INTERNATIONAL FACTORS.
The other circumstance which I think is insufficiently, recognized by the general public is the extent to which conditions during the current fiscal year are likely to be affected by international financial and political develop- ments, factors wholly beyond our own control. Those factors may be helpful, or they may be the reverse, but they are bound to be important, and in my opinion they entirely justify Mr. Chamberlain in his ultra-cautious view of the future.
I have, indeed, only to point to two omissions from the Budget to demonstrate how greatly its provisions must have been affected by a consideration of international influences. The accounts for the year omit on either side of the balance-sheet the large sums represented by Repara- tion payments and War indebtedness. Not only, how- ever, are those matters likely to be affected by the outcome of the Conference at Lausanne in June, but a moment's thought will show that to have included them might easily have caused the Government to be charged by those nations taking part in the Conference, with having pre- judged delicate matters forming the subject of that Conference. By holding, therefore, the whole matter in suspense, the Chancellor of the Exchequer hail freed the Government and the country from any such charge of bias. Another omission from the Budget was any reference to the immediate prospect of debt conver- sion, and here again it is not difficult to imagine that, although local conditions, in the shape of cheap money, suggest the possibility of a conversion operation, the Government is bound when contemplating anything like a wholesale conversion of £2,000,000,000 in 5 per cent. War debt to take into consideration the extent -to which the financial atmosphere as a whole might be affected by international as well as domestic developments. • (Continued on page 611)
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