Evening Post. THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 1933. NOT TOO LATE YET

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 15, 19 January 1933, Page 8

Evening Post. THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 1933. NOT TOO LATE YET

"Unbroken National Unity" was the subject of our leading . article yesterday—a title derived from the article on the World Economic Conference in the December Table," which concludes with a plea for "a strong Government arid a united and steadfast attitude on the part of all sections of the population" as no less essential to the safety of Britain than it was when the National Government was formed. In a second article entitled "Making Things Worse" we dealt with the revival of the farmers' agitation in favour of a high exchange and the persistent reports that the Government would stultify itself and yield to pressure.

Hitherto we have been able to rely upon a Government which would stand firm, not driven this way and that way by sectional pleadings. If the Government were now. to lose its resolution, to yield weakly toy persistent propaganda, and to take a course which it has long claimed to be wrong/ what rallying place for confidence would there be?

And we called upon the Prime Minister to lose no time in dealing decisively with the reports. Before these articles saw tHe light they were both retrospectively given; an ironical turn by the news item which it was our painful duty to include in the same issue. A more definite report was in circulation which not'only confirmed the previous rumours of a contemplated volte face on the part of the Government but added that it was involving the resignation of one of its three strong men, and one who, from the standpoint of the national unity and the national confidence, is at least as essential as either of the other two. *■ <

Of this specific report that the Government had decided to reverse its attitude to, the exchange problem, and that the Minister of Finance had therefore tendered his resignation, the best that can.be said at the time of writing is that it has not been confirmed, and, the|worst that it has not been denied. -Damaging as the peribd of suspense may be to the authority of the Government and the confidence of • the public, both of which had already been seriously weakened, it has the .immense advantage -of enabling all parties to reconsider the position in the light of a much clearer knowledge of alPthat is at staked The temporary damage will be a small matter in comparison with the permanent effects of the decision attributed to.the Government if such use is not made of the present breathing space as to produce the reputation which so far it has been unable to give. But; when we speak of the opportunity, that is being all/owed to all parties to reconsider the position we.are seriously understating the hardship and the injustice of the course contemplated by the Government. Speaking broadly, ~there are two parties to this issue—the primary producers, who are asking for, a special benefit at the cost of the whole community, and the rest of, the community, whose interests are specially represented by the business, world. Early-in the year the business man and to'a smaller degree the general taxpayer organised against the powerful agitation of the producer in favour of a free exchange and were relieved when it failed. In November they mobilised more effectively against a less imposing movement for a pegged high exchange, and when the Government said that the new-demand was a matter for the banks and the banks rejected it they naturally thought they were safe. They cannot be said, to be now reconsidering the third phase in which the farmers appear to have captured the Government, for they had not previously considered what they did not ■ know to be in existence. Yesterday's bombshell has roused the public from its assumed security, but it will have to move fast if it is to do any [good..

We do not propose at this late hour to reiterate tie normal aspects of the exchange problem.' But it may be worth while to appeal to the Government to consider the matter broadly from the standpoint of the task for which it was formed to carry out, and which it has obtained an extension of the life of Parliament in order to comply. It received a free-hand mandate from the electors, but not a party mandate or a sectional mandate. It was a national mandate under which the Government was-to consider fairly and squarely-the interests, of all classes, and sound finance was declared to be the very basis, of its undertaking. Conceding to Mr. Forbes and Mr. Coates for the sake of argument that the specific effects of a high exchange on the farmers' position may be problematical, may we ask them to conIsider what must be the indirect but inevitable effects of the measure upon the .confidence of the public, the stability of the Government, and the credit of the country? It is not only on the farms that the world's economic blizzard has made its mark. In the towns also fortunes have collapsed and the pinch of want is being felt as it has never been felt before. Dn the whole the town-dweller, has

borne his load of taxation and his privations with a patience worthy of the race, but when he sees a great measure of rural relief put through, as he believes, at his expense, put through after it had been twice rejected on the merits, and put through, as he considers, in a hole-and-corner fashion by a Government which had given no notice of its intention to turn a somersault, a keen sense of •injustice will seriously aggravate his troubles and disturb his balance. A Government which was elected on a national basis and desires to retain the confidence of the nation should pay careful attention to this aspect of the matter before it is too late.

There is another aspect of the case which cannot have been so completely overlooked by the Government, but which it must, surely have considered more carefully during the last twenty-four hours than it ever did before. Though the result of the General Election was in .large measure a vote of confidence in the two Coalition leaders, the emphasis which they properly laid upon sound finance as the governing consideration indicated the hardly inferior importance of their principal colleague. The average elector looked to Mr. Forbes and Mr. Goates and the executive leaders of the Coalition and to Mr, Downie Stewart • as the keeper of its financial conscience. Nothing that has happened since has weakened the confidence that the electors then reposed in Mr. Downie Stewart. On the contrary much has happened to strengthen it. Mr. Stewart's sure foot has not faltered once on theslippery path he has had to tread, and his local reputation has been confirmed by the judgment of the leading financiers of the Empire af Ottawa and in London. Have Mr. Forbes and Mr. Coates considered how much of the public confidence .will be withdrawn from the Cabinet on the day when Mr. Stewart leaves it? There is still time to avert that disaster.