Mr. Chamberlain's speech was in no sense a retreat from
his original proposals. In their broad outline they remain unchanged. The Chancellor is determined to obtain the £25,000,000 out of the excess profits and he is quite unre- pentant in his belief that it is a fair and just way of paying for rearmament. On that there is no doubt of the verdict of the electorate. Government supporters report from thcir con- stituencies that the National Defence Contribution has had a splendid reception and that it has done much to remove the conception amongst the Liberal-minded that Mr. Chamberlain is a harsh reactionary and an employers' man. The Labour Party was of course at pains to destroy his growing popularity, and asserted through the mouth of Mr. Pethick Lawrence that " very little of the main structure of the National Defence Contribution outlined a week ago remained firm and intact." But Mr. Pethick Lawrence could find very little basis in the Chancellor's speech for this argument, and was reduced to saying that Mr. Chamberlain's very proper announcement that he would receive representatives from the Federation of British Industries and the Chambers of Commerce on the incidence of the tax meant that " the House of Commons would be called upon to play the part of a rubber stamp to effect the bargain between the Chancellor and the employers."
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