A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK R ARELY has had any Government met with
such universal condemnation in the Press as greeted the Prime Minister's statement last Monday. The Daily Herald did its dutiful best to defend what could not be defended, b..it apart from that, condemnation was unanimous. Criticism from the Telegraph, the Mail and the Express was to be expected, but the Government has always been well treated by The Times. The hard words uttered in that quarter must, therefore, have cut the deeper. The News Chronicle was as hostile as the Liberals in the House of Commons, but it was left for the Manchester Guardian, on the whole more friendly to the Cabinet than any other ron-Labour paper, to pour out column after scathing tolumn of condemnation as damaging to Mr. Attlee and his colleagues as anything the Guardian has ever written. What are the causes and what the probable effects of the whole strange and sorry business ? One cause may be the belief, almost certainly wrong psychologically. that the stern measures the situation needs would tell against the party at the General Election. Another possibility is anxiety not to stir the trade unions into antagonism by any substantial rise in the cost of living ; another the exercise of a like discretion in the matter of Mr. Aneurin Bevan, whose Health Service has been left virtually untouched, and whose council houses escape completely, only the private builder whom the Minister so cordially dislikes being penalised. As for the effects, the chief must be to improve the Conservatives' electoral prospects considerably.
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