A General Election
ALL doubt about the date of the General Election is resolved. It is to leap upon usin three weeks time, and we can all be glad that at any rate the uncertainty is over, whether we approve of the date chosen or not. We can also hope, all of us, that the bickering and intriguing of the last few weeks are over for good. It is difficult for those who stand outside the agitated centre to understand how those who are inside can be blinded to the biggest and most important circumstances that should engross them, and become obsessed with the smaller points of difference with colleagues. These, however, are what ever loom largest in the eyes of those who are overwhelmed by the details of daily action and have no time to sit apart and think. We sympathize with the one man who has had to sit apart, Mr. Lloyd George. He has fought from his sick bed for postpone- ment, and has been overruled.
We weighed last week the reasons for and against delay : we still regret the haste. We fear the effect abroad of a disso- lution before the country has impressed its neighbours with its determination to reform its finances. However, we must hope there that no great harm will smite us from abroad, and then, if the National Government is returned with prospects of more firmly established power, haste will have been to the good, for confidence will have been the sooner established. Our second objection to haste was due consideration of the Indian Round Table Conference. To delay the work, to send the Prime Minister and others off to their constituencies, to set Indians speculating on the results of the election, were all effects that we wanted to see avoided. The distrac- tion of the one man alone, the Prime Minister, seemed likely to be seriously harmful, especially, since (as pointed out in the following article which puts the reasons very lucidly and with full knowledge) on Mr. MacDonald will probably fall the responsibility .of taking decisions, because no one else will take them, and the best hope is that the Indian leaders will agree beforehand to accept his decisions. This objection, however, has less force to-day than it had last week, since when the Conference has not gone well. Instead of any hoped for advance, adjournments might anyhow have been necessary.
We have, therefore, to make the best of the decision and to consider the policy to be followed. First and foremost, the candidates which' stand for the National Government, and those who work for them, must do educative work so that there shall be a wider glimmering of under- standing of how we come to this present pass. Questions of currency, the gold standard, &c., are complicated, are not matters of common study and are too dry to allure the general public to interest themselves in them. Knowledge was urgently needed when the National Government was formed. It is yet more needed since the Government had its early set-back. Their first hopes and purposes included the maintenance of sterling on the gold standard. It will be thrown in their teeth that they failed. They did, through no fault of their own but through foreign action, partly induced by the speeches and action of the Opposition. That the Government was pressed back a step makes it the more necessary to support its efforts to lead us forward. It was our consciousness of the need of understanding subjects so little understood that led us to publish Mr. Hartley Withers's clear and simple statements last month. We cannot avoid these subjects. We entirely agree with the letter from Mr. Maynard Keynes to The Times of Michaelmas Day. We do not endorse all' that clever writer's theories about 'currency, but the point of his letter was clear and entirely true : " The immediate question for attention is not a tariff, but the currency question . . . the proposals for high Protection have ceased to be urgent. To throw the country into a turmoil over them to the neglect of those other more urgent and important problems would be a wrong and foolish thing."
We rejoiced to read another letter to The Times, on October 3rd. Lord Grey of Fallodon expressed in it opinions with which we heartily agree. If the country and the Liberal Party are worthy of their great men, that letter should carry enormous weight and should influence leaders and voters alike. Lord Grey foresees in the present declared policy of the Opposition all against which we have tried to warn the country, " national ruin and consequent distress and suffering, such as this country has never yet seen and the severity of which is immeasurable." He wrote that the primary and paramount issue lies in the policy of economy and sound finance that has been begun by the present Government. In order to avoid crippling the Govern- ment in unforeseen conditions that may arise, there is a duty upon us all. He tells those who, like himself, are Free Traders to support the Government but not to make unreasonable qualifications of that support, such as stipulations for the exclusion of any power of imposing tariffs in " really emergency situations." We under- stand that most of the Liberals already in office fall in with that moderate advice, and a body of unofficial Liberal members have done likewise. Then Lord Grey turned to the Conservatives and deals with rumours that many of them would seize the opportunity to insist on candidates at the election being pledged to Protection and fiscal preferences, or being opposed in their con- stituencies. If that is true, those Conservatives are guilty of exploiting the national emergency in order to carry out their party programme, and " on Conservatives will rest the responsibility for having demonstrated that in a national danger a National Government and policy are impossible." He ends by declaring that the national danger lies in the position of our finance and currency, and if tariffs are to be made the issue, the election will degenerate into a party fight (with a very doubtful result, we would add) and the national cause will be in jeopardy. In those wise and solemn words of Lord Grey we find the fullest confirmation of all that we have tried to impress upon our readers.
There then is the second great duty of the Cabinet and of candidates : to eschew party policies and present a united front in support of a National Government that will do the salvage work that is needed if we are not to collapse into ruin. We say again that no Free Traders, such as we have always been, should make unreasonable conditions for unbending adherence to freedom of trade, if they would thereby divide the Government's support. Equally, and with more emphasis, because here lies the actively dangerous intention of the moment, no Protectionist, however honest his inherited or other- wise acquired convictions may be, has any right to insist upon their being put into operation now or being made the subjects of pledges for candidates. Unity is vital, and upon the heads of those who would deliberately thrust into the election contention over tariffs, which they know to be sources of inevitable and possibly ruinous contention, will rest a responsibility from which they will not escape. If they should by their insistence bring about the ruin of their country, they will neither forgive them- selves nor be forgiven; -
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