The Press Saturday, August 20, 1932. The Eton and Harrow Match.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20630, 20 August 1932, Page 14

The Press Saturday, August 20, 1932. The Eton and Harrow Match.

Unemployment Expenditure.

The question whether England is what she was has worried people ever since England was what she is. The answer is not easy, because, as Napoleon discovered in Spain, to diagnose national decadence from the outward appearance of the patient is risky. Yet when England was caught by the depression, a little in advance of the rest of the world, a host of foreign critics, who may have been wishing as well as thinking, sighed wistfully over the decline of a once great nation. M. Andre Siegfried did it thoroughly with graphs and tables, and ended a survey of England's trade balances since the War with the epitaph: " Rome is no " longer Rome." In an age which puts economists on higher pedestals than philosophers, the mistake is natural; but it must be insisted that export graphs are not the temperature charts of the body politic and that national decadence is too subtle a disease to be detected by these rough-and-ready methods. Just as straws rather than telegraph-poles show which way the wind blows, so it is in the trivialities of life that there is to be found the true index to the state of a man's mind or of the mind of a nation. When Mr Mac Donald's second Government fell and Mr Montagu Norman had to go on holiday, no one was seriously alarmed and everyone was pleasantly excited. But when Mr Mac Donald was seen entering Buckingham Palace in morning clothes and a bowler hat, the nation knew that something was up; and the news that it was nothing worse than the suspension of the gold standard brought a wave of relief. It is the significance of incidents like these that escapes the foreigner. If England suffers a general strike or a political crisis, he looks instinctively to the market reports or the Board of Trade returns for some indication of how the country is taking the shock. An intelligent Englishman would enquire anxiously how the Lent races went off in Cambridge or whether Ascot was up to expectations. Early last month, while the world was prepared to judge England by the success of Mr Chamberlain's conversion scheme, every Englishman who opened his copy of The Times on July 9th knew that the country wa3 sound, whether it clung to its 5 per cents, or not. For The Times spoke these comforting words:

The Eton and Harrow match .at Lord's opened yesterday in .brilliant sunshine, which continued throughout the day.' With such settled conditions the lightest o-f frocks were worn, and the muslins, laces, and organdies outrivalled those Been at Ascot on the smartest days. The Duke of Gloucester watched the match for some time, and Prince Arthur of Connaught was also a morning visitor. Princess Ingrid of Sweden, wearing a summery pink and white frock, with a white hat bound ■with red ribbons. . . .

Lower in the column, between Lady Snagge in black crepe de chine trimmed with large silver buttons and Charlotte Lady Inverclyde in beige chiffon with a large pattern of blue flowers, appeared the imperturbable and reassuring figures of Mr and Mrs Baldwin, Mrs Baldwin wearing a light matron dress with a brown hat trimmed with matron and blue flowers. Europe is in the balance at Lausanne, there is street fighting in Berlin, the Commons are in hysterics over Ireland, and a Senator from Tennessee is saying harsh things about war debts; but England sees the brave blue flowers on Mrs Baldwin's brown hat in the sunshine at Lord's and knows that all is well. There were, it is true, some untoward incidents this year. " The Maharajah "of Burdwan," noted The Times frigidly, "arrived early to watch the "play." But the Maharajah is, after all, almost a foreigner. It is less easy to excuse ,a writer in the reputable Manchester Guardian who went to the match with a New Zealander:

For three hours of exquisite cricket weather we watched Lord's given up to such play as few school coaches would tolerate on the obscurity of their own grounds. "What," remarked my friend, "is England's cricket coming to when small boys bat as though there were £IOOO on each stroke?" What he said when lazy fielding gavd away gratuitous runs through overthrowing cannot decorously be set down on paper. It was not easy for me to deny that this afternoon may fairly claim to rank as the poorest three bobs' worth in the history of the game.

It is impossible not to feel uneasy when subversive nonsense like this gets into a national daily. Prinee Arthur of Connaught, Princess Ingrid of Sweden, Lady Snagge, Charlotte Lady Inverclyde, and Mrs Baldwin's brown bat with blue flowers—all lumped together as "the poorest three bobs' worth in the history of the game " ! By now, it is to be hoped, Mr Bateman has drawn a really salutary picture of " The Man who Watched the Play at " the Eton and Harrow Match."

The Prime Minister, in a statement printed this morning, announces that unless something unforeseen occurs, resulting in unexpected demands being made on the Unemployment Fund, there should be no need for additional unemployment .taxation." This repeats in other words what he said recently, and is no doubt intended to be reassuring; but anyone who has watched the mounting expenditure of the Unemployment Board in the last twelve months will find this a rather perturbing kind of reassurance. For Mr Forbes is assuming that, if the Board needs more money than it is now spending to carry forward its present pol : cy, the extra money must be found. He doss r.nt a k. as the deputy-chair-man of the Unemployment Board has asked, whether it is safe to impose further taxation; and he does not ask whether it is wise to persist in - ear present unemployment

policy if it shows signs of getting out 'of hand financially. Yet these are questions which ought to be asked, and which the taxpayer certainly will ask, if the Unemployment Board goes to the Government for more funds. From motives which are wholly creditable, the Board has chosen a very expensive method of relieving unemployment. If the burden of taxation were less oppressive, and if the national finances were in a healthier state, few would question the wisdom of that method or oppose its being continued. But if unemployment expenditure seems likely to turn a manageable deficit into an unmanageable one, the Board must choose a cheaper, if less socially desirable, form of relief.