The Test of Unity .
INTEREST in the election campaign is quickening as it nears its close. The result, so far as all the indications go, is not in doubt, though the Stock Exchange estimate of a National Government majority of some- thing like 200 looks excessive. Rowdyism, to be deplored in any circumstances anywhere, seems for some reason to centre mainly round Sir Oswald Mosley and his singularly heterogeneous following, though the Prime Minister has had a good deal to contend with in his own constituency. Bitterness between the two sections of the Labour Party is no doubt inevitable, but some of its manifestations are unedifying. The spectacle, for example, of Mr. Snowden choosing the Daily Mail as a pulpit from which to discourse on " Labour's Little Lenins " and declare that in his fifty years' experience of General Elections he has " never known one where a political party has sunk to such depths of deception as the leaders of the Labour Party have done on this occasion," does not provoke admiration. The National Government's claims are strong enough to make resort to this kind of vituperation between old colleagues unnecessary. It is quite enough for Government candi- dates to quote the Labour Party's own manifesto, with its irresponsible proposals for more expenditure and its complete lack of any consciousness of the need for economy, to make their appeal to the electors decisive. A Government that will save wherever saving is reasonably possible, that will make it its first, if not its only, business to redress the trade balance and maintain the pound, is the Government the country needs. And there is every sign that the country will get it.
But when it has got it ? That is the question that may fitly exercise the minds of responsible electors to-day. For the General Election is not an end but a means. It has an obvious value in itself, in that a decisive victory for the National Government will do much to create confidence abroad, and confidence abroad is the main factor in determining the fortunes of the pound. But victory can be put to legitimate or illegitimate uses, and the demand of, the Prime Minister for a free hand, combined with the unqualified declaration of many of the Prime Minister's Conservative supporters for the immediate introduction of a system of full-blown Pro- tection, is creating an uneasiness that may deflect a good many votes from Government candidates and militate gravely against that sense of national unity, so essential when the election is over. We discussed last week the hard case of the Free Trade voter, com- pelled to choose between a Conservative Protectionist and a Socialist Free Trader. Lord Grey has since described that situation as a choice between the frying-pan and the fire. It may be, but gravely as a plunge into Protection might injure both our national prosperity and our international relations, adoption of the policy set forth in the official Labour manifesto might shatter the whole financial and economic fabric of the country. Between those alternatives, dis- tasteful as both may be, there can be no serious hesitation.
But those ought not, of course, to be the alternatives, and there is no need, so far, to assume they will be. The National Government was formed not to rivet a tariff system on the country, but to achieve national unity in defence of the pound. An interchange this week. between Mr. Snowden and Ali. Chamberlain on that point is instructive. The Chancellor of the Exchequer in his broadcast talk last Saturday (in many ways the most effective of all the wireless election addresses) refused to believe that the Conservative leaders would regard a majority obtained in the circumstances of the present election as giving them a mandate to carry- a general system of Protection in the new Parliament. For that, said the Chancellor, a specific decision of the electorate should be demanded. Mr. Chamberlain' at once challenged' that interpretation, holding that it would debar the new Government from imposing tariffs if it came to the conclusion after careful examination that tariffs were the right thing for the country, and quoting, in regard to that, the Prime Minister's declaration that tariffs might prove necessary as a means of reducing imports. If Mr. Chamberlain accepts, as he specifically declares' he does, the Prime Minister's definition of his attitude on tariffs, there is no necessary contradiction between him and Mr. Snowden. The whole question (and it is the decisive test of the good faith of the Conservative leaders) is whether tariffs are to be advocated, if they are advocated, as a means to stabilize the pound or as a specific which a particular political party has for years been advocating unsuccessfully as a party measure and which it now sees an opportunity of administering to the country as a result of success achieved under cover of the emblem " National " on the electoral banner.
That distinction is vital. So is another that goes with it, the distinction between an all-round tariff of 10 per cent. or some other moderate figure (all-round, of course, not meaning, of necessity, completely universal) as a means of effecting the limitation of imports, and what Mr. Snowden calls " a general system of Protection," such as the Conservative Party has for some time been making the chief plank in its platform. For Conservatives to abandon the prospect of Protection on that scale, if the victory of the National Government seems to put its attairunent into their hands, would unquestionably he a sacrifice. But it is a sacrifice equally for many Liberals and National Labour men so far to abandon their adhesion to Free Trade as to agree that if " after careful examination," as Mr. Chamberlain puts it, a tariff is necessary as a remedy for the particular diseases of the moment, they will make no doctrinaire objections to its adoption.
Mr. Chamberlain's formula, if honestly interpreted, represents a compromise which all the allies fighting under the National Government standard may reasonably adopt. But it must be honestly interpreted. Careful examination is one thing, insistence on preconceived ideas is another. For careful and unprejudiced examina- tion of the tariff expedient, as of other expedients with equal claims, the leaders of all parties uniting in the National Government are prepared. Lord Grey has stated their case as well as anyone. Mr. Chamberlain is fully entitled to say that the National Government will be free to consider the imposition of tariffs as an emergency measure to meet the special exigencies of the present situation. Mr. Snowden is fully entitled to say that the exigencies of the present situation should not be used as shelter for the adoption of a general system of Protection in execution of the policy of a single party. Mr. Baldwin, more than any man, can make the re- conciliation between those views real. A great respon- sibility is on him, for national unity is as necessary after the election as before it. There may, and should be, little need to drive that home, but the danger of a course that would substitute for national unity widespread bitterness and resentment is too grave for any warning to be superfluous,
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