The question before the electors will be whether they wish
for a National Government which will restore Great Britain to its former place as a country whose financial and commercial integrity are unquestioned at home and abroad. On this hangs the whole future of our over- crowded island, which cannot support its population without international trade, shipping and finance. These are threatened from many quarters since the War by new conditions and new competition of which we should have little right to complain, even if complaints served any useful purpose. Need we add voluntarily to all the difficulties an impetus down stream of our own choosing ? If we, like Coleridge's pig, are carried down with wind and tide, need we also cut our own throats the while ? Yet that seems to be the policy proposed by the Opposition. If they were returned to power, no doubt responsibility would sober them. We can also attribute a good deal of what they say to a discomfort due to a consciousness that they have left their leader in the lurch when the duty before the Government was bound to be unpopular. Partly, too, ignorance and lack of imagination' may prevent them from realizing that if we do not economize and bear heavy burdens now, the future of the country, most of all the future of the poorest, will be one of acute suffering and a wretchedness of which we have been mercifully spared any knowledge, and a lowering of every standard of life that we have learned to cherish. Into such a future would the declared intentions of the Opposition lead us, and we must judge them by their declarations.-
