BRITISH ELECTIONS.

Waikato Times, Volume 105, Issue 17711, 15 May 1929, Page 7

BRITISH ELECTIONS.

MR BALDWIN CONFIDENT.

“NO FIREWORKS OR HEADLINES."

ADDRESS AT PLYMOUTH. (3y Telegraph — Pres3 Assn. — Copyright.} (Australian Press Association). LONDON, May 14. “No leader ever had better ground for confidence,'’ said the Prime Minister, Mr Baldwin, in a message issued’ to the public before he left London to tour the west country. • “J start ihe campaign confident of victory,” continued the Prime Minister. “Neither the Liberals nor the Labour Party can offer the country the stable and steadily progressive Government it needs at present. That is Ihe issue it: a nutshell."

Mr Baldwin addressed 10,000 people at Plymouth last evening. There Was not a single voice of dissent, although the meeting was an open one. Referring to Mr Lloyd George’s scheme for Hie remedy of unemployment, the Prime Minister said: “Prosperity must he founded on work, not on stimulants. Put taxation first and production afterwards and you might as well put the shutters up.’’ lie described his Ministry's work as “no fireworks and no headlines." What had been accomplished had been done just by day to day work, as a mar. would carry on his own business. Mr Baldwin said he hoped the new Government would be able to make an agreement with the United States which would lift the whole problem of disarmament from talk into a scheme of action.

Mr George and Mr Ramsay MacDonald have both attacked the Government for its action in publishing a White Paper giving Hie Ministers’ views on Hie Liberals’ unemployment relief scheme.

A reply from Conservative headquarters says the complaint smacks of hypocrisy. It points out that Mr George, Sir John Simon and others had asserted that civil servants had been instructed to examine the plan and had not been able to find a flaw in it. Ministers were entitled to reply without publishing confidential InlorfnaUon. Speaking at the National Liberal Club Mr George referred to the need for the modernisation and reconditioning of the railways. Writing in the Daily Telegraph Mr Churchill, Chancellor of the Exchequer, says: “Of all the States in the modern world Britain can least afford to make a mistake. The Empire is passing through a phase of transition. Nothing is settled, nothing is fixed. “The next 10 years will probably decide whether the various parts of the Empire will draw together or drift apart. It is not the Government, bul the whole of the British nation, that is on trial. The fortunes of Britain are now being decided.”