Evening Post. TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 1930. MR. BALDWIN

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 31, 5 August 1930, Page 8

Evening Post. TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 1930. MR. BALDWIN

As a Worcestershire man, born and bred in the county,, and through all the twenty-two years.of his Parliamentary life the representative of its Bewdley Division, as his father had been before him, Mr. Baldwin has a constituency exactly to his liking. He is fond of posing as a plain man from the country, and it is natural that such a man should feel less at home in London than among his own people. To a member so happily placed constituents are friends and' helpers rather than worries, and instead of being an ordeal a visit to them affords a welcome relief from the cares of public life. A note of old-world fellowship and common service, not often heard from any politician to-day, was sounded by Mr. Baldwin in the address which he delivered on receiving the Freedom of the City of Worcester shortly after his first appointment to the Premiership. Beginning with a reference to the emigration of his family into the county 150 years ago, and to his own birth there, he proceeded:— One knows in one's bones that one is ;i Worcestershire man, and that there is nothing like it. One came out of this red soil, and one will return to it and lay one's bones in it, and there is no soil like it in this country. . . I am just one of yourselves, ,who has been called to special for the country at this time.. I never sought the office. I never planned out or schemed for my life. I had but one idea, which, was an idea that I inherited, and it was tho idea of service—service to the, people of this country. .. ■. It makes very little difference whether a man is driving a tramcar or sweeping streets or being Prime Minister, if he only brings to that service everything that is in him, and performs it for the sake of mankind. There is nothing ornate about this language. It is, on the contrary, 'as plain and homely as it well could' be. But it is so obviously genuine that it goes straight to the heart, and it makes one feel that this simple countryman, "whose talk is of bullocks," and even, as ■' Mr. ( Lloyd George has recently reminded us, of pigs, has mastered some important secrets which have not been1 revealed to Lord Beaverbrook or Lord Rothermere, or. even to Mr. Lloyd George himself. The absolute honesty and disinterestedness of the man make a large part of his strength. One of the sources of the great .strength of our country in every part of the Kingdom, said Mr. Baldwin in an address on "Service" which he delivered to tho Leeds Luncheon Club in 1925, is thai there are men who have no personal ambition for themselves to get where the limelight is brightest and publicity is greatest. And as long as our country can go on producing that type, which I am thankful to say it is producing from all classes of the community—so long as that is the case, I should never despair of England. "Personal ambition," "limelight," "publicity"—by these words Mr. Baldwin accurately indicated the strong points of the three men abovenamed who are his most formidable opponents to-day. His own fidelity to ■ the ideal of unostentatious service must inemfise our admiration of the man, but obviously handicaps the politician. Mr. Baldwin's latest visit to his constituency has not been entirely free from political polemics. In a speech at Bewdley, -which has followed hard upon the prorogation, he was reported yesterday to have discussed "trie difficulties of maintaining the morale and unity of a great party in the hour of defeat." I am never going to see our great historical party become a j»reat hysterical party, said Mr. Baldwin, especially where oertain elements are devoting all their time and money to smashing the party.' They won't succeed as long as I am where I am.

It is probable that both the wit and the spirit of these remarks have been widely appreciated. In v spite of a single offensive expression of which Mr. Lloyd George naturally made the most, the speech delivered by Mr. Baldwin to a meeting of Conservative M.P.'s and candidates in the Caxton Hall, Westminster, on the 24th June, was extraordinarily well received not only by the meeting and the party, but by independents and opponents. The reason was that in taking off the gloves to the Lords of the "Daily Mail" and the "Daily Express," he was generally considered to have dealt with two men whose arrogant attempt to dictate the policy of the Conservative Party through the irresponsible power of their newspapers is felt to be a public menace.

The taxation of foreign foodstuffs may be wright or wrong. The cumbering of the issue by submitting it to a referendum —-a concession made to the Empire Crusaders at Lord Beaverbrook's suggestion, but violently attacked by him afterwards— may be right or wrong. The caution with which Mr. Baldwin, after wrecking his party once against the Free Trade prejudices of the British people, shrinks from repeating the experiment may be excessive or it may not. All these things are open to argument. But the injustice, the bad taste, and the insolence with which these two Press magnates —and especially Lord Rothermere —have attacked Mr. Baldwin and endeavoured to smash his party are a danger to the dignity and security of public life. Mr. Baldwin is fighting something better than a personal or a party battle when he refuses to be bluffed or intimlclated out of power.