However that may be, the fact has to be faced
that.. the present proposals of the Government invert the order of Mr. Churchill's, programme. They dethrone a national principle from the first place and make it retrospective after a complete set of district settlements has been achieved. We take it that Mr. Baldwin had information which is not accessible to .us about the general unwillingness of the mineowners to fall in with Mr. Churchill's plan. - Even so, we think -that the Prime Minister, owing to that- modesty which- is one of his chief adornments, has underrated- his powers of 'per- suasion. There is no one 'in the country better equipped with -the personal -force and the reptitation for sincerity which are likely' to bring off the " big thing." As we pointed out last week,-Mr. Lloyd George, whose methods we have never been able to regard with any respect, would have tackled the situation- -at once with sheer dialectical cleverness that would probably have brought, at any 'rate, a temporary success. But if the present writer-were a miner or an owner, he would -gladly listen to Mr. Baldwin when he would not listen for a moment to Mr. Lloyd George. •
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