Republican leaders have always sought to “crack” the Democratic South in the hope of making their party a majority one in all of the major sections of the country. The current proposals of Senator Karl E. Mundt of South Dakota for uniting northern Republicans and southern Democrats are not new; they have been tried in the past with little success. This was especially true of the post-Reconstruction years when the memories of Republican ascendancy in the South during die early years of Reconstruction were still fresh and vivid.

The british elections of October 25 gave the Conservative Party a small majority of 17 members in the House of Commons, although the popular vote provided a majority of 200,000 for the Labour Party. Parliament, however, is the supreme power in the British government and the discrepancy between popular vote and parliamentary results will not seriously shake the self-confidence of the Conservative Party. Members of the Labour Party, less sober and responsible in opposition, will doubtless characterize the Conservative government as a freak and an accident. But British traditions sanction the illogical workings of electoral machinery.