THE BRITISH PRESS

Feilding Star, Volume 1, Issue 49, 10 December 1923, Page 2

THE BRITISH PRESS

AND THE ELECTIONS The following newspaper opinions on the British elections have been cabled: — BADLWLV.S GROSS STUPIDITY The Daily Express says: (; A distinctive Conservative Government is an impossibility. This overthrow is due to the crass stupidity and ricdiculous miscalcnltions of Mr Baldwin and his little ring of advisers. Every eoiicepion of sanity should have urged Mr Baldwin as a new and inexperienced Prime Minister to walk carefull in the path Mr Bonar Lawhad shown, but he declined the counsel preferred by experienced men who had served Conservatism responsibly before Mr Baldwin entered Parlia-

ment. "While home protection has been hopelessly beaten the policy of the Empire Ims suffered no defeat at all. if .\h- Baldwin had succeeded the caifse of Imperial preference would have suffered a setback lasting a generation. The rejuvenated Conservative Party can now carefully think out the whole question of the revival of our foreign markets and the creation of an Empire almost economically sellcontained. Labour's gains exceed all the prophet's expectations, hut they have mostly been in tbrec-cor-ered fights on a minority vote. Liberalism boasts that it stands in middle position, in a word for: "Tranquillity tempered by fads." if this is true the united Conservative forces of [Liberalism and Toryism could easily defeat the Labour menace." The Daily Chronicle says: "Tree Trade decisively jtriumhed to-day. LMr Baldrin, as a reward for the shabbiest election trick ever stooped to by a. British Prime Minister, finds a safemajority of 77 which the Government could have enjoyed for four years converted into a minority of about a hundred. Besides the universal uprising against protection and high prices in which it seems certain the women voters took a strong part, there may also be discerned some general movement towards the Lett ft is too early to say what the next step will be with our three-cornered Parliament." The Morning Post declines to waste time on reproaches or lamentations It takes the view that the mistake was not in recent boldness, but in past timidity and proceeds to assume that Mr Baldwin will resign. The paper urges that: ''Since the present calamities have come chiefly from the degradation of the Conservatives in the bondage of the Coalition the Conservatives should refuse ever again to join a coalition of any sort. It they arc not strong enough to govern alone let the other side try its hand. If there is to be a Coalition we think j there is much greater affnity between I Mr Lloy'd George and Mr Itamsay Mae Donald than between the Conservatives and ' Liberals. Wo make these observations in the full knowledge of the terrible risks the country runs of the Government by a Radical-Socialist Coalition. but also we see that the best hope of salvation lies in a free, strong, ndependent and self-respecting Conservative Party rather than in a weak, discredited unpopular centre coalition. The Daily Telegraph says: "The country did not want this election and could not tolerate another. We have to-day the three-party system ami must accept the consequences so long as it endures We believed in Mi- Baldwin's proposals. Wo believed in them still, but we cannot shut our eyes lo the fact that victory for tariff reform is out, of the question so long as Lancashire does not waver from its faith." The Daily Chronicle suggests that the electors' emphatic and unmistakable rejection of protection in any shape or form represents a personal triumph for Mr Lloyd George's whirlAvind missionary tour in which by means of amplifiers and wireless hundreds of tliosuands of people heard his sixty speeches. Never before has there been a man in British polities who can thus appeal to the common people. There is some flavour about Lloyd Georegs' eloquenee which enables it t.o carry conviction from its Very plainness and sincerity.