TOPICS OF THE DAY.
DOVER AND ITS LESSONS.
THE Dover election was not, in our opinion, fought upon the best and wisest lines. In the circumstances the case for Economy indeed suffered certain disad- vantages, like all causes championed by Mr. Bottomley, and made a " stunt " by the " stunt " loving portion of the Press. Again, the Economy candidate was admittedly not a man of political experience or oratorical force, or with a specially magnetic personality. We have no desire to depreciate him, but he was clearly not the kind of man who sweeps the electors off their feet and makes them say " Men, not measures. Whoever else is unfit to go to Parliament, this man is fit ; and whatever his personal views, the House of Commons will be richer by his presence." On the other hand, Major John Astor was an exceptionally good candidate. Not only did his youth, his fine war service, and his fifteen wounds make him a man of mark, but so did the moderation, good sense, and good manners with which he conducted the campaign. He was, in truth, an ideal candidate for a borough like Dover. He belonged to the type who would naturally be liked by the soldiery and the sailors ; who would be admired by the retired men and women of independent means, of the kind that throng the villas of the South Coast, and, finally, who would be attractive to the professional and middle-class population. Sir Thomas Poison performed what was little less than an electoral miracle. He swept the constituency.
What are the chief lessons to be drawn from this fact ? The first is that under existing conditions any man who is put up in a constituency on the sole policy of cutting down national expenditure, and therefore reducing national taxation, is an almost certain winner. His Coalition opponent, since he is bound by loyalty to his party and his leaders to adopt the Government's view of finance, And to attempt to maintain it before the electorate, is doomed to defeat unless he is so skilful a dialectician as to be able to persuade people that he can be elected at one and the same time as a stern Economist and a whole- hearted supporter of the Government or else as a spell-binder who will be able by some hypnotic influence to bring the Government into saner ways. Otherwise, at the moment support of the Government's financial policy means political obliteration.
By the Government's financial policy we mean not the support of any special tax or special form of expenditure, naval, military, or civil; but the policy which we ventured to describe on a previous occasion as that of " The Duke's biscuit." The Duke, it will be remembered, said " Hang it all, a man must have a biscuit," and would- give no heed to the people who pointed out to him that in the existing conditions of his finance it was impossible for him to have his wonted Ducal Biscuits. The biscuits meant keeping up a still-room and a staff of still-room maids ! The Government is always saying it must have this or that " biscuit," and never asks the essential, the all-important question, " Where is the money to come from ? ' Dr. Johnson said, " If you call a dog Harvey, I shall love him." Just now, if you call a candidate an anti-Expenditure man, the constituents will not only love him, but will overwhelm him with devotion. Of course, the Government apologists have plenty of elaborate ways of avoiding this conclusion, but nevertheless it is the true one. How long is this mood, so satisfactory to the moderate man, the man of sense, going to last ? Our hope is, naturally, that it will last for many years. Experience shows, however, that moods of this kind do not last for ever, and that if we are not able to take occasion by the hand and maintain the good and eschew the evil, the men of moderation, of essential conservatism, and of common sense will soon get daunted and weary.
The time is ripe for putting up a barrier against that increase of expenditure and that increase of taxation which must ruin us quite as effectively and as quickly as revolution of the Russian kind. But what if the natural leaders of the element in the population which we have just described have at the"moment, for some reason or other, not the heart, or the brains, or the sense of self-preservation, and the patriotism to take the tide at the flood ? What if they falter when they should act and are content with grumblings instead of deeds ? In that case, the mood, as we have just said, will certainly pass. Men in all classes— for the sane are not confined to the Income Tax payers —will grow more and more pessimistic ; more and more depressed ; more and more inclined to say " Heaven's will be done ! We can do nothing. Let it go as it will, and be finished." They will see the country plunging to its doom with the kind of feeling with which the better people in France, workmen, peasants, intellectuals, as well as aristocrats, went to the guillotine. We have reached the stage when a body like the People's Union for Economy, of which we wrote last week, must be made or marred. If it does nothing but issue pamphlets and letters, however wise and telling in argument, the Government will soon realize that they are not a penny the worse off for such paper pellets. They will be much more inclined to come to terms with people like Mr. Bottomley and the protagonists of the newspaper campaign than with men who, though they understand the subject and treat the matter seriously and not sensationally, have not got the energy to take the Wasters by the throat. The test of soundness in the Economy controversy is one which presents no great difficulty in its application. Those who are handling the matter properly are those who look at it essentially from the taxation side. It is, of course, good per se to see that money is not wasted on unnecessary clerks in this department, or unnecessarily expensive houses in that, or in so controlling industries that people are not allowed to sell as cheaply as they would like on the ground that they will interfere with the deliberation with which Government hoards should be disposed ! The problem however, will never be successfully dealt with purely on these lines. It is taxation which must be tackled. It is taxation beyond the power of the nation to bear it which is the evil. It is taxation which calls for the political surgeon's knife. When we are confronted with the argument about the duty of putting an accepted policy into operation which Governments naturally make so much of, there is only one sound. reply : " Of course you must be responsible for policy. We have no desire to dictate to you there. Our dictation shall be on one point and one point only, and that is the point of necessity. We cannot; whatever the claims of policy, allow the Government to raise taxation to the point where it is destructive of enterprise and industry, and so brings ruin upon the community."
The efficient economist looks at taxation, looks at the spendable income of the nation, and then trusts the Executive Government to do the best with the strictly limited amount at their command. The inefficient economist busies himself with all sorts of items about which he finds it impossible to learn the true story or even the true defence. The People's Union for Economy by its publica- tions and appeals obviously fully realizes this in the abstract. It has now the opportunity of putting its preaching into practice and of arousing the country on this point. Will the Union seize the opportunity or sink to silence and political nonentity, like so many " movements " of the past ?
And here let us say that we have no desire whatever that the Union should attack the Government. On the contrary, we are very strongly against any such attack being made. If the Prime Minister, as he certainly can and certainly ought, will put himself at the head of those who ask that taxation shall be reduced to the level of safety, and that expenditure shall consequently also be reduced to that level, he will not only find no opponents among us and the friends of thrift generally, but he may perfectly well get a new lease of political life. All men of experience in public affairs know that the poacher turned gamekeeper often does excellent work, and we can quite well imagine Mr. Lloyd George throwing himself with all his energy and resource into a campaign of rigid reduction in expenditure in order to meet the outsiders' demand for the establishment of a strict barrier in the matter of taxation—a barrier which no one can pass.
Here are the three essentials for any movement to prevent the risk of National Bankruptcy :— No more increase of the total indebtedness of the nation on any prdext. No more inflation of the currency by printing money when it is impossible or inconvenient to borrow it. No increase of taxation beyond the annual limit of £950,000,000.
If such a three-barred fence were set up and rigidly maintained, though times would be hard and difficult, we should get through. As it is, it is not only the awful weight of present taxation, but the dread of still higher taxation, which is turning us all into a nation of wastrels. Men can and will accommodate themselves to almost any circumstances which are stable. Once, however, inspire them with the belief that conditions are going to be still worse, and they lose hope and confidence. But in losing these they lose also energy, foresight, and diligence. The most that you can hope for in an over-taxed nation is petty economies, for with very high taxation it pays better to save £100 than to make it. If you cut down your expenditure by £100 in minor economies you- have that £100 to save or to spend on something else. If you make £100, the Government will possibly halve it and certainly take £30 of it, and leave you only £70. That is probably why France became a nation of minor economists. France was throughout most of its history so grossly and arbitrarily over-taxed that the energy required for money-making and speculation was deflected to minor economies as the line of least resistance.
England, on the other hani, was in former days less heavily and much less arbitrarily taxed, and therefore her people were more inclined to make money than to save it. Unquestionably the making instinct is better for a nation than the saving instinct. Consult the parable of the man who put his talent in a napkin. Here, then, is another reason why we must insist upon a barrier to over-taxation and arbitrary taxation, and make men feel that they are not perpetually at the mercy of the Executive in the matter of their spending incomes.
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