"We Hold! We Hold!"

An indignation meeting at the radicalism of Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and his Cabinet was what the annual Conservative Party Conference paradoxically amounted to last week at Margate. By enduring British standards, it is radical for His Majesty's Government, when challenged by a Germany hungry to regain colonies now under the British flag, to shilly-shally evasively as the Prime Minister has done, bleating that his Cabinet "has not considered this matter." It was Conservative last week, and rousingly Conservative in a robust Victorian sense, when more than 1,000 of the 1,400 Margate Conference delegates leaped to their feet brandishing agenda papers like swords and shouted in unison: "What we have we hold! We hold! WE HOLD!" This Tory spectacle came just before the Conference voted with virtual unanimity the strongest possible resolution demanding that the Government inform Germany that the question of returning any British territory to the Reich "is not a discussible question."

To the brandishers at Margate it also appeared radical that His Majesty's Government, who know perfectly well that the House of Lords may be emasculated or swept away once a Labor Cabinet with a big majority gets in, have done nothing to block such a development. Again by virtual unanimity last week the Margate Conference resolutioned in favor of "reforms" calculated to deprive the House of Commons or any other authority of ability ever to abolish the House of Lords.

It was radical, too, the Conference thought, for His Majesty's Government to have omitted the essentially Conservative step of putting a tariff on agricultural produce. This would raise British food prices for the benefit of such staunch Conservatives as the farmer and the squire-- "The very backbone of England, Sir!" as more than one Margate Conservative stoutly said. In short, the Conference atmosphere last week was not 1936, but at least as far back as 1836. This fact made headlines because there was no "human interest" news about what the Prime Minister had had to say at Margate or about his pipe or his pigs. Stanley Baldwin was absent and absent too was the amiable humbug with which he has led Great Britain for so long, meandering down the winding path of least resistance in both home and foreign affairs. A reborn fighting Conservative spirit was stirring at Margate last week and the Party was veering toward new leaders--slowly, for in Britain the political mascot is always the tortoise rather than the hare.

Stanley Baldwin desires and expects to be succeeded as Prime Minister by the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, laborious and uninspiring Neville Chamberlain. In the Labor Daily Herald last week the Margate Conference was cartooned as a "Political Dreamland Movie Palace," presenting Mr. Chamberlain in the stellar role of a film entitled The Man Who Could Work Miracles (But Won't). The Chancellor of the Exchequer came to the Conference in fact as the designated representative of the Prime Minister, and Mr. Baldwin had interrupted the three-month holiday he is taking on doctor's orders to come to London last week and go over the speech Mr. Chamberlain was to make at Margate.

It was neither a great nor a fighting speech, but it was both firmer and more precise than what Great Britain has grown tired of hearing from Stanley Baldwin. While the Prime Minister has publicly regretted the invention of the airplane and wished it could cease to exist, the Chancellor of the Exchequer declared: "I can imagine no more sobering thought to any ruler who might be contemplating aggression against his neighbor than the knowledge that within a few hours his action might be followed by the retaliation of a force of such terrific striking power as our new air force will possess!"

This of course alarmed Germans last week and they were further vexed by the "hypocrisy" -- as Nazi newsorgans called it -- with which Chancellor Chamberlain asserted: "Everyone knows that the British Royal Air Force will never be used to make an unprovoked attack on anyone."

Whereas Mr. Baldwin has been pleasantly vague about World economic recovery by the lifting of trade barriers some day, Mr. Chamberlain declared : "All indications are that we have left free trade behind forever, or until the whole world agrees to abolish tariffs on imports, which comes to pretty much the same thing!"

This Chamberlain pronouncement, embodying the Chancellor's usual pessimism and cynicism, came just before two epochal events. Suddenly the tariffs and quotas of France were slashed, and this was followed even more unexpectedly by Benito Mussolini with similar action on behalf of Italy (see p. 24). Overnight on the international scene new life was breathed into the principle of Free Trade, and there was a wild scramble by His Majesty's Government to readjust their ideas and Mr. Chamberlain's. To Geneva this week hurried the Chancellor's most distinguished subordinate, Mr. William Shepherd ("Shakespeare") Morrison. In the only speech to the current League Assembly which had any real importance, Mr. Morrison virtually reversed the highly nationalist position Mr. Chamberlain had taken at Margate, called for international abolition of import quotas and exchange controls.

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