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Otago Daily Times, Issue 19201, 18 June 1924, Page 4

“ME SNOWDEN AND THE CHANCELLOR.” The latest English newspapers show, as indeed was indicated by the cablegrams at the time, that the judgments which were passed on the first Labour Budget, while of diversified character, were predominantly favourable. It is noticeable, in the first place, that the Ultra-Social-ists were greatly disappointed with Mr Snowden’s proposals, though for the most part they found it politic to disguise their chagrin; and, secondly, that some of the Conservative “ die-hards,” or reactionaries, were prompt to detect in the Chancellor’s moderation a latent threat of revolutionary enormities to come. It is evident that the majority of Conservatives and Liberals were vastly relieved hy the nature of the Budget. In matters of this kind, it is safest to consult, not either of the oppos'to extremist sections, not even the representative statesmen of the orthodox political parties, but rather those economic experts whose business and habit it is to deal with the problems of public finance in a scrupulously dispassionate temper, entirely removed from polemical considerations. The general trend of this class of opinion has, allowing for cautious reservations, been favourable to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There can hardly be anything radically unsound in a Budget of which a journal of such secure standing as the Economist (after a high personal compliment to the author, in acknowdedgment of “ a display which challenges favourable comparison with that of any of his predecessors among whom, be it remembered, Pitt and Peel and Gladstone are numbered) —remarks: “ The tax remissions are popular, industry being particularly pleased with the abolition of the Corporation Profits Tax. and the Stock Exchange has shown its appreciation in a hardening of security prices. The friendly reception may possibly owe something to a reaction from fear of the worse things that might have been done by a Labour Government; but, on the whole, we think this approval is due to the Budget on its merits.” The value of this impartial encomium is not seriously impaired by the fact that the same issue of the Economist contains an incisive article on “ Snowden and the Chancellor.” Tile epigrammatic flavour of the title is due to the curious and probably accidental circumstance that on the very eve of the delivery of the Budget Air Snowden’s book, “ Labour and the New World,” first published in 1921, was re-issued in revised form. The writer of the article almost apologises for his indulgence in a semisatirical strain. “We can imagine the enthusiasm with which Mr Snowden’s opponents of the Right and his dissatisfied supporters of the extreme Left will open the new volume to search for the deadly parallel and the embarrassing quotation, and who can grudge them the amusement to be extracted from this innocent old-fashioned sport ? It is a game that every journalist learns to play in his professional youth, and Air Snowden in the hour of his very real success will not grudge us the enjoyment of playing off the aspirations of the prophet against the performance of the statesman.” It is true that there are striking divergences between the doctrines expounded in “ Labour and the New World ” and the policy of the first Labour Budget; but the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as well as his distrustful opponents, might borrow the famous Asquithian formula, “ Wait and see.”