The Unionist Party The result of the North Norfolk by-election
was announced too late for us to comment upon it last week. The great reduction of the Labour majority shows what opportunities the Unionist Party might take if it were more united. We do not want a General Election before the Indian Round Table Conference and the Imperial Conference, but discontent with present conditions is growing. So long as Lord Beaverbrook and his friends split the Unionists they can seize no advantage. Mr. Baldwin is taunted with weakness by those who carry on a vendetta against him, but he is strong enough to repudiate them with contempt. We do not go with him along his path to Protection. It is when he speaks as he did on Monday at Coventry on Democracy, showing the scholarly qualities of a statesman with high ideals and wide understanding, that we are compelled to say that he is fitted to be a leader where his enemies are not. In Protection he follows a plain, well-worn line of thought which we understand, though we dispute the reasoning. " Empire Free Trade," however, is a form of Protection that seems to us to reveal the blundering amateur. * * * *
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