The Free Churches and a Council of Action The important
Free Church manifesto on peace and unemployment reaches us too late for any detailed comment, and in any case full discussion of the aims there set out will be more relevant when they have taken more definite shape as result of the convention called for their discussion on July 1st. Any steps designed to concentrate the attention of the electors on the urgency of the two problems of world peace and employment are to be welcomed, and the insistence of the signatories of the manifesto on the need for a non- party approach is reassuring. But the signatories are themselves, with few exceptions, of one political party, practically all of them are Free Churchmen, and their manifesto is critical to the point of hostility of the National Government. Their declaration, moreover, than 3" what is involved is not the question of the merits of this scheme or that " follows close on a passage approving proposals strikingly like those which Mr. Lloyd George is reputed to have submitted to the Cabinet. Since the signatories speak definitely from a Christian standpoint it would surely be worth considering whether their appeal could not be set on a wider basis than one which suggests an obvious danger of throwing the Free Churches as such into political conflict again. The impulse behind the manifesto is admirable, but its practical application needs very careful thought, and the delegates to the forthcoming convention should be clear in advance regarding some of the dangers to be avoided in the formation of the proposed Council of Action.
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