MR. LLOYD GEORGE IN REPLY

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 69, 21 March 1912, Page 6

MR. LLOYD GEORGE IN REPLY

Mr. Bonar Law's striking speech at the Albert Hall, which we reviewed at considerable length a week ago, produced an interesting and characteristic reply from Mr. Lloyd George. Though the reply makes just as good reading as Mr. Law's speech, it received much less generous treatment from the P»'ess Association's correspond disparity that may be reasonably ied for without any suspicion of oias by the special interest attaching to Mr. Law's first appearance before a London audience since his promotion to the leadership of his party. Mr. Law's speech has been described as the besfc fighting speech delivered on behalf of the Unionists for years, and ifc must be admitted that the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave him a Roland for his Oliver. When Mr. Lloyd George gets on the warpath he is apt to be so slashing as to create 6ome sympathy for his victims; but in this case the speech to which he had to reply was so severo and bo provocative that Mr. Law himself would doubtless admit thab ifc was fair game. Mr. Lloyd George's opening sally was a very neat ono. He described Mr. Law as an able man who had failed to do himself justice in his debut at the Albert Hall. "Shortly before Mr. Balfour's retirement," said the Chancellor of the Exchequer, "I remember at a Tory meeting when his leadership was attacked, one gentleman got up and proclaimed that they were suffering from too much intellect. Mr. Bonar Law, judging by the ' Albert Hall speech, is going to take car© that they will suffer no longer from that malady." If the ferocity of the Unionist leader's invective be borne in mind, the justice of this retort courteous must be admitted. There was, indeed, as we remarked last week, little thought or constructive statesmanship in the Albert Hall speech. Its value was that it served as a tonic to the depressed spirits of the Unionists, and stimulated them to something of the' same sanguine pugnaoity that the speaker himself displayed. But the invective was so unmeasured as to lend itself admirably to Mr. Lloyd George's ridicule: "At the Albert Hall in a regular crescendo of vituperation, he (Mr. Law) said 'Dodgers', 'Lunatics', 'Gambling Cheats', 'Gadarene Swine.' They (the Unionists) said in a perfect delirium of triumph — they embraced each other and said, 'Balfour could never have said things like that.' Nor could he." After this happy opening the Chancellor of the Exchequer proceeded to the more serious task of replying to the Unionist leader's attack upon the administration of the Government. To a New Zealand reader an interesting thing about both the attack and the rejoinder is the general parallel that they present to the conditions of our political warfare. Mr. Law complains that in six years the Liberals have increased the national expenditure by £40,000,000 a year, or if old age pensions are omitted, by £25,000,000 a year. After pointing out that £8,000,000 of this alleged increase was tepresented by a. mere matter of bookkeeping in connection with the local taxation grants, and that an additional £3.000,000 was represented by payments from the Consolidated Fund for purposes that had been previously met from loan moneys, Mr. Lloyd George went on to 6how that, apart from thie " trifling error of eleven millions," the Unionists approved the objects for which the in* creased expenditure was incurred. The piincipal increase was in the Navy Estimates, „ which had gone up by seven and three-quarter millions. "I am entitled," said Mr. Lloyd George, " to ask Mr, Bonar Law, ' Does he denounce that item of expenditure? Do his friends cry shame on that?' " The next item of increase was five and three-quarter million* in the Postal Service, of which Uuge^uftrtori vt * pillion v«pv^otit«d

increased salaries for the most poorly paid employee, and the rest w»e dv» to the larger volume of business resulting from expanding trade— an evil for which Mr. Lloyd George suggested that Tariff Reform might provide a remedy. The Education vote had also gone up by three and a-half millions. Did Mr. Bouar Law object to that? The argument i* indeed remarkably like what wa are accustomed to hear in New Zealand. Opposition critics point with alarm to the steady growth of the debt, and yet the Government is able to reply that they have approved of the measure* which are mainly responsible for the increase. We are certainly surprised that. Mr. Bonar Law, who is a business man, should have blundered so badly in his figures. Mr. Lloyd George has seldom done a' more effective piece of work than this reply.