MAN OF THE HOUR

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 80, 1 October 1938, Page 10

MAN OF THE HOUR

NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN

BIRMINGHAM TRADITION

CARE AND COURAGE

(By "Q")

Whatever ultimate verdict history may pass on the dramatic events of the times and the characters, policies, and the leading actors in the drama— and it would be futile for any contemporary to try to anticipate the verdict —the British Prime Minister, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, stands out in the eyes of the world as the man Of the hour. From the comparative obscurity of a public man who has always, as far as he could, shunned publicity he has, at an age when most men might have been seeking retirement, by a series of acts of supreme courage, succeeded finally m averting the threat of imminent war and thereby winning the fervent gratitude of. the world as, for the time at any rate, the saviour of civilisation. It is characteristic of Mr. Chamberlain's courage that at 69, he did not shrink from taking his first flight in an aeroplane on an errand of life or death in order that precious moments might not be lost by the slower, but, to him, perhaps more comfortable, transport by sea and land. The three visits by th i British Prime Minister to Germany to meet the redoubtable Fuhrer face to face will always be remembered to the credit of aviation as an.instrument of peace against its dreadful record as a weapon of war. Nor could anything have-been more spectacular in the eyes of the world than these flights which strike the imagination with dramatic effect Bke the deus ex machina of the old Greek play, suddenly^introduced to solve the problems of a crisis in human affairs. NO DRAMATIC FIGURE. Personally, Mr. Chamberlain is not a dramatic figure. Up to the present crisis he had little of the popularity in Britain of his predecessor, Mr. Stanley Baldwin (now Lord Baldwin), with the placid temperament of the English squire and the perpetual pipe that was a joy to the cartoonist Mr. Chamberlain is the business man in politics, maintaining the traditions of his family and birthplace, the Chamberlains and Birmingham for never was family more closely associated with its home town. It was Joseph Chamberlain, father of the present JPrime Minister, who was father also of modern Birmingham, with a civic record unparalleled in English municipal history. It was Joseph Chamberlain who declared, when he became Mayor, that he would remake Birmingham so that they would not know it for the same city. He was as good as his Word and his magnificent work for his native city had its repercussion in every civic centre of Britain. Joseph Chamberlain, for all his dynamic energy, perhaps because of it in the tranquillity of Victorian politics, never became Prime Minister. His eldest son, Sir Austen Chamberlain, who spent a lifetime in Parliament, fell also short of the highest office. It was left to Austen's half-brother, Neville, to carry on the Birmingham and Chamberlain trj^ dition, to introduce, in 1932, the Tariff Reforms his father had preached so vigorously in a generation before, and finally to become Prime Minister. It was in the introduction of the tariff resolutions, as Chancellor •of the Exchequer, that Neville Chamberlain displayed an emotion rarely revealed in public, when bespoke of the consolation which his father would have found for the bitterness of many disappointments if he could have foreseen that "these proposals, 1 which are the direct and legitimate descendants of his own conception, would be laid before the House of Commons, which he loved, in the presence of one and by the lips of the other of the two immediate successors to his name and blood." SUCCESS IN POLITICS. It is a curious irony of fate that the two last Prime Ministers of Britain owe their start to Mr. Lloyd George, who gave them office during the Great War, Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Neville Chamberlain. Mr. Lloyd George was evidently not much impressed with the performance of Mr. Chamberlain, as Director-General of National Services, for he wrote of him in his "Memoirs" many years later: "It was -not one of my successful appointments," and "Neville Chamberlain? A good Lord Mayor of Birmingham in a lean year." He certainly was, like his father, a good Lord Mayor, and Birmingham owes to b him the establishment of her Municipal Bank, the only institution of its kind in Britain. Mr. Chamberlain did imt enter Parliament until he was nearly 50. He had in the meantime made money in the family engineering business of making screws and was thoroughly trained in business methods, invaluable to him in public and political life as an administrator. Even if he had not attained fame in foreign affairs, his administration of health, housing, local government, and State finance had left its stamp on the domestic welfare of Britain. It was said of him truly, when he became Prime Minister, that he solved the housing problem on business lines, after a long and dismal history of muddle and waste, by providing 900,000 houses between 1923 and 1929. He lifted an immense burden off the shoulders of industry by his Rating and Valuation Act of 1928. and the Local Government Act of 1929 completed his gigantic task. These rank high among the major Parliamentary reforms of modern times. His tenureship of the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, says the same writer, J. B. Firth, was unsurpassed for financial ability and solid statesmanship. "What stands out conspicuous in the retrospect of his six Budgets is the measured and unhurried pace at which the Chancellor nursed the' finances of the country back to convalescence and' health. . . . What few contest is that the national recovery is largely due to his policy of cheap money, balanced Budgets, and security in the home market." SECRET OF STABILITY. Baldwin and Chamberlain both hail from Birmingham, for Bewdley, Baldwin's birthplace, is only a few miles away "In the beautiful Worcestershire countryside, the heart of rural England, never very far from some home of busy industry. There is something inherently stable about this region and the men it produces, and it is worth recalling how this characteristic was noted in an editorial article in "The Post" on the occasion of Mr. Baldwin's retirement and Mr. Chamberlain's promotion at the end of May, 1937. "The Post" * then said: "The qualities which produce stability produce the strongest points of resemblance in the characters of the retiring Prime Minister and his successor. Both have been men upon whom Britain might rely in a crisis and the greater the crisis the greater their reliability. When strength and steadfastness were required to bring Britain safely through the difficulties and dangers of the depression Mr. Chamberlain never wavered. .... He-is trusted by business men who are the trustees of British industry and trade. » i . Mr. Chamberlain typifies; the

solidity and integrity of Britain 'ip* business" So, as Baldwin was, described as John Bull personified, Chamberlain, says an acute observer, ia best seen as one of those "shopkeepers" whom Napoleon, derided* but who brought down the stark imperialistic menace of that generation. Chaw berlain will not risk everything on a single hazard. This explains his passionate hatred of war. He sees .the real England in the counting houses, the factories, and the dockyards,B and the real Empire in the busy nations over. the seas providing so much of Britain's food and furnishing her with markets for her manufactures. These he would not except in the last e»: treme, expose to the hazard wa* inevitably involves. But if he;has.to fight, he will fight to the last to pre-" serve them from harm.