Mr. Stanley Baldwin was far from making this mistake. After
by no means negligible attacks on the Govern. ment's attitude from different angles, by Mr. Lees-Smith, Mr. Mosley, and Mr. Snowden, he wound up the debate with a very effective speech. He defended the Govern- ment's present policy of inaction by emphasizing the extreme complexity of the reactions of the international situation on trade here and the likelihood of violent and ill-considered intervention making the position not better, but worse. All the speakers, with a few excep- tions, such as Colonel Croft on the extreme right and the obstreperous Mr. Newbold on the far, far left, showed real grasp of the fact that for us the European problem was fundanientaIly economic and not political, and that any settlement which allowed Europe to buy would do for us, and that no other would.
