A Conservative Manifesto
Tao Forward View. By the Right Hon. L. S. Amery, M.P. (Bios. 16s.) Tao Forward View. By the Right Hon. L. S. Amery, M.P. (Bios. 16s.)
Tins is the Manifesto of 1935 addressed to Conservative . England. Designed to disturb complacency and to provoke :thought, it comes on the eve of a General Election, as a call to action. In both its parts, in its ".Thoughts on Present Discontents" and its " Outline of Policy," it reveals Mr. Amery as the not unworthy heir of Milner, both in his ardent faith in the mission of the British Empire and in his humane, imaginative feeling for the condition of the people. Radical, trenchant, disdainful, provocative, Mr. Amery enters the stricken field of contemporary problems with strong con- . victim's, equally strong prejudices, and with a pen which wields the language of political controversy in a manlier which holds the reader's attention. Though some of his . argument sounds like a mere survival of Joseph Chamberlain's tariff propaganda of 1903, he is no, reactionary ; and, whatever may be thought of some aspects of his plea, he justifies his
• title by looking forward. He sees what the needs of the time . are—not always as some of. us -would have them envisaged !- . and is not afraid of radical measures when they are necessary to preserve those things which must be preserved—British freedom, social peace, property and the British Empire. To save these from Fascist and Socialist assault alike, he summons Conservative England to gird its loins and to act swiftly, for " there is no time to lose."
The key to his attitude is the word " national." He rejoices in the title of " economic nationalist " and rejects internationalism with a wealth of opprobrious epithet employed . with gusto to show his contempt for President Wilson, Lord . Cecil and other guides of humanity who have sought the general salvation by the way of collective responsibility. His every reference to the League of Nations shows -that he thinks it . futile ; and although he pays something more than lip service to the ideal which he finds quite inadequately enshrined in the Covenant, he decides that such heights are not for us to attain in our time, and that it is the duty of Britain to turn her energy to the service of a more accessible ambition. Not the League of Nations, but the League of the Nations of the Empire, is his choice : not a collective system, but a British system. And those who know the course which Mr. Amery has taken in his political career do not need to be .told how he argues his thesis. That he does so with zest goes without saying : that he will carry conviction is not at all so certain, though he himself is well assured that he speaks for the spirit of his own times. Starting from the assumption that the self-interest of all nations will for long continue to impose on them the necessity of an economic policy, nationalist in kind, he bids us relinquish the hope of an international ,solution, whether it be of the problem of gold, of tariffS, or of peace and war, and tells the British Empire to cultivate its own garden. And once we accept his premisses, his argu- ment is well found. But it is in laying down his premisses that Mr. Amery reveals his own limitations and challenges reproof before his argument reaches the bottom of his first page. He fails to appreciate the strength which underlies the collective system ; and something more than his intellectual scorn of its present supporters is needed to prove that he is right and they are wrong. This is a very large flaw in his capacity and it will make many feel that one who can so fail to appreciate the merits of internationalism has little right to dismiss it as having " very little warrant either in history or in common' sense."
In Imperial policy Mr. Amery recognises that the belief, once so tenaciously held by some, that the Empire could not hold together unless it were a genuine federation, was mistaken ;. and the passages which he devotes to the famous declaration of the Imperial Conference of 1926 and to the Statute of Westminster, including (we must add) his chapter on India, are some of the best in his book. On the economic side of British policy, both domestic and Imperial, he has much that is pertinent to say, as of the Ottawa Conference ; but, here again, he does not seem to realise the predestined limitations of the Ottawa measures, even if they had been as bold and com- prehensive as he would have liked. The long chapter on " Economic Policy " must be read in its entirety to see what British Protection brought up to date implies in the mind of its strongest contemporary • advocate. On foreign policy lie
has four major lines i , (1) the maintenance and deVelopment of the worldwide estate of the Empire ; (2) satisfactory relit, tions with the United States of America, " a cardinal point c (8) detachment from European affairs, " subject only to the proviso, embodied in our Belgian and Locarno undertakings (which he conceives as lying altogether apart from the League), that we will not lobk with unconcern upon aggressive military operations within short air range of Dover, and coupled with an attitude of helpful goodwill towards any effort made by European nations to bring about their closer economic and political union " ; (4) " a fresh start in Anglo-American- Japanese relations based on a recognition of the realities of the Situation, and, in particular of Japan's urgent need for markets and of her natural aspiration to play the leading part in the regeneration of the Far East."
Ile closes the book with an interesting invitation to us to learn how to reform parliamentary England by studying the " Corporative State " ; and, as we close it, we can say that if Mr. Amery has provoked us to disagree with him in some
vital things, he also provokes us to think. A. F. WnYTE. •
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