Budget Speech

The impatiently awaited budget speech --the speech on which prophets have declared that Britain's general elections would turn--was delivered to a packed and eager House of Commons, last week, by the empire's most amazing statesman, Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. Journalism, dare-devil soldiering, music, history-book-scrivening,* politics, dabbing with oil paints -- these are a few of the careers of Winston, who entered the War as Chief of the British Admiralty, switched to Secretary of War and later Air, emerged from the conflict as Colonial Secretary, became Chancellor of the Exchequer and four years ago put the depreciated pound sterling back on gold. Last week a hearty cheer greeted the versatile, rubicund, dynamic Chancellor as he bustled into the house at 3:18, just three minutes after Edward of Wales had taken, his favorite gallery seat above the clock. Breathlessly the whole empire waited. No advance copies of the speech had been given out. What was up Wins ton's sleeve?

As the clock ticked, as Edward of WaIes leaned over it to catch every word, Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill fired what are evidently to be three big Conservative election guns by announcing: 1) Abolition of the betting tax, 2) Drastic cuts in the taxes on tea and, 3) On beer.

Because no general tax-cut is possible, the Chancellor thus made the best of a bad job by appealing over thinking British heads to the stomachs and strongly developed betting appetite of the mob. In an effort to provide, also, food for thought, he harked to the day when he put sterling back on gold. "Because of that policy," he declared, "there has been a decline of 18 points (%) in the cost of living . ... while wages are almost at the 1924 level. . . . This means an increase in the purchasing power of our wages equivalent to the remission of -L-161,000,000 ($780,850,000) annually in indirect taxation." Though such a statement is all very well for electioneering purposes it completely ignores the fact that thousands of British workmen lost their jobs when British exports to the continent were curtained on account of the refusal of Europeans to pay British "gold prices" in Europe's depreciated currencies.

Only once and half-heartedly did the Chancellor take up the unanswerable Liberal and Labor charge that the Conservative Government has done little or nothing to solve the unemployment problem. Cried Mr. Churchill: "It is the deliberate view of this Government that unemployment can be reduced normally by a revival of the basic industries. It has been urged that the Government should seek an opportunity for utilizing the national credit for stimulating general trade, and particularly in connection with assisting toward rationalization. Such transactions are far better dealt with in the sphere of regular business than by direct intervention of the state.''--

That was all--no crossing swords with Mr. Lloyd George, no alternative plan to beat the Welshman's scheme of employing the jobless in building roads and on other public works. Referring ill-naturedly to Mr. Lloyd George as "the happy warrior of squandermania,"* the Chancellor said with a shrug of scorn, "His scheme amounts to making racing tracks for wealthy motorists in order to make the ordinary pedestrian skip." Conservatives, and there are many, who fear the Lloyd George program as the most dangerous weapon of the opposition, hoped, last week, that Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin would provide--in a speech scheduled to follow Mr. Churchill's in a few days some better shield than scorn against the Welshman's spear. He seemed no longer the "young man in a hurry," seemed to lack the daring and originality which the Commonwealth expects from him. It is 54 years since he began to hurry, since the London Times printed the following announcement: Born: To the Lady Randolph Churchill, a son, prematurely.

* For an account of latest Churchill Literature, see page 45. * Cf. The Coolidge-Hoover: ''Keep the government out of business.''