MR SNOWDEN’S MISTAKE

Southland Times, Issue 20663, 19 April 1929, Page 6

MR SNOWDEN’S MISTAKE

Mr Snowden, the financial expert of the Labour Party, seems to have run into a pack of trouble with his injudicious statement on the Balfour Note. It is probable that Mr Snowden never contemplated repudiation when he rose to speak, and even now he is hardly likely to entertain the idea that the State having made a bargain can wriggle out of it by the simple expedient of changing the personnel of its Ministry. Mr Snowden evidently found Mr Churchill’s Budget difficult to assail, and having become sufficiently indignant about the electoral possibilities of the remission of the tea duty, was compelled to project something else into the arena to keep the discussion in being. That he has done with a vengeance, and he has put his own party on the defensive from the outset. The attack on the Balfour Note may be made from the viewpoint of the taxpayer who has to pay the United States more than he receives from the European nations to whom Britain is a creditor, but it has to be admitted that the terms of the Balfour Note bind Britain to certain contracts with her late allies, because undoubtedly the arrange-

ments made with the debtor nations were governed by the principle that the Old Country had no wish to make a profit out of the war debts. In principle the Balfour Note is sound, and it puts Britain in an unassailable position. To reopen the discussion on the basis that the arrangement with the United States is unfavourable in the light of Britain’s treatment of her debtors will do nothing but raise a storm of protest in the United States, where the bulk of the population sees only the point that it is owed certain sums and asks for nothing more than payment of them. Mr Macdonald evidently has no wish to be drawn until he is ready to speak, but his attitude suggests that the Labour Party leaders are conscious of the awkward position into which the tactical blunder of Mr Snowden has put them. To accept the principle of repudiation is extremely dangerous, and the Labour Party’s activities will be directed to the removal of the impression that there is any hint of treating the Government’s undertakings lightly. Mr Snowden’s dictum, of course, goes very much further than the Balfour Note, and if it is endorsed by his party it means that no contract with the Baldwin Government is secure. Repudiation is no new thing, but every government which has taken that course has suffered in the long run for its inability to appreciate the conditions surrounding the undertakings entered by a State.