THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1924. NEW POLICIES IN BRITAIN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18879, 29 November 1924, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1924. NEW POLICIES IN BRITAIN.

Barely a month has passed since the general elections in Britain put Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald out of office, and but three weeks since Mr. Baldwin announced his choice of Ministerial colleagues, but already, even before Parliament has met, a new order is well begun. It bears the stamp of the new Prime Minister's business ability. He has ■ever been distinguished by definiteness in statement, and has the knack of getting things done. Thus early in his regime these characteristics are impressed upon the activities of his Government. While Mr. Mac Donald is entitled to all credit for the things accomplished in his term of office, notably by his energetic direction of the London Conference, no considerable achievements other than that good piece of foreign policy can be recorded. In perfect fairness to him it must be conceded, as the chairman of Labour's Parliamentary Committee has been at pains to plead, that Mr. Mac Donald was onfly in office, not in power, and that consequently the programme he might have pursued, had he been free to act, was not practicable. But that does not counter the quite legitimate and reasonable criticism of his administration as lacking in definite, positive, constructive proposals. To those who say that he was bound hand and foot by Liberals, whose votes he wanted to win, and extreme Labour members, whose votes he did not want to lose, the answer is simple: he would have been better esteemed had he chosen once for all between these alternative supports. He elected to sit "between two stools," to try to serve two masters. He emulated a certain celebrated vicar of Bray, but did not have the ecclesiastic's good fortune. The result in the main was sveak opportunism, the planless journeying of the sundowner mainly concerned in reaching a shelter before nightfall, a policy of shreds and patches. It may be granted that his hands and feet were tied, but his tongue was not. Unacceptable proposals would have been better than continual attempts to shape proposals to suit, now this, now that, section of his composite following.

From this experience of a piebald policy and a chronic vacillation, the new Government brings relief. There will be, for one thing, no coquetting with Communism. Mr. Mac Donald made a fine show, particularly at the Trades Union Congress in September, of throwing Communism overboard, but he never really did it. He encouraged the Clydesiders to stick to him, however red their opinions. He flirted with Russia, without convincing either the Soviet Government or the Moscow International—one and the same, really—that his intentions were honourable. Had he the courage, he would seemingly have gone all the way with revolutionary Socialism —so some of his colleagues say—but all he did was to provide a modern instance for an old saw — "The cat would eate fish, but would not wet her feete." That disquieting phase of British politics is over, probably for some considerable time. There will be no dallying with Marxian principles and their infatuated exponents. Already Russia has been given to understand quite plainly that the seditious propaganda of which the Zinovieff letter was typical will not be tolerated, and that treaty relations are rendered impossible by its continuance. The Egyptian crisis also nan been handled with commendable firmness. Mr. Mac Donald's attitude to Zaghlul was satisfactory as far as it went; but the news that Labour intends to challenge the Government's Egyptian policy by direct amendment to the Addressin Reply is an indication that, had Mr. Mac Donald been in office recently, he would not have taken adequately stringent measures ' save at the emphatic bidding of Parliament. This crisis has called for drastic surgical treatment. Palliatives would ultimately have proved injurious and

half measures worse than useless. It is well for the Sudan, for Europe, for the world, including Egypt, that a British Government capable of acting with such vigour and promptitude is in power. It is in plans for the Empire's strengthening and development that the new Government has particularly given practical proof of its earnestness. From no other party have the Dominions any reason to expect such sympathetic and farseeing consideration. The 'international" views of Labour prejudice its adherents against national consolidation and expansion. The Empire" is taken to mean an aggressive menace to other peoples, and every effort to defend or develop it is suspected accordingly. This prejudice is hopelessly absurd, but it has made Labour a disintegrating rather than a unifying force in Imperial affairs. As for the liberal programme, it has no such childishness, as a rule; but it is dictated by "a craven fear of being great and a Free Trade obsession that belittles measures of tariff discrimination designed to favour intra-Im-perial commerce. In the Conservative policy, on the other hand, is no indifference about the Dominions, and already a definite promise of fiscal reform and a new departure in calling the High Commissioners together in confidential consultation with the Foreign and Colonial Offices presage better things than Labour or Liberalism have ever offered. The Navy's strength and mobility are also promised adequate attention —a matter of vital concern to the Empire's territories oversea. These things will have formal expression shortly in the King's Speech, but already there is cheering proof that a practical programme of Imperial development is in being. With such a start, the new Government bids fair to travel sure and far.