"AN ENIGMA"

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 132, 2 December 1930, Page 19

"AN ENIGMA"

; THE HEAL BALDWIN

STEED PUZZLED

-Omar Khayyam's baffled philosopher "came out by that some door whereirt he went." A similar.impression is left ou the mind after reading Mr. Wickham Steed's attempt to solve what he apparently regards as the, "enigma" of Mr.'Baldwin's character, saysE. G. Hawkc, discussing Mr. Steed's book in the "Daily Telegraph'. '■' ~■ . | Mr.■■ Steed has evidently,'tri'el to1 bb fair toa •statesmaiV'witli whom-lie has ho sympathy, and who is interested in domestic problems rather than iv the .Geneva Protocol and other iutern'atioual matters. But ho seems throughout to be 'puzzled by Mr. Baldwin, principally bocause ho,does not employ the usual demagogic arts. Only in his closing sentences does Mr. Steed fiud matter for satisfaction in Mr. Baldwin's vigorous commeats on the United Empire Parly. ' "If Mr. Baldwin can put hit, new vigour of words into a new vigour of deed in the service of a go-ahead and fnr-bighied Couscivalive policy, he may cease to be an enigma and become a national asset. There would bo no need to seek painfully among the records of his past for light upon his character and quality. At last a real Stanley Baldwin would haveemuiged." RAPID EISE. Tho author sketches Mr. Baldwin's rapid rise from 1916, when he became Pailiamentary Secretary to Mr. Bonar Law, then Chancellor oi" the Exchequer. . lie recalls Mr. Baldwin's anonymous gift of £120,000 to the State in 1919, intended to set the example for a voluntary levy. Ho tells a less familiar story of Mr. Baldwin's "love of doing good by stealth." "He heard that two philanthropic old ladies iv a certain village were straining their slender means in keeping up an asylum i'or feeble-minded giiih. Ho walked ou into Ktroud, a good many miles away, collected 200 dirty and crumpled '£.1 notes, and wrapped them up in a piece of newspaper, together with a letter to the old ladios, which he wrote in tho style of a tramp. Then he persuaded a yokel to bribe an urchin to deliver tho parcel without saying how ho had. come by it." . - .-•■ Mr. Steed thinks that similar '?inoral and-.subje&tive" actions ■ inspired Mr. Baldwin's revolt against the Coalition in October, 1922, "which pi-oved to be the turning point of Ms political career." "As lie explained to his intimates, he had seen one decent, fellow after another go to pieces under the influence of the Lloyd-George'group..')' Therefore he made the speech at the Carlton Club meeting in which ho said that Mr. Lloyd George's "dynamic force" was destroying tho Conservative Party. FOR THE RIGHT. "I stick all through to what I believe to be right," he told his colleagues. The Coalition collapsed, and Mr. Bouar Law became Piime Minister, with Mr. Baldwin at the Exchequer. Mr. Steed docs not blamo Mr. Baldwin for his settlement of the United Slates war debt iv 1923. Ho would not, iv the author's view, have made better terms after the publication of Iho Balfour Note, though Mr. Bonar Law was reluctant to ratify tho bargain. Tho,.author becomes more and nioio ciitical as he proceeds with the narrative of Mr. Baldwin's first Ministry of 1923, arid of his second Ministry of 1924-29. Mr. Steed's discussion of the Zinovieff letter, the coal question, and tho general strike is frankly controversial, but he reserves his sevore&t comments for. the late Government's foreign policy, with which Mr. Baldwin was at most indirectly concerned. In a chapter headed "A Study in Conservatism" the author gives reiu to his fears of social revolution—even quoting Marx's manifesto of 1848 as applicable to present conditions—if a new industrial policy is not devised. Here Mr. Steed seems to have travelled far away from his nominal subject. REVIVAL SOUGHT. •, Incidentally he states that "before the 1924 election certain personages wore working for a revival of the Coalition, with Sir -Robert Homo as Prime Minister of a Cabinet "which Mr. Lloyd George and his more prominent associates might have joined." The overwhelming Conservative triumph, Mr. Steed affirms, put au end lo this 1 scheme. I Tho author quotes some reputed say- j ings of Mr. Baldwin to illusliate his humility. "Once when discussing with a friend a point of policy ou. which his second Administration had clearly gone! wrong1, he said with a gesture of *e-5 signation: 'I thought we should have taken another line; but then Winston came along with his hundred-horse-power brain, and what was I to dot' " Mr. Steed takes this literally, and admonishes Mr. Baldwin for his supposed weakness. Perhaps, after all, Mr. Baldwin was speaking ironically, and Mr. Steed has missed tho humour of it.