Evening Post. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1931. A REMARKABLE PROPHECY

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 80, 1 October 1931, Page 12

Evening Post. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1931. A REMARKABLE PROPHECY

As the head of the National Government it fell to Mr. Mac Donald to declare its programme ori trie opening day of the emergency session, and. afterwards to move the second reading of the National Economy Bill which embodied the most contentious proposals. It was equally a matter of course that as Chancellor of the Exchequer Mr. Snowden should introduce the Budget and see the Gold Standard Amendment Bill through all its stages. But the honour of moving the third reading of the Economy Bill was reserved for a junior member of the team who,.as a Conservative, and not one of the party's Big Four, is not included in the Cabinet. For the first six months Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland was not even a member of the present Parliament, for he lost his seat at' the General Election in May, 1929, and did not get .another till the! following December* In the Baldwin Government he was Minister of Labour, but that portfolio has now been given to another Conservative, Sir Henry Betterton, and by some odd mischance what -substitute has been provided for Sir Arthur does not appear to have been cabled. It seems safe to assume that a man of his standing in the Conservative Party cannot have been given a subordinate position, and that if he had he would not have been selected for the important task of moving the third reading of the Economy Bill. Whatever his official position' may be, Sir Arthur SteelMaitland has justified the selection by a speech which in its length and breadth of vision, and in its worldwide appeal, may stand comparison with the best that we have had from Mr. Mac Donald or Mr. Snowden. It was a good debating point with which Sir Arthur started when he asked the House to Temember that nine out of the ten economies proposed by the Bill had been approved by the late Government. It was admitted by Mr. . Henderson that the I economies thus approved amounted Ito £56,000,000 of the £70,000,000 ■ now proposed, but Mr. Lansbury contended that the approval was only provisional and not unanimous. What Mr. Snowden said was that ho gave details of the cuts to a meeting of the Labour Party and the T.U.C. Committee without the slightest, protest from Mr. Henderßon, who, was sitting a yard away. But presumably the 10 per cent, cut in the unemployment dole was not covered by this statement. It is at any rate clear that it is against this I attack upon-the. "social services" that j the Labour Party has been stampeded into indignation, i and, though the principle involved on both sideß is one of immense importance, it was good tactics to emphasise that it only concerns 20 per cent, of the great economy programme with which the National Government has come to the rescue of the national credit. From this small and not novel point in the tactics of economy Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland passed to tho breadth of treatment which makes the speech memorable. The trouble with which Britain is struggling is, the Minister pointed out, not the concern of Britain alone. The crisis was confronting other countries, ho said, and would confront nearly every other country in tho •world. It was not really a difficulty that could be surmounted by loaving the world just as it was before. The captious critic might object to the last sentence as tautological, for it is obvious that if the world is left just as it was before it will not have made any progress. But the context shows the meaning to be that no treatment of the difficulty by the countries individually will overcome it as long.as the world is left in its present disorganised condition. It is not individual remedy but a world remedy that is needed and that alone will deserve the name of remedy. Any previous ambiguity is rembved ( by the sentence that follows: These difficulties were really the pain that went, before the birth of a mew state of affairs and that everyone would tfe forced to recognise. From this point of view it is even possible to find some comfort in the universality of the disease. As long as the United States enjoyed immunity it was impossible for llic debtor nations to expect the lull cooperation of the great creditor nation in the search for a remedy. As long as France, with gold reserves second only to those of the United States, was enjoying a commercial prosperity and a freedom from unemployment unequalled by any other great nation, she also was unable, to see that the distress of her neighbours was any concern of hers or supplied any argument for a broader outlook. But the troubles which brought Britain off the. gold standard have struck France a blow which her hoarded gold has been unable to avert or even to soften, and thus willy-nilly the troubles of Britain have become the troubles of France. Since she was blocking President Hoover's proposals three months ago, France had made a similar discovery rgga^digg. ihg trouble^ p| .Germany,

Thus it is that within the last few days a French Premier lias visited Berlin for the first time in more than 50 years, and a Franco-German Economic Mission is the result which should be of equal value to commerce and to peace. Equally interesting is the fact that in about a fortnight's time M. Laval will be in Washington on a similar errand. A few weeks ago a Conference of the gold-hoarding Powers would have been considered to bode no good for the rest of the world, but there is no such fear now. It is believed that trie facts are proving too strong for them, that they are learning their lesson, and that the result of a little heart-to-heart talk is likely to be as good for others as for themselves. It may be, said Mr. Snowden in the broadcast address reported on tho 23rd inst, that the present crisis will bring home to those who have hitherto been reluctant to enter into a discussion of this matter the pressing necessity of concerted action, and His Majesty's Government will,certainly lose no opportunity to emphasise its urgency and importance. It is reasonable to hope that the Powers referred to may have their objection removed by.the Washington conversations. The success of the conference at Berlin between the leading antagonists in the World War and the hopes inspired by the conference about to be held in Washington give joint possibility to Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland's remarkable prophecy: Within ten years from now there would be a' regime of international agreement on economics and finance surpassing anything hitherto contemplated. This question would equal, if not surpass, in importance tho question of armaments. Gold would havo to be dealt with as would the international lending of- capital and quite possibly concerted action for proventing undue fluctuations in credit. That kind of action was coming, and would quite intimately affect the welfare of masses of people in all different countries and would affect, intimately their employment and .standard of life. .