But we must take their utterances seriously, and their silences,
too ; and- these drive us to oppose them and to beg the electorate to return the National Govern- ment to power with a stronger majority than before the dissolution, and to prove to the Labour Party that they do not believe in a programme of spending, even for the most desirable purposes, when we are on the very edge of bankruptcy through having spent too much on ourselves already. Unless the British people have lost their self-control, they will not run wildly away from hardship, but will stolidly accept it for the time with faith that it is worth while in order to earn a better time in the future. This is what we must teach and preach to an electorate which cannot fairly be expected to form, without help, a clear judgement on questions complicated by abstruse financial causes and effects and by the action of foreign governments or persons. Our " splendid isolation " has gone—on the whole, for good—and the sins or sufferings of our neighbours inevitably affect us now.
