Evening Post. THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 1931.

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 78, 2 April 1931, Page 8

Evening Post. THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 1931.

MR. BALDWIN WINS

The Empire Crusader who was defeated in the St. George's by-election a fortnight ago by a large majority in a straight fight with Mr. Baldwin's candidate is fully entitled to whatever comfort he can draw from his remark that the .election at least stirred the complacent mandarins of the Conservative Party. o But the effect of the election upon the arrogance of the millionaire mandarins of the Press who were running this candidate is of much greater interest to the public. For about eighteen months the unbalanced enthusiasm of Lord Beaverbrook and the vindictive insolence of Lord Rothermere have combined to dictate to their newspapers, to the Conservative Party, and to' the people their own loose, inconsistent, and sometimes mutually contradictory ideas of fiscal policy. So thoroughly are these newspapers under control, so completely has their shame been stripped of the faintest fig-leaf of independence, that their lords and masters have sometimes made public proclamation of the views which the papers themselves would be advocating on the morrow. The Conservative Party has not proved equally pliant, but at a time when it was under a cloud its difficulties have been greatly increased by the abuse which these Press lords have persistently showered upon its leader and by the putting forward of candidates who have split the Conservative vote and in one case at least defeated the official candidate of the party. The contest in the St. George's, Hanover Square, had a unique interest in two respects. In the first place, it gave the arch-enemies of Mr. Baldwin the opportunity of attacking him in a safe Conservative constituency and submitting the quarrel between him and them to a popular vote without the,intrusion of a Labour or a liberal candidate to confuse the issue. Secondly, Mr. Baldwin himself, who had been so meek and longsuffering that they appear to have regarded him as unable to say boo to such a formidable pair of geese, was provided with an opportunity for proving their mistake., The proof was adequate. Mr. Baldwin rounded upon his persecutors with a plainness of speech proportionate to the patience which he had previously displayed. His devastating torrent of invective was loudly cheered by his audience in the Queen's Hall, warmly approved, regardless of party, on his return to the House of Commons, and though described by one of the papers as without a precedent in English public life for a century, seems to have been approved both by that paper and by the Press as a whole in exactly the same way. What was Mr. Baldwin's immediate objective was also achieved by his Queen's Hall speech. So far from being scared aAvay by the fierceness of his attack upon the Press lords, the electors of St. George's rallied to his call with great enthusiasm, and gave Mr. Duff-Cooper a. majority of 5710 over the Empire Crusader. Their enthusiasm was, indeed, so great as to make the election unique, at any rate in recent times, in another respect besides the the two already mentioned. It is an almost xmiversal rule that the slackened interest of the public makes the polling at a by-election much less than it had been at the General Election, but instead of any falling-o£f in St. George's there has actually been a slight increase. The aggregate poll, which was 28,742 at the General Election, is now 23,774. To find a precedent for such a result at a by-election, or even for any near approach to equality with the General Election figures, one would probably have to go back to some national emergency or to some striking change-in the personal equation of the candidates or in the policy of the leaders as supplying the' cause. But none of these explanations is possible here. The Government has gone on much as before; the Liberals are just as - negligible in St. George's as they were at the General Election; and the Conservative policy is substantially as it was. What seems to have happened is that both Conservatives and impartial outsiders had grown tired of the narrowness and extravagance of the Bcaver-brook-Rothermere programme, by their Napoleonic or pseudo-Napo-leonio tactics, and by their incessant personal abuse,. and were at last stirred to decisive action when Mr.

Baldwin showed that lie was not prepared to take it lying down any longer, and that lie could hit even harder than his assailants, but without hitting below the bell. That what everybody else regarded as a knock-out blow for the Press Lords has been so accepted by them, or at any rale by the one of them that really matters, seems to bo proved by the correspondence between Mr. Neville Chamberlain and Lord Beaverbrook which was summarised in a London message on Monday. As long ago as the 19th November Mr. Neville Chamberlain, who had recently succeeded Mr. John Davidson as Chairman of the Conservative Party organisation, explained to a meeting of the City of London Party organisation the differences ■which still divided Lord Beaverbrook from the parly, and added: As far as our party is concerned, I may say that I see nothing in tho shape of any difference between us that is worth fighting about. We are always ready to make friends, provided we can get a reciprocal intention from the other side. The reciprocity -which was not forthcoming then or for four months afterwards has followed hard upon die St. George's election. Lord Beaverbrook asked for an assurance that the programme proposed should use "the most efficient and practical method for increasing British manufacturing, wheat and agricultural production." He points out that ho belioves duties on foreign foodstuffs the most effective way, but he recognises that quotas and prohibitions may be advantageous, and promises that if the party at tho next alection is prepared to ask for a mandate to use all these methods, to do everything to assist in their fulfilment. Replying with Mr. Baldwin's authority, Mr. Chamberlain said that Lord Beaverbrook. had "correctly stated the policy." Lord Rothermere still stands out, but he carries little weight in the constituencies, and cannot do much mischief alone, and, though Lord Beaverbrook broke away from the referendum compact last year, a repudiation of the new agreement would leave him little credit. In the meantime, as several of the newspapers consider, Lord Beaverbrook's capitulation to Mr. Baldwin appears to be complete. Writing from the standpoint of Free Trade to which the policies of Mr. Baldwin and Lord Beaverbrook are about equally obnoxious, the "Manchester Guardian" says: — If Lord Beaverbrook's letter does not mean conceding Mr. Baldwin a "free hand" it is difficult to know what it docs mean. It is surely a eompleto capitulation. It now remains to be seen whether the notoriously mercurial Lord Beaverbrook will maintain his present mind. Even if he does not it seems hardly possible that he can split the Conservative Party seriously again; and it now looks as. though when Mr. Lloyd George's endeavours to prop up a party in which he does not believe have exhausted his own acrobatic ingenuity or the patience of his party, there would be a chance of a really stable Government under the only leader in whom the nation appears to have real confidence.