A FRENCHMAN VIEWS ENGLAND'S PROSPECTS

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 145, 16 December 1933, Page 23

A FRENCHMAN VIEWS ENGLAND'S PROSPECTS

M. Andre Siegfried, that.most amiable and friendly prophet of disaster, is not mow so sure of England's doom as he was in 1930, when he first wroto "England's Crisis." Then he feared a grandly catastrophic shipwreck for us, says the London "Daily Telegraph." In a revised version, he defines our danger as a "slow but persistent leakago" which our "unlimited powers of adaptation" may yet staunch. His affection and admiration for us is a nation enables him gladly to admit that: — "As far as England is concerned the ferisis is, if not over, at least under control; the greatest danger now lies behind her, no longer ahead. The Old Country surviv-es and carries on, having proved once more to the world her capacity for defence and resistance. He is not niggardly in his praise of the behaviour of the population when "England went off gold, in September, 1931:—^ "Anywhere else people would have scrambled to save what they could, and in the eyes of any man of intelligence, the situation would 'logically' have justified such an attitude. But the ave-1-age Englishman . . . did not go to his bank and change his pound notes for tangible assets. He lost faith aieither in his currency nor in his rulers. With calmness and discipline, and, above all, in perfect simplicity, he did [vvhat he was told to do." With which, having sufficiently ''wreathed the rod of criticism with *oses," M. Siegfried resumes his more accustomed role of candid (friend. Only 75 per cent, of our good behaviour, he thinks, "was due to our fine qualities; 25 per cent., "was due to self-complacent lethargy—to the lazy belief that "England is safe, come what may." M. Siegfried fears ( that "the average Englishman has not been much altered by the crisis"; that, so far from learning tho lessons it teaches, we have allowed it to imbue us with a sense of false security. Tho fact, for instance, that neither the adoption of a protective tariff nor I

abandonment of the gold standard has [ raised internal prices is due, M. Siegfried argues, to the world drop in prices. This has given the Englishman the idea "that" the .pound is certainly not inoncy like the rest, and that ordinary ee6nomic laws do not apply to so privileged a coin. It has now become tho thing to say, and, indeed, to believe, that it is not the pound which has gone off gold, but that gold has gone off the pound. Most Englishmen have persuaded themselves that their moneyj even when it appears'to fluctuate in relation to gold,. remains the real measure, of stability in the world of today, since its purchasing power seems to be imperturbable.'.' So too, with o-ur tariff. M. Siegfried declares that we art living at the moment through "a regular protectionists' honeymoon."' « "Prices have not gone up—not yet! —so England has all the advantages of the tariff without its drawbacks. Many are naivje enough to think that it will always te so and that they can have protection without raising the cost of living." Good Frenchman that ho is, M. Siegfried is evidently-no little1 chagrined at the loss of tTie English market. He admits that Protection, has opened up opportunities "-not -only for new types of industry, but also fur agriculture," but ho will not allow that this means anything more than "a spurt of prosperity." This preoccupation with the domestic market ■will cause the English to lose their "export coniplex, which is the very essence of their commercial genius"; and so restricted an outlook "may in the long run mean mediocrity and decline." And so from his immediately catastrophic prophecies of 1930 M. Siegfried has descended to a less vulnerable form of vaticination. He now reserves his darkest pigments for the distant future.* It is reassuring that the worst the revised version of his book has. in store for us is "to share the somewhat tragic destiny of the rest of Western Europe." ~