THE H.B. TRIBUNE MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1924. THE “TREATY” ISSUE.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIV, Issue 277, 3 November 1924, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1924. THE “TREATY” ISSUE.

The relative strength o£ parties in the new House of. Coinnjons resulting from last Wednesday’s! election being fairly well established, 1 the motives that actuated electors in conferring so heavy an absolute majority on the Conservative side of the triangle will continue to be discussed. In this connection we must always continue to bear in mind that,- as has been before pointed out, this majority in members is by no means a numerical reflection of the votes cast for. them --that, while Mr. Baldwin and his followers have secured two-thirds of the seats, they , polled less than half the total number of votes cast. The swing-over of the electors is thus not by any means as heavy as the membership result would suggest. Under any feasible system: of voting so far devised, the- tendency will probably always be for the party that scores most victories to have apipething less than a corresponding majority of primary votes behind them. But under the system in vogue in the Old Country—and in this —the tendency is ever so much stronger than under the more “scientific” modern methods of proportional representation and preforential voting. Of this last week’s contest provides an example that can scarcely ever have been exceeded |in its factors of disproportion. This is. a consideration which may well have a steadying effect upon any possible reactionary elements in,Mr. Baldwin’s, following, and give him a rope wherewith to hold them back.

It seems to be pretty generally accepted that the revulsion in favour of the Conservatives is mainly, though not by any means altogether, due to popular disapproval of Mr.. Ramsay MacDonald’s Russian policy, and this in spite ot the fact that he managed to. evade any full parliamentary discussion of it. In fact it may very well be that hih lowering of the curtain before such a discussion could be staged only intense fied the feeling of distrust, almost: of alarm, that his agreement with the Bolshevist emissaries, had aroused. IVhatever motives may have incited tresli support from other quarters, there can be little doubt but that the Liberal sacrifice —for such in appreciable measure it undoubtedly was—was made in favour of. the Conservatives chiefly on account of a determination to quash the Anglo-Soviet. Treaty to which the British Prime Minister had, under protest from Parliament, so obstinately and precipitately set his hand. Evidence of this is to Be found in the latest London newspaper files received, in which great emphasis is laid upon the vigorous criticism launched by Liberal leaders against the Treaty. The “Tinies,” for instance, quotes Lord Grey, who had been quite agreeable to diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Government, and eyen tp -some, working arrangement ■ with it, as having characterised the so-called Treaty as “not a real thing, but a make-believe, not an agreement, but an agreement to make further agreements.” To this he added that he had “never known an agreement between foreign nations to start under such bad auspices.” Mr. Lloyd George, whose Government, it has to be remembered, was responsible for the earlier Anglo-Russian trading ■agreement, was - even more outspoken, and denounced thd document signed by the. Prime Minister >s “a fake and a folly,” while Mr. H. A. L. Fisher declared it to be doomed. There can thus be little doubt as to what the fate, of this . unfortunate document would have ! been had it come to be put to the vote for ratification, or rejection by :the late Parliament. Nor need, we doubt but that the Liberal-Conser-vative “pacts” to avoid three* cornered contests were in very many cases reached because Liberal organisers,, agreeably to the wishes of Liberal constituents, were resolved to see that the new House of Commons was so composed that rejection would be assured.

The “Times” itself, proceeding (p comment on the Liberal attitude towards the Treaty, said that a good deal of the prevailing confusion of thought was due to a misconception of the nature of the Power with which it was proposed to deal. It was assumed that it was a question of entering into relations ■ with

Russia. The Treaties were concluded with the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics—which was a - very different matter. Lord Grey described the Soviet Government as “the Russian Government,” and said that “it was just as much a despotism as the Government of the Tsar whicl) it destroyed.” The former Foreign Secretary, said the “Times,” might have remembered that in the years preceding the revolution constitutional, principles were steadily gaining ground in Russia, and that whatever may have been the faults of the unhappy murdered Emperor, the Russian Government with which Lord Grey had to do wag in no sense to be compared with the wholly unprecedented Bolshevist tyranny. The Bolshevists have, in fact, done their utmost to wipe Russia politically off the map and to substitute for the Russian State an international revolutionary system. In the Treaty the word “Russia” was used of the past, in relation to former treaties and old debts and old claims. Thp contracting party with which Mr. MacDonald’s. Government made its strange terms was the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, which is confessedly international and aims at indefinite extension by promoting revolution in countries near and far. “To recognise this Union,” the article quoted concludes*--“is not to recognise Russia or to enter into closer and more friendly relations with the Russian people. It is not the recognition of a foreign State in the accepted sense of a territory with a political system confined within clear and definite-limits. It is the formal recognition of a revolutionary principle, the admission of this principle into our own sphere of political.ideaq.”