27 FEBRUARY 1948, Page 16

PARTY POLITICAL BROADCASTS Sta,—I have read what Sir Stafford Cripps

has said about the present economic abyss under the edge of which we stand, and I have read the Government White Paper on balance of payments with a stunned sense of the appalling gravity of the situation. This week I have listened to an ex-Chancellor speaking for the Government to the country over the B.B.C. I heard no note of urgency ; there was no word about the gravity of the situation. With the facts unknown to me I should have ' been happy to hear that such an excellent Budget surplus was in sight, and I should have thought, not that we were "rounding recovery corner," but that in fact we were but a furlong from prosperity post.

I prefer the Chancellor's views on the economic situation to those of the ex-Chancellor. In these critical days what has been the effect of the latter's party political broadcast ?—Yours faithfully,