Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 8, 1930. DAMON AND PYTHIAS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 6, 8 January 1930, Page 8

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 8, 1930. DAMON AND PYTHIAS

"The maddest scheme ever I evolved" is Mr. George Lansbury's 'description of the economic policy advocated for the Empire by the great twin brethren of the Press, Lord Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook. Though the ideal of "Empire Free Trade" is an admirable one, and thirty years ago would have had the additional advantage of1 novelty, no recognition of its abstract merits should blind one to the fact that from the standpoint of practical politics it is a sheer impossibility. From that standpoint the policy is stale and utterly discredited. When Mr. Joseph Chamberlain launched his great scheme of protection for Britain and preference for the Empire in 1903, it enjoyed the great advantages of a

militant Conservatism, a strong Imperial sentiment, and an advocate of unsurpassed courage, resource, and persuasiveness. Temporarily the policy had the additional advantage of a double ignorance—an ignorance both of the British electors' deep-root-ed hostility to a food tax and of the Dominions'.fears for their secondary industries. The overwhelming verdict for Free Trade at the polls of 1906 smashed Mr. Chamberlain's scheme and condemned the Conservatives to a long period of Opposition. When they were recovering after the war their _ support of a protective policy from which food taxes were expressly excluded gave them another setback. If Mr. Baldwin has been too wise to repeat the blunder of 1923 it, was not to be expected that he would revert to the far more disastrous blunder of 1903 and load his party with the millstone in which Lord Beaverbrook has asked it to find salvation. Nor can even those who had formed the most modest estimate of the political intelligence of his Lordship and his colleague have expected them to show so little sense.

But if the Beaverbrook and Rolhermere policy had previously seemed to Mr. Lansbury "the maddest scheme ever evolved" the personal turn which it has now taken must surely beggar' his powers of description. On Sunday, as. we were informed yesterday, ono of Lord Rothermere's newspapers the "Sunday Pictorial," gives great prominence to an article frankly advocating Lord Beaverbrook for tho leadership of the Conservative Party and the next P/rimo Minister.

What the "Sunday • Pictorial" had to say on Sunday we may expect the "Daily Mail," the "Evening News," and a score of other papers that take their orders from Lord Rothermere to repeat on the other days' of the week. And what will the "Daily Express" have to say about it? And what will the "Sunday Express" have to say? It was the "Sunday Express" which six months ago was privileged to publish under the title of "A New Project for Empire" the policy which Lord Beaverbrook was shortly afterwards running under his own name. Surely on the present occasion-the same paper was at least entitled to share with one of 'Lord Rothermere's papers the honour of revealing the most vital point about the new Cabinet. Is it possible that modesty compelled Lord Beaverbrook to decline the honour? If so, there is one of the essentials of political success in which he must yield the palm to Lord Rothermere. When Lord Rothermere published in the "Daily Mail" a few months ago a statement to which nobody else paid very much heed, it was duly acclaimed in the first sentence of the leading article as "interesting and important." A man who can order such things to be said about him editorially in his own paper, or can allow them to be so said, is likely to beat Lord Beaverbrook in the political race "hands down" if the latter has a spark of modesty left in him. We should indeed have felt much more hopeful of Lord Beaverbrook's chances if the "Sunday Express" had given the same prominence as the "Sunday Pictorial," and at the same time to an article "frankly advocating" his claims to be the next leader of the Conservative Party and the next Prime Minister.

If a precise parity could not he maintained between the two peers in this momentous but delicate business, reciprocity of service might reasonably have taken the place of identity. Strict reciprocity would, of course, have demanded that while the "Sunday Pictorial" urged Lord Beaverbrook's claims to the Premiership the "Sunday Express" should simultaneously pay Lord Rothermere the same compliment. But if the impossibility of a dual leadership had to be recognised from the outset the "Sunday Express" could at least have been directed to point out that in the Empire Free Trade Cabinet which must shortly be formed Lord Rothermere had already established conclusively his right to nothing lower than the second place. While Damon has for the moment staked his all for Pythias we cannot bear to think of his magnanimity standing out in the cold even till Sunday next without portfolio or reward of any other kind to cover its nakedness.

When the Beaverbrook-Rothermere Cabinet has passed beyond the region of headlines and dictated leading articles, some difficulties may appear which are at present beneath the notice of its projectors. If Damon were to become Prime Minister with Pythias as his Chancellor of the

Exchequer, each would be holding a position for which a 'peer is disqualified. And if this invidious bar were surmounted they might still suffer a trifling inconvenience from the fact that while Pythias has declared emphatically for food taxes, Damon's latest pronouncement is equally emphatic against them. But " 'twere to consider too seriously, to consider so." It is not the immortal partnership of Damon and Pythias that the Rothermere-Beaverbrook combination suggests, but that of Gilbert and Sullivan. We do the baseless fabric of their vision a grave injustice if we seek to gauge it by the coarse tests of practical politics and common sense.