LAST SPEECHES: EARL BALDWIN

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 270, 13 November 1937, Page 11 (Supplement)

LAST SPEECHES: EARL BALDWIN

Published as a collection by Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton under the title "Service of Our Lives"—a title taken from the text of the speech broadc<tst on Coronation Day, Earl Baldwin's last speeches as Prime Minister will be widely read and warmly received. The keyi/ote of these speeches is their simplicity of language. No tricks of eloquence, no flights of oratory adorn these utterances; they are short and simple speeches, composed of short and simple sentences, made from short and familiar words. This is no doubt the secret of Mr. Baldwin's success as a public speaker—his audience can understand all he says and the simplicity of his utterance (at times one might almost say its dullness) serves to emphasise his sincerity. The speeches do not impress the reader, as they are read upon the printed page, with the cleverness, the ulture, or the political power,, of the writer; one rather feels that here is a simple man talking to a simple audience. Yet Baldwin on his feet talking to an audience on a great occasion, seems to have the attributes of an orator, as witness, for instance, his famous Carlton Club speech (not, of course, included in this book) which brought about in one afternoon the downfall of the Coalition.

At least one of the speeches in this collection has made history—the one made by Mr. Baldwin in the Commons on the occasion of his announcement of King Edward's abdication. This is printed in full. Others worth reading are his orations in the Commons on the deaths of Lord Jellicoe and King George V., and an address to the Congress of British Empire Universities, delivered at Cambridge, on ''The University Ideal."