CHIEF ELECTION ISSUE

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 99, 23 October 1924, Page 5

CHIEF ELECTION ISSUE

NEGLECT OF EMPIRE OPINION

LORD^CURZON'S CRITICISM OF '.GOVERNMENT.

(UNITSD PRESS ASSOCIATION.—COPIRICHT.) (AOSTRALIAN-NHW ZEALAND- CABLE ASSOCIATION.) (Received 23rd October, 9 a.m.) LONDON, -22nd October. Viscount Curzon, speaking in London, jaid that the Russian loan had disturbed the commercial community more than any proposal of *the Labour Government, ■whose assumption of office was a foolish and fatuous experiment, due far the stupidity of the Liberal Party. The speaker ridiculed Mr. Mac Donald's assertion that his. Government had in eight months contributed more to peace than all the other parties in the last, eight years. Lord Curzon said he had himself received a personal and private assurance from Ministers! of each, of the Dominions that they were entirely satisfied with Britain's foreign policy ; in the past, and desired its continuance on the same lines and in the same hands. . -."'■' Labour, he said,1 had no real conception of th«,lmperial idea, and paid lip service to the Dominions. Mr. Thomas's numerous speeches boiled over • with frothy, patriotism, but they had; pursued a policy apart from, and contemptuous, of the .Dominions. They had dropped the resolutions of the Imperial Conference, Imperial preference, and the Singapore scheme,. which the Dominions considered vital to their security, and had finally signed the Soviet Treaty, with which not a single Dominion Prime Minister had _the smallest sympathy, and which was the most humiliating1 and disgraceful act in British annals. 'They were in the hands of their gunmen. The country,. said Lord Curzon, would insist on having a Government that would not allow the claims of the citizens of the Empire to be bartered in return for the embraces of the Bolsheviks.