Evening Post. TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1931. NATIONAL INTERESTS FIRST

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 48, 25 August 1931, Page 8

Evening Post. TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1931. NATIONAL INTERESTS FIRST

The statement with which Mr. Mac Donald had hoped "to reassure foreign opinion that the Budget would be balanced" after the Cabinet meeting on Sunday night has not been issued. At least seven of his colleagues, including three of the best of them—Mr. Henderson, Mr. Graham, and Mr. Clynes— were not prepared, even with default staring them in the face, to restore the nation's credit at the expense of the dole. And so, after a three hours' discussion had revealed a hopeless deadlock on this and other points in his programme of economies, the Prime Minister left Downing Street at 10.15 to inform the King, who, as the result of a "purely personal" decision, happened to have arrived at Buckingham Palace from Balmoral that morning. Both before and after the Cabinet meeting Mr. MacDonald'was in consultation with the Opposition leaders, and on his advice the King himself had seen them "to hear from them the position of their respective parties." The result of this common-sense procedure is that a safe and honourable escape is possible from one of the tightest corners that Britain was ever in. Mr. Mac Donald has resigned, and has received at the same time a commission to form a new Government. But it is not a Labour Government but a National Government, not a one-party but a threeparty Government, that he is now to form. . Another record is broken by the circumstances in which the call was given. The representation pi the Opposition parties at Mr. Mac Donald's interview with the King appropriately indicates that the trust which has now been committed to him transcends the limitations of parly and is as wide as the nation. One of the first of to-day's messages declares that the majority of the Government is opposed to the idea of a National Government, and there is little chance of its coming into being. At the same time the "Daily Mail's" expectation that Mr. Baldwin would be called upon to form such a Government was mentioned. If a majority of Mr. Mac Donald's late colleagues were opposed to the formation- of a National Government, all the greater credit is.due to him for undertaking so invidious a task. If the Labourites who estimate that not more than 50 members of. the party will support such a Government are right, the country owes a still larger debt of gratitude to the leader who. has1 put its interests first and followed the call of duly in defiance of an overwhelming majority of his own party and without pausing to calculate the possible effects upon his own career. A leading member of the Trades Union Council is reported to have said: This Government Tvas elected Tjy ;i class to defend :i class. At the .first big test it runs (o make terms ivith the other parties. Mr. Mac Donald and Mr.. Snowdcn have certainly not been lacking in loyalty to the class which they were supposed to represent, but are shrewd enough to see that to carry the promotion of the apparent interests of a class to the point of national disaster is not to promote their real interests. With the example of Australia, and especially of New South Wales, before them it is astonishing that so many of their late colleagues and followers should be blind to the fact that the ruin of a State is not a fit foundation for the prosperity of any part of it. As the King's Government had to be carried on, and it could not be i carried on without paying ils way, it : was necessary that when a majority lof Mr. Mac Donald's collcapurs and of his party refused him the power'

lo satisfy the condition ho should lurn for help elsewhere. H would indeed have been possible u> resign and leave, the responsibility lo others, | but seeing that the (rouble is lo a large extent of his own making, he properly rejected such an escape as j unworthy of a man of honour. Both | on this account and as involving the! least breach of continuity, the course which Mr. Mac Donald lias decided to lake is clearly ihc right one. With a nucleus of his old colleagues he virtually remains in office and is associating with him in a new Ministry representatives of the Conservative and the Liberal Parlies. The frankness with which the co-operative basis of this Ministry is recognised, not only in the understanding between the parlies but in the Royal instructions, is indicated by the. official statement of which the terms come to hand as we write:— The Prime Minister this afternoon tendered to His Majesty tho resignation of the Ministry, which was accepted by His Majesty, who entrusted Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald with the task of forming a National Government on a comprehensive basis for the purpose of meeting the present financial emergency. Mr. Mac Donald accepted the commission, and is now in conference with Mr. Stanley Baldwin and Sir Herbert Samuel, who are co-operating with him in the constitution of such an Administration. Both, Mr. Mac Donald and Mr. Snowden are said to have recognised that it was "political suicide" that they were committing in following what they saw to be their duly, and it is certainly to be feared that they have little to expect from Labour after this. But they may well think the sacrifice worth while. What ihc default which they have probably averted would have meant to Britain it is impossible to calculate or even to imagine, and though the National Government will have exhausted its commission when it has straightened up the finances of the nation there is another service of incalculable value which the stand taken by Mr. MacDonald and his supporters may be found to have rendered. The item in the proposed economies which was the principal cause of quarrel was the dole. The Labour Party had long been encouraging this hideous cancer upon industry, finance, and politics, and that they could do so as; a minority was sufficient proof that the majority was not sincere in its opposition. It is easy to talk from a distance! wrote M. Siegfried, about the beginning of the year. When you are on the spot you realise that no politician would dare to attack openly the policy of the dole: he would lose his seat! Thus it was lhat Conservative candidates found ihe tariff a safer subject lo discuss than the dole, and, for the same reason, Free Trade was considered a safer subject by the Liberals. But as during the recent party conferences both Conservatives and Liberals have been propping up Mr. Mac Donald in his insistence on economies, how can the National Government run away from , the 2s cut in the dole- which was the chief cause of his defeat? And how, after this Government has done its work, can either Conservatives or Liberals evade an issue on which Mr. Henderson and his friends "intend to fight tooth and nail"? The dole has been brought into the open, and in the open it may be expected to get its' deserts.