News of the Week
The Political and Financial Crisis T'journey of His Majesty to London on Saturday night after he had been for a few hours at Balmoral first revealed to the general public the urgency of the Prime Minister's appeal to him, and the extreme danger from which the country needed to be extricated without delay. It was not a matter of summoning a meeting of the Labour Party to discuss the position in the Cabinet, still less of dissolving Parliament and holding an Election on the questions at issue. It was vitally necessary that steps should be taken in a few days, in a few hours if possible, to assure the sources of our foreign credits that Great Britain would cease to pile up debt by spending more than we earn in these days of depression, and, as an earnest of amended ways, would take measures now to ensure the balancing of the Budget. If the prospect revealed in the May Economy Report of a deficit estimated, and admitted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to be under-estimated, at £120 millions, was not immediately and radically .changed, the credits would not be renewed ; the pound sterling would collapse ; the country would starve.
