Evening Post. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1933. UNITY AND STRENGTH

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 113, 9 November 1933, Page 10

Evening Post. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1933. UNITY AND STRENGTH

Britain's National Government may be congratulated both on the note of unity and strength with which it brought an anxious recess to a close and on the strong lead which it gave to Parliament on the following day. At the close of the summer recess last year Mr. Mac Donald was entertained by the National Labour Committee at a luncheon, and though nearly all his Cabinet colleagues were there also, lie, and he alone, was the guest of honour, and his speech, if not the only one, was at any rate the only one considered worth cabling. At the similar occasion on Monday a better procedure was observed. There were three guests of honour instead of 'one, the two others being Mr. Baldwin and Sir John Simon, the leaders of the, two other parties which joined with National Labour to form the National Government; and there were three speakers instead of one. On both occasions the same note of unity was struck, but it was obviously a more convincing note when the two other leaders were there to join with the Prime Minister in sounding it. The remark applies with special force to Mr. Baldwin, who commands about ten times as many votes in the House as the other two leaders combined, who in the ordinary course would therefore have been Prime Minister, and- whose resolute self-effacement was equally necessary to bring the National Government into being and to maintain it during every day of its existence. In his speech-on October 17, 1932, Mr. Mac Donald said: t His own influence and advice would be on the side of maintaining the allparty national efforts until the country was able to lead to a return to conditions of prosperity. He justified the Government's economy policy and the unavoidable hardships that had been incurred on the grounds that the economic foundations of the country had thereby been kept intact and sound. •■ On Monday. Mr. Mac Donald spoke in the same strain. He referred to his colleagues' association with him in "a combination which not one of them would break so long as there was a national need for its continuance," and he justly and happily described the National Government as "the greatest steadying force in the world." By the heroic, fashion in which under her National Government Britain faced imminent disaster and turned a threatened deficit of £170,000,000 into a surplus, gave the Government which had imposed the grinding taxation needed to achieve this result a "record" majority at the General Election, and afterwards refused to treat this almost unique success' and a general improvement as grounds for easing Jthe burden, Britain did more at that time than all the other countries combined to supply the world with the medicine that it' most needed —confidence. Since then while these other countries have gone more or less rapidly to the bad, Britain has continued to improve her position until she is now the envy of them all. Under her National Government she has certainly become "the greatest steadying force in the whole world." Mr. Baldwin concurred with the Prime Minister in regard both to the work that the Government had done and to what there was still to do. Britain, he said, was in an incomparably better position than she was two years ago, but there was much still to be done, both nationally and internationally, which required -that they should continue to maintain the closest collaboration. Internationally indeed the services of the National Government are just as essential today.^ as they are for the purposes of domestic policy, though Mr. Baldwin appeared to consider that "the preservation of democracy in Great Britain" against the attacks that will be made upon it at the next election was a still higher purpose, which such a Government alone could serve. We should have supposed that a weak Government would be an even greater risk than a dictatorial Government after the next election. But Mr. Baldwin might perhaps reply that it would be quite possible to have both, and it must be admitted that, if Britain ever does get a, non-democratic Government, she will not take it lying down with that abject supineness which seems to be just as dangerous a symptom of Germany's disaster as the violent autocracy of her leaders. It will be very interesting to hear Mr.'Baldwin develop his theme on some future occasion, but in the meantime the emphasis laid upon it, to the substantial exclusion of other issues, by a man who is not accustomed to exaggerate, cannot be lightly dismissed, especially as it received some support from his Liberal colleague. Venturing on prophecy the Conservative leader said that in -whatever form the next election came, unquestionably the great issue would be "arc we going to tread in the patli of constitutional democracy or are we going to scrap

it?" There could be only one answer to that question, if all who believed in constitutional democracy stood together and fought out the issue. The most striking of the three speeches was that of Sir John Simon. Abstaining apparently from any reference to his own special province of foreign policy and disarmament, on which he was to make a statement of exceptional interest and importance in the House of Commons on the following day. Sir John dealt tactfully with the changes that had recently come over the-spirit of both the old parties and had enabled their, representatives to meet in a National Government. He declared the old controversies that had previously divided-the parlies to be dead because "each party .had made its contribution to what was now a common national possession;" The Liberals fought for the extension of the franchise, the completion of religious liberty, the extension of self-govern-ment in the Empire; and the application of the State's resources to the help of those that needed it. These things had been won in the face, of Conservative opposition, but they now belonged just as much to Conservatism as to any other political creed. And in the same way in the past generation the immense contribution of enlightened Conservatism which, at the time was belittled and criticised from the Opposition quarter is today recognised and acknowledged with prido by us all. ! On the other hand. Liberals had dropped Free Trade, which once was the touchstone of their creed, in favour of a broader view. The old party controversies were dead.' "Let the dead bury their dead. There is great work to be done, but it will only be done if we work together." Two years ago the example set by Great Britain was followed in New Zealand. The two older parties discovered that the issues dividing them were trivial in comparison with the common danger, that demanded cooperation. The Coalition Government emerged from the General Election with a national mandate to carry out a national policy. But the three men who led them to victory cannot meet now as the British leaders met, on Monday, to rejoice over the success of their labours, to exchange expressions of confidence, and hearten up their followers. By changing the national policy,, into a sectional policy two of ?few Zealand's leaders lost the services of the third, and the public confidence which they commanded in combination grows weaker day by day.