The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 1936. MR BALDWIN.

Evening Star, Issue 22379, 1 July 1936, Page 8

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 1936. MR BALDWIN.

Ir Mr Baldwin feels with any poignancy the attacks on him that have accumulated in the last few days it will bo in accordance with the saying that “it is the little gnats that sting.” Unless his condition of over-tiredness has made them more exasperating, it is improbable that he has felt them overmuch. Some members of the extreme Right of the Conservative Party have long found enjoyment at intervals in baiting the Prime Minister. Lord Londonderry’s denial that his leader had been misled in the matter of German rearmament was an awkward contradiction to come from a colleague, and its implication would have been serious applying to one with less reputation for integrity. It was stated by a Labour paper, not likely to be over-friendly to the Prime Minister, that if the necessity should be felt by him Mr Baldwin could produce confidential memoranda entirely upholding his case, but the Leader of the Government preferred to take no notice of the contradiction. It would appear as if Lord Londonderry, defending himself as the former Air Minister, said either too little or too much. Sir Stafford Cripps said too much, too brutally, when he declared at a meeting: “ Mr Baldwin must have been lying.” That language is not common in political discussions at Home, and it was least due to the object of it, whose example has worked to soften, in a remarkable degree, the asperities of political life. It came ill from the son of Lord Parmoor and a leading member of the national church.

Now the Prime Minister has been attacked by the Socialists in the House of Commons because two of his Ministers had made what they interpreted to be injudicious utterances, arguing the lack of a coherent policy or else of discipline in the Cabinet. The remarks themselves were harmless enough. Mr Neville Chamberlain’s speech against the continuance of sanctions correctly enough prefigured

what tho Government’s policy was going to bo, and could only be in all the circumstances, despite all the distaste for it which was equally inevitable. Since the sanctions policy was a failure there was as strong a case for condemning the initiation of it as the ending, but its adoption was acclaimed by the Socialists. Mr DuffCooper’s remark in a speech in Paris that “ France’s frontier is ours,” was no more than Mr Baldwin himself had said two years before. The grounds for it have been all too much impressed, though the statement may have been inopportune at a time when Great Britain is negotiating for a better understanding with Germany. The censure motion, moved by Major Attlee in the House of Commons on the basis of Mr 'Duff-Cooper’s speech, was rejected by more than two votes to one, Mr Baldwin taking no part in the debate. Mr Churchill this time revealed himself on the side of the Prime Minister, who was resting from overstrain at Chequers. Major Attlee was presumably unaware of that condition when he made his gibe of “ Little Boy Blue away, instead of looking after *his sheep.”

Mr Baldwin has been in office continuously now for nearly five years. They have been years of unusual anxieties in Europe, as well as of depression, now fading, and the great India Bill. It is not surprising if he should need rest. The cry has been raised, from within Conservative ranks, that he has lost his vigour, and should make room for the formation of a strong Centre party. But it is a Centre party which the Prime Minister has always ledi; 'the Conservatism which ho has represented stands midl- - between Labour and l that extreme Toryism which has nothing but distrust for social progress. It was a Socialist, Professor Laski, whp said of him: "Everyone feels that with Mr Baldwin in power, a man one knows is in power. Everyone feels ,that he is in power, less because he wants to be there than because he feels the service of the State to be a moral obligation.” Notwithstanding attacks, the signs are that he will remain there, with the esteem of a majority of Parliament, till he feds free to resign his responsibilities.