THE CHANCELLOR'S DIFFICULTIES.
'I`have felt it impossible to deal with the Budget without commenting upon these points which have evoked criticism in the City, but I should be conveying a false impression if I were to convey the idea that there is a lack of appreciation of Mr. Churchill's services as Chancellor. The City may be critical, but it is fair, and it is recognized that the difficulties with which the present Chancellor has had to contend during his period of office have been exceptional in character. During the progress of his speech Mr. Churchill referred so many times to the. General Strike and the Coal Stoppage of 1926 that Labour members often became restive. Small wonder, however, that the Chancellor should perforce have made frequent references to an event which gave him no opportunity of demonstrating the possibilities of prosperity which might have followed ere this upon sound budgetting and the return to the Gold Standard but for the follies of that disastrous year. In his Budget speech Mr. Churchill made a most effective defence against attacks which have been levied against the Gold Standard, and there was no part of his speech which commanded greater approval in the City. Never- theless, it is undoubtedly a fact that, under any conditions, the re-establishment of the Gold Standard in 1925 demanded, in special degree, sacrifice and effort on the part of industry if a difficult period was to be successfully surmounted and made the basis of a general trade recovery. Instead of that intense effort we had an attack upon the very basis of the industrial life of the country, and it was with that situation and its consequences which Mr. Winston Churchill had to deal not in one Budget, but in several, and it is in the light not only of the actual Budgets which have been presented, but of the difficult conditions attending them, that Mr. Churchill's record at the Treasury is judged by the City. With these situations he has dealt with consummate skill, and, in the light of the extravagant programmes of the two parties in opposition to the Government, it is scarcely surprising that the Budget which has just been presented should, in spite of some blemishes, seem sound by comparison.
ARTHUR W. KIDDY.
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