Evening Post. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1931. "BRITISH SHOW US SOMETHING"

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 116, 12 November 1931, Page 12

Evening Post. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1931. "BRITISH SHOW US SOMETHING"

"Slow but sure" is the reputation which Britain enjoys in all parts of; the world, but the speed with which she has accomplished one of the most momentous revolutions in her history has astonished the world just as much as the thoroughness. It was on 31st July that the late Parliament adjourned till the 20th October, but within a fortnight Mr. Mac Donald had been brought back from Lossiemouth to Downing Street to face a dangerous financial crisis. The holidays of the other party leaders also were interrupted a day or two later by invitations to take part in a Three-party Conference, but the'return of the King to London on the 23rd August showed that the financial crisis had brought a political crisis, of the first magnitude in its train. A large majority of Mr. Mac Donald's colleagues having rejected the plan for balancing the Budget which the other party leaders had approved, he resigned on the 24th August, and on the 25th his new Three-party Cabinet was sworn in. Within a fortnight it had completed a programme of an extraordinarily I drastic character. Parliament reassembled on the Bth September. On the 10th Mr. Snowden introduced! his Supplementary Budget, which provided for economies totalling £70,000,000 in a full year and for raising £80,000,000 in additional taxation.

Before this little contract had been disposed of, the dangerous withdrawals of gold from the City had precipitated another crisis, with which Parliament promptly dealt by passing through all its stages on the 21st September a three-clause Bill to bring Britain off the gold standard.- On the 7th October Parliament, having completed its task, was dissolved, and the General Election was fixed for the 28th October. On the 10th November Mr. Mac Donald faced the new Parliament with his second National Cabinet beside him, and with the support of 553 members in a House of 615. Thus in less than three months since the majority of a minority Government threatened Britain with default she has weathered two perilous financial crises, and, if the General Election held under such conditions may be included, two political crises of the first importance, and has exchanged a precarious and utterly discredited minority rule for a Government supported by such an expression of the national confidence as to be embarrassing by its extravagance. And all this has been accomplished without bloodshed or violence or civil strife or &ny coup d'etat. It has been done by a nation of 40,000,000 people ori strictly constitutional lines and yet with a speed and a thoroughness that any dictator with an army of black-shirts or red-shirts behind him might envy. The-result is something more' than a vindication of Britain's financial integrity, her grit, and her common-sense, and a further proof that the greatest of her qualities, which are often obscured when times are easy, are at their best in adversity. It is also, as Mr. Mac Donald.said at the Lord Mayor's banquet, a vindication of democracy. • :

I believe, he said, that Britain's decision' at the election restored in all men's and women's minds faith and trust in representative democracy. It also has shown self-governing peoples throughout the world : what national unity means. But Britain's achievement represents something more than a triumph of the democratic principle in general. It is a special triumph for the elasticity of that form of democratic government which under a constitutional monarchy has become in Britain so powerful and so rapid an instrument of the popular will. This feature of the case has naturally attracted particular attention in the United States, where a written and rigid Constitution incorporating an elaborate system of checks and balances designed in the 18th century as a safeguard against tryanny sets a slow pace in politics which presents a striking contrast to the speed developed by American hustle in non-political business. At a quite early stage of Britain's experiment this aspect of it was the subject of favourable comment from American reformers baffled by the difficulty of getting anything done at Washington even at a time of grave emergency.! Writing just after the introduction of Mr. Snowden's second Budget under the title "British Show Us Something," the "Springfield Republican" of the 11th September said:—

At this moment the British Government is forcing through Parliament a drastic budgetary provision calculated to wip,e out a Treasury deficit of some 600,000,000 dollars for the present fiscal

year. JS To time is being lost. No delay 'will be tolerated. Sure of its majority, tho Ministry drives ahead. Now taxes will be effective immediately, and the I-lotiso will debate them while the taxgatherer collects them. More than that, tho debate wilt be cut tliort by closure, and tho Parliamentary share in tho business will soon be over. The ancient system of Orders in Council,' recalling tho period when the King could rule without Parliament, is then to bo revived and utilised so that the Ministry may arbitrarily raise oi- lower taxes, as the Government's needs hereafter may dictate. In short, the Budget will be balanced, it might be said, before sundown and His Majesty's Opposition may as well whistle as declaim its protest.

The article proceeds to point out that a month ago there was no National Government in existence, that there had been no change in the personnel of the House of Commons, and no General Election.

Yet within tliG month the old Ministry goes out and a radically changed Ministry comes in pledged to do what tho old Government would not do — and do it quick, even without a popular mandate registered at the polls. And again, the Orders in Council, a relic of the Stuarts and Tudors, suggestive of dictatorship more than democracy, are the resort of a Prime Minister who a few weeks ago was still the darling of the advanced social democracy of Great Britain. This rapid transformation in the Government of "democratic" Britain is somewhat startling. Yet it reminds one of what the old monarchy, with its spouse, the Mother of Parliaments, is still capable of. And all within the law.

Yes, "the old monarchy with its spouse, the Mother of Parliaments," can still do a thing or two —"and all within the law"—which all the constitutional authorities assembled at Washington, even if they were not engaged in their favourite pursuit of preventing one another from governing, are powerless to rival.

What has happened in Britain the past month in forcing a reorganisation of the Ministry and compelling the existing Parliament to apprpve on short notice a drastic budgetary reform would be impossible in the United States, the "Republican" continues. A majority of the branches of Congress, formed on new lines, could not place a new Executive in, power. A fiscal reform Bill designed to balance the Budget would require months even to pass the Senate. Higher ' taxes, going into effect the next morning after their announcement by the Finance Committee chairman, or some other financial authority, are in the American system and the American mind a phantasm of the imagination.

The balancing of the Budget "before sundown" and the imposition of £80,000,000 of new taxation to take effect at sunrise are feats beyond the power of the Washington authorities, and yet if in the face of such an emergency as confronted Britain they had spent months in talking about it any action that they then decided to take would have been months too late. The "Springfield Republican" must since have noted with satisfaction that within a month after the close of the emergency session a General Election had been held which confirmed by an unprecedented majority all that had been done and sanctioned a drastic extension of the same programme, and that the whole interval between the danger call which brought/Mr. MacDoriald back to London and his appearance on Tuesday in a new Parliament as the head of the second of his new. Governments was less than three months.

The British, says the " Republican,'' have a robust way of doing things and talking about them afterwards. _

The British are reputed slow by their cousins across the Atlantic, and even by some of their children in the Antipodes, but in the hour of danger they can act with a robustness, a calmness, and a speed which the whole world admires but nobody can imitate.