Evening Post

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 104, 29 October 1931, Page 12

Evening Post.

' For once Mr. Lloyd George has been struck dumb, and illness has enforced the same silence upon the unhappy Mr. Arthur Henderson. It was certainly better to be silent in the presence of the stupendous calamity which has overtaken the British Labour Party than to hazard such a comment as that which has fallen from one of its leaders.

We' are living in panic times, says Mr, Bon Tillott. I hope the new Government will bo successful in saving | the country from its present panic. If the Government had no heavier task than that, it might be congratulated upon its enviable sinecure. But a veteran who actively supported the Trades Unions in the mad policy which destroyed the Labour Government, and who has had for his personal reward the conversion of his majority of nearly 4000 in North Salford into a minority of more than 12,000, is hardly to be expected to deliver in the hour of defeat an impartial judgment on the causes of it. A foreigner, whose detached position gives him, as Bacon pointed out, some of the advantages of a contemporary posterity, has a better chance. The first of the foreign judgments to come to hand is that of the Paris "Matin," which has often played the part of candid friend to Britain, and even in its adverse ' judgments has displayed a knowledge and a discernment not often to be found in the French Press. England, says the "Matin," haasprovided an impressive spectacle of magnificent recovery. The election will have an enormous repercussion all over tho world. The English people, even |in the working-class districts, have shown a determination to react strongly against a policy of disorder and waste. Apart from the general advantage to which we have referred, a foreign judgment is of peculiar importance in the present case because the world's loss of faith in British credit was the immediate cause of the crisis. More than four years of the World War in which Britain had not only played the leading part on one side but had to a large extent financed her Allies also had failed to shake that faith, nor, so far as we are aware, had the Napoleonic Wars or any other emergency shaken it. But her staggering load of debt and taxation, her huge and steadily growing army of unemployed, the demoralising system which was enlarging that army by putting a premium upon idleness, the increasing reliance upon capital for the payment of working expenses, and the obstinate refusal to economise had brought Britain to a pass unprecedented in her financial ■ history. She had not lost faith in herself, but faith of the outside world was severely shaken. To talk of a "banker's ramp," as Mr. Henderson and his friends did, was absurd. Securus judicat orbis terrarum, says St. Augustine. Calm is the judgment of the outside world! The judgment of the financial world is particularly calm. It has no politics, but it knows the difference between good security and bad, and Britain had to mend her ways, or start on the toboggan slide leading to the morass in which Germany has been floundering for years. Mr. MacDonald and two of his, colleagues chose, the former alternative; but a majority of them preferred to desert their posts rather than help him through. If Mr. Henderson or Mr. Graham had been advising the Government or the Bank of England on a loan to a South American State with such a financial record as that summarised above they could not possibly have recommended it. In this case they have ignored their responsibilities and talked nonsense about a "bankers' ramp." During those perilous weeks in August and September when the issue hung in the balance, was there any indication of a panic? The only approach to a stampede that we can recall either then or since was of an exactly opposite character. When Mri Snowden sat down after introducing his Supplementary Budget, which by increasing the income tax to 5s and other devices proposed to draw an' additional £30,000,000 a year from the taxpayers, while providing also for economies amounting to £70,000,000, the victims cheered as if he was giving them the time of their lives. Peoplo in tho gallery, abandoning tho traditional decorum, clapped widly. Conservative millionaires and representatives of noblo families around him— indeed, every occupant of tho Government benches—sprang on to their seats an-i waved handkerchiefs and tumultuously choered tho old Socialist, who every minute of tho. past half-hour had been felling their' fortunes. The Labourites opposito wore hypnotised into silence. It was natural to suppose that hypnotism had played its part on the majority also, and to expect some reaction from the paradoxical display. But there has been neither reaction nor panic, nor faintheartedness of any kind. The nation seems on the contrary to have faced its painful task in the same spirit of grim determination which Mr. Snowden himself displayed, ' and to have brought to it the faith and the grit which in one of his broadcast addresses he declared to be .the condi-

tions of success. The foreigners who were beginning to think that Britain was "down and out" and abandoning her ancient prejudice in favour of paying 20s in, the £ have their answer now. With sympathy and admiration her children overseas may think of her as having once more justified that magnificent tribute which was paid to her by Emerson during the dark days of the Crimean War: I see her not dispirited, nor wouk, but remembering that she has seen dark days before; indeed, with a kind of instinct that she sees a, little better in a cloudy day, ami that in atorm of battle and calamity she has v secret vigour and a pulse like canon. I see her in her old age not decrepit but young, and still daring to bolievo1 in her power of endurance and expansion. Seeing this, I say, All hail Mother of nations, Mother of horoos, with strength still equal to tho time; still wise to entertain and swift to executo tho policy which tho mind and heart of mankind requires in tho present hour, and thus only hospitable to tho foreigner, and truly a homo to the thoughtful and gonorous who aro born in tho soil. So bo it! So lot it be! Yesterday the feelings of relief and elation inspired by the incomplete returns of the polling were modified by .the doubt whether the man to whom the victory of the Nationalist Government was chiefly due might not be rewarded by a personal defeat in. his own constituency. Disdaining the offer of a safe seat elsewhere Mr. Mac Donald decided to defy the hostility of the Labour organisations in Seahani, and the courageous decision must have put heart into the supporters of the Government at a critical time. Today the Empire,is thankful to know that Mr. Mac Donald has defeated a strong Labour , opponent by a majority of nearly 6000. The victory is welcome both .because he doserved it, and because the defeat of the Prime Minister might have un- ! duly discounted the victory of the I Government in the eyes of foreigners. But weightier reasons are the diffi- ' cutties which are presented by the | huge size of the Government's , majority and the fear that under any other leader it may lose its national i character and become Conservative and reactionary. Mr. Mac Donald showed his appreciation of the point 'in the satisfaction in which he exI pressed over Sir Herbert Samuel's defeat of his Conservative opponent. i That this satisfaction is widely | shared is proved by the Darwen electors, who**, gave Sir Herbert the biggest majority ever polled in that constituency, and by the intense cheering with which the news of the success was received by the crowds in London. As a Liberal who played the game at a critical time and led his parly away from the evil influence of Mr. Lloyd George, Sir Herbert Samuel fully deserves the gratitude of the Darwen electors and of the nation. Another gratifying surprise is Mr. Thomas's brilliant success in Derby. The result has been consistently represented as very doubtful, but he has increased his majority by nearly 10,000, and it is appropriate that he should have carried a Conservative colleague to victory with him. The decisive victories of Mr. Mac Donald and Mr. Thomas and the defeat of Mr. Henderson by a majority of 8000 have greatly enhanced the significance of ; the national verdict. Britain's censors have no doubt where Britain stands now. "This is splendid," says Mr. Baldwin, and it really is.