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Evening Star, Issue 17192, 6 November 1919, Page 4

More than a week after it was delivered a summary was reThO British ceived of Mr Lloyd Financial Outlook. George's "brilliant oratorical effort," which, it was said, "even the anti-Minis-terial newspapers admit had completely discomfited the Government's critics." It is, of course, not possible to form, from an abbreviated cabled summary, a just estimate of so purely personal an effort as that of the Prime Minister. All- the surroundings and details—tho hour, the scene, the subject, the magnetic influence of the speal&r—are absent. But, read in the after-light and free from the immediate glamor of the occasion, we are disposed to regard the comment of 'The Times' as more accurately reflecting sober public opinion. " The speech will not stand the analysis of cold print." * Without attempting that analysis, it is sufficient here and now to recall the reasons for and the objects of the speech. Less than three months ago the Chancellor of the Excheque, Mr Austen Chamberlain, speaking in the House of Commons, said: " If we continue spending at the. rate we are doing, four and a-half millions a day, it I would lead us straight to national bankruptcy. Coming from the source they did, the words (possibly misapprehended in many cases) caused a thrill of something more than anxiety to run through the country. The cry arose from all sides for greater production, accompanied with economy in public expenditure as ruth- , less as it was drastic. Yet it was but a few days after the Chancellor's comment that the Prime Minister, addressing the Commons, insisted that there were many things which offered no opportunity for econoray. They must pay interest on their National Debt; they could not reduce pensions nor cut down the grants for eduiation. All of which ia true, but hardly the note for which Parliament and the country were listening and waiting. Crititisms and protests continued, and it was imperative that a newer note be sounvsd. This note was heard on Wednesday of last week, when Mr Chamberlain was able to assure the House that, "while the question was grave, there was no reason for panic; the situation to-day was betAl r> fta '** anticipated in Au-

gust. Taxation on incomes was coming in extraordinarily well, his first Budget Estimates would be exceeded by over £50,000,000," etc., etc. It is not, perhaps, greatly to be wondered at that Mr Lloyd Georgo should have felt the occasion, as Mr Asquith said at Aberystwyth, one, through the gravest in the country's history, over which it was timely " to crack jokes and to keep members dissolved in laughter," for had not the Chancellor "knocked the bottom out of the case of his critics"? In their calmer moments somo may be disposed even to agree with 'The Times/ that "there will be widespread astonishment that the House of Commons is so easily cajoled." The present situation and outlook, though not as bad as the Chancellor of the Exchequer said they were in August, are hardly objects for joking. Nor can we think that the Prime Minister seriously intended that they should be so treated.