FROM HIS FIRESIDE

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 95, 19 October 1931, Page 8

FROM HIS FIRESIDE

SNOWDEN PLAYS PAET

CRITIC OF EX-COLLEAGUES

United Press Association —By Electric Tele.'

graph—Copyright,

(Received 19th October, 2 p.m.)

LONDON, ISth October.

From his fireside at No. 11, Downing street, Mr. Philip Snowden is doing devastating work on behalf of the National campaign. His pen is tireless and his tongue trenchant. Seated at the microphone last night, he riddled the fallacies with which his ex-Cab-inet colleagues are wooing the country. There is a silkiness in his voice and a subtle fascination in his Yorkshire accent which make every listener feel that it is a personal talk to him, but it is the facts which Mr; Snowden presents which make him the campaign's outstanding protagonist. For example, the unemployed, to whom Mr. Henderson promises to restore the dole uncut, learned from the Chancellor that if tho National Government had not stopped the drift, there would not • have been funds to pay the dole in mid-November. Equally striking was tho comparison of to-day with. 1906, when he entered Parliament. Then the total expenditure was £123,000,000; to-day it was ££04,000,000. Social services -were then £18,000,000; to-day, £237,000,000, of which £132,000,000 was for the dole, which was more than the nation's total expenditure in 1906. Taxation then took one-thirteenth of the national income; to-day it took onethird. All this had come front industry, so it was appalling ignorance or wilful deception on the part of Labourites to tell tho unthinking that there were enormous resources from which they could continue spending to their heart's content.

Viscount Grey, though a Liberal* ha« rigorously countered Mr. Lloyd George's tactics. In a speech at South Shields he toJd the electors that the one thing to do was/to prevent Labour attaining office. "I am* a Free Trader, but I would not trust Labour. Opposition with Free , Trade as part of their policy is a board's control of imports and exports. Tariffs mean the-shackl-ing of trade, but Government control is to put trade into a strait-jacket." The "Daily* Herald" claims that lifelong Liberals are rallying at Mr. Lloyd George's behest and sending money to Labour headquarters to assist in defeating the Protectionists.