Evening Post. MONDAY, AUGUST 11, 1930. PRESS DICTATORS

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 36, 11 August 1930, Page 8

Evening Post. MONDAY, AUGUST 11, 1930. PRESS DICTATORS

From the constitutional aspect, Mr. Baldwin's quarrel with the Empire Free Trade Crusaders has had two very interesting results. In the endeavour to conciliate the more amiable of their two leaders he acdfepted Lord Beaverbrook's suggestion of a referendum to determine by direct popular vote the question of taxing foreign foodstuffs which threatened to split the Conservative Party if the controversy was allowed to proceed along normal lines. As we pointed out on Thursday, it is only because the arrangement was making confusion worse confounded and embittering the controversy which it was supposed to have settled that | Lord Beaverbrook has repented of [his own proposal, and a procedure which might have had very serious constitutional consequences is likely to be abandoned. Mr. Baldwin has fortunately been under no temptation to placate Lord Beaverbrook's twin-brother in the Empire Trade campaign. Lord Rolhermere is too ignorant, too uncertain, and, above all, too arrogant to make any attempt to reason with him worth while. For Mr. Baldwin it is a sheer impossibility, for through all Lord Rothermere's changes and all his loud professions of principle his personal animosity against Mr. Baldwin has stood clearly out as the one object of his political activity towards which he has maintained a rigid consistency. The offer of Mr. Baldwin's head on a charger would doubtless have purchased peace at any time, but that was not a price which Mr. Baldwin himself could pay. Whatever may have been his previous mistakes, Mr. Baldwin's treatment of these attacks in hia address to the Caxton Hall meeting of the party on the 24th June should have satisfied the most exacting of his critics. .1

This is iio personal question, ho said; it is no party question; it is a national question.

It was a national question because, though the leader of the Conservative Party was the immediate object of attack, it might just as well have been the Labour Party or the Liberal Party. Mr. Baldwin accordingly claimed the sympathy of every decent man and woman in what he was going to say.

There is nothing more curious in modorn evolution, said Mr. Baldwin, than the effect of an enormous fortune rapidly made and the control of newspapers of your own. The three moat striking cases aro Mr. Hoarst in America, Lord Kothormere in England, and, Lord Beaverbrook. It seoma _to destroy the balance: the power of being able to suppress everything that a man says that you do not like, tho power of attacking all the timo without there boing any possibility of being hit back; it goes to the head like wine, and you find in all these eases attempts have boen made outside tho province of journalism to dictate, to domineer, to blackmail.

This is very well said, but it may perhaps be worth adding that, whatever application the term "blackmail" might have to the Yellow Press of the United States, it was only in the Pickwickian sense of political intimidation that Mr. Baldwin applied it to Mr. Hearst's English analogues. Mr. Baldwin proceeded to deal in a very happy vein with Lord Rothermcre's rapid changes in regard to both parties and principles, and especially on this very issue:—

On the 4th January this year ho said: "I am against food taxes." On. tho l»th February he waa for them. In May, as I shall show you, h* does not like them. To-day, I am told, he is supporting thorn. You cannot take your politics from men like that. The desire to dictate the policy to a big party, tho dosire to choose the loader, tho desire to impose Ministers on tho Crown; the only parallel to that was the action of tht T.U.C. in 15)26, whon they tried extra-constitutional means to impose thoir will on tho democracy of tho country. That is what you are up against. ... I accept the challenge, as- I accepted the challenge of tho T.U.C., ana I call the bluff.

But the climax of Mr. Baldwin's reply was supplied by a letter from Lord Rothermere informing a correspondent of the conditions on which alone he could give Mr. Baldwin his support:—

I cannot make it too abundantly clear that under no circumstances whatsoever will I support Mr. Baldwin [and Mr. Baldwin interjected, let mo bog of you for "Mr. Baldwin" to road the namo of any other person who may bo leading this party], uuless I Know exactly what his policy is going to be, unless I have- complete guarantoos that such policy will Ijo carried out if his party achieves office, and uuless I am acquainted with tho names of at least oight, or ten, of liis most prominent colleagues in. the next Ministry.

Mr. Baldwin's comment on this extraordinary claim was distinguished by a spirit and a plainness of speech appropriate to the occasion:

ThOBO are the terms that your leader, if roturnoa to powor, would havo to accept, and when eont for by the King ho would havo to say, "Sir, those names aro not necessarily my choice, but thoy have tho support of Lord Rothormore." A moro preposterous and insolent demand was novcr made on tho loader of any political party, I repudiate it with contempt, and I will fight that attompi at domination to the end.

It might, indeed, be said that if ihe action of the T.U.C. in calling the General Strike, to which Mr. Baldwin had previously likericd ihe methods of Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Rothermere, was an attempt to intimidate tho democracy, Lord Rolh-

ermere was now attempting to encroach on the prerogative of the King. It was so put by the "Spectator," which, after saying that most people had been "genuinely shocked" by the letter, summarised its terms, and commented as follows:— In other words (as wo interpret the letter), Lord Kotherniere demanded that tho Primo Minister in appointing his Ministers should be responsible to Lord Rothermero as well as to tho King. The "Manchester Guardian" found a parallel in the late Lord Northcliffe's vendetta against Mr. Lloyd George for refusing to include him in the Peace Delegation to Paris. Hitherto it had regarded that performance as marking "the limit of the newspaper proprietor's political arrogance," but it considered that Lord Northcliffe's record had been beaten by his brother and Lord Beaverbrook. It is not meroly an attempt to oust Mr. Baldwin from tho leadership of the party, said tho "Guardian," it is an attempt to replace Him by Lord Beaverbrook and the Conservative Party by an "Empiro Free Trade" Party. It is an attempt to set up a now political organisation dietatorially controlled, by Lord Beaverbrook, with the advice of Lord Rothcrmore. This is something which has never been attempted before, and which goes far beyond, what any sober judge can suppose has any chance of permanent success. But it does point to a most dangerous tendency, to the growing powers which the owners of large-circulation papers believe themselves to possess, and to the irresponsible use they are capable of malting of such powers as they do in fact possess.

This stalwart champion of all the legitimate rights of the Press bespoke for Mr. Baldwin "genuine sympathy from the public of all parties," and even wqnt so far as to declare that

whonover there is any real danger of tho Conservative Party being swallowed up by tho Pross-controllod party everybody of any political senso will go to MX Baldwin's aid.