful than
parliament, says the president of a ia
nous English college, and can stop
or prevent a war. He added an AGA
demic "Alas." being anti-labor. Union
lists themselves are not so sure, but
their party. which is busy preparing
for the victory, confidently expected at
the polls a year or two hence, did and
is exploiting to the full the situation
consequent upon the mess in the Near
East.
The first response to the warlike
pronouncement of the cabinet was that
of labor and it was: mot a man, not
a ship, not a gun"
Leaders were organizing stop the
war meetings before the ink had dried
on headlines announcing the new crisis.
Nobody thought the war suggestion
would be received enthusiastically, but
the intensity of the opposition must
have been a disagreeable surprise for
Lloyd George and his cabinet. The
crisis, says a procurement paper,
is not in the Near East but at home.
The cabinet deliberately beat the war
drum so that a tableau of imperial
solidarity might be shown those who
needed reminding; it is the reverse
that Renal and Lenine and Poincare
see displayed for them.
Labor Acted Quickly
The labor party. which has already
named 400 candidates for the next
general elections, did not think wal
actually imminent. But it decided to
stop it anyway for the effect on the
voters.
l am assured by parliament author
ity that the cost of the preparations to
resist the Turks attempt to cross the
straits will reach something like $780,
600. 900. Rumors of war sent food
prices up, only slightly. it is true, but
discouraging enough after the assur-
ance that the fall would bring a general
reduction.
Food prices and taxes are even more
topics of general conversation than
predictions that if war were begun it
would inevitably spread to the Bal
kans, Palestine, Mesopotamia and
Egypt-and farther.
War talk has crowded from the
news the trade agreement between the
soviet government and the Russo-Asi-
attic Consolidated company, n Of the
biggest industrial organizations in the
WOTlU, WHICH, IOW IOAIiOAO RAothi1oAy
the whole of Russia's non-ferrous
metal industry, nearly 70 per cent of
conner production, all of her zinc and
lead output and over 20 par cent of
her gold production, not to mention
millions of acres Of land, railways, fac
tories and coal mines. But develop
ments are being narrowly watched by
Fnglishmen who were in business IN
Russia before the revolution. Appli-
cations for jobs from some thousands
of them have already been received
Mt the Russo-Asiatic offices in Lon
don. and places will be found for many
of them.
Business Man Optimistic
Leslie Urquit, head of the o~rganiza-
ton. is very optimistic. In an article
in the Observer he declared that while
practically all of the other British en-
terprises in Russia are at the end OF
their tether, an advance of no more
than S75.OOO,0 900 by the government
would restore all of them to pre-war
activities. 1t would involve full recog-
milton of the soviet, but that, he thinks
inevitable and better now than later.
He urges his fellow countrymen to
get in quick. Russia is i~nexhaustible
and indestructible, and the signs are
not wanting that already, even Deneatn
the accumulated mysteries of the past
five years, her resilient impulse, her
tremendous recuperative power, is be-
ginning to gather strength and conf
dence.
do people realize what it means
that Russia should again be self-sup-
porting? The harvest this year for
the first time since the revolution will
be sufficient to supply her domestic
needs. A year or two hence we may
again see her exporting agricultural
produce on a fairly large scale.
But that is not all. The Russian
peasant has now a higher standard of
living than before-he needs a far
greater variety and amount Of man
featured articles. He will need large
quantities of goods that the factories
are peculiarly qualified to supply"