TWO STATESMEN

Evening Star, Issue 22709, 24 July 1937, Page 2

TWO STATESMEN

When Mr Baldwin presided over his - last Cabinet it met at 4 and continued until 5.30. Future diaries and biographies may tell us, says the ‘ Manchester Guardian’ how he behaved at this meeting and, whether or not ho took farewell of his colleagues’in a short formal speech as Mr Gladstone did. At present we do not know. It could have been an affecting scene. Mi; Gladstone recorded in his diary that’his last Cabinet was very affecting, hut we shall probably discover in time that Mr Baldwin’s was not, and that he, acted, as though he had any number of .Cabinet meetings still before him, and. expected his colleagues to act in that J spirit, too. He has always shown something like genius for turning the flank, , so to speak, of an emotional occasion,' Considering that he was treating of the first voluntary abdication of a King of England his historic speech of last December .was almost cold-blooded. ,Cer- - tainly Mr Baldwin left the Cabinet cheerful and alert and wearing something rather gay in waistcoats. After his last Cabinet Mr Gladstone went to" the House of Commons and made a resounding attack on the House of Lords. The cause was still more than - the man. Mr Baldwin did not enter the Chamber at all on the day of hij last Cabinet.