"Bilking," "Tub-Thumping"

"Bilking," "TubThumping"

Like the spiteful dwarf or pixie in a fairy tale, the Rt. Hon. Philip Snowden made all sorts of mischief, last week, in the House of Commons. He may even have lost (or, by a strange paradox, won) the coming General Election for his party (Laborite). Insulting Frenchmen, roiling Italians, vexing U. S. statesmen and bringing tears to the eyes of His Majesty's Foreign Secretary, Sir Austen Chamberlain, were a few of the pixie's mischiefs. Mentally Mr. Snowden is honest, alert, fearless. Long years of suffering from a spinal affliction have warped him physically, reduced him to hobbling upon two canes, given his drawn face its ascetic pallor. If he did not lash out savagely at his enemies they might treat him with a pitying consideration which he could not endure. As Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1924 Labor Cabinet of Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald, he won a sort of right to criticize the budgets of succeeding Chancellors, to sear and slash. He exercised that right last week most rashly when he rose to flay Chancellor Winston Churchill's fifth and present Budget (TIME, April 22). The Chancellor (Conservative) had abolished the tax on tea which Englishmen have paid grumblingly since the middle of the 17th century, which American colonists refused to pay at their famed "Boston Tea Party." Throughout England last week the retail price of tea-- which Britons drink at the rate of 10 Ib. each per annum--fell fourpence a pound (8-c-), much to the satisfaction of poor and thrifty citizens who would ordinarily vote Laborite. Perhaps some of them will now gratefully vote Conservative. Therefore the angry Labor pixie spat at Conservative Churchill that his latest opus was a "Brib-ery Budget!" After that--cripple or no cripple--it was Parliamentary war to the knife. Not unnaturally, Mr. Churchill, a man of flesh and gusto, who looks as if he had never spent a sick day in his life, watched keenly for a chance to catch his enemy off guard. Swaying on his canes, Mr. Snowden worked himself up to a pitch of spleen, harked back to the old debt settlements made by Chancellor Churchill with France and Italy, declared them to have involved far too heavy a British sacrifice, and fairly shouted:

"No more scandalous transactions have ever been carried through by a Minister of the Crown than these settlements with our foreign debtors! ... If Italy and France can afford to pay the United States they can afford to pay us. ...

"I say that Russia at her worst has done nothing worse than France has done! France has repudiated four-fifths of her national debts, and there are many British people who patriotically lent money to France during the War who have been practically ruined by France bilking her national obligations!

"It was with a country like that that Churchill made his shameful settlement. Could Churchill not have made a better bargain? America did!"

Probably not even Chancellor Churchill, hunched over and intent upon the pixie, realized where all this was leading. Rather perfunctorily he interjected that his settlements had been based upon the Balfour Note of 1922.

Doubtless he did this as automatically as a parson citing one of the Ten Commandments, and with as little expectation of being challenged. Lord Balfour laid down the astute principle that Great Britain will not exact a penny more from her European debtors than is exacted from her by the U. S. These unctuous words have enabled Honest John Bull to pass the blame for collecting War debts on to Uncle Shylock Sam. Without the Balfour Note, both France and Italy to-day might well be on hostile instead of friendly terms with Britain. Therefore, almost everyone in the House of Commons was flabbergasted when Spleenful Snowden cried:

"I have never subscribed to the Balfour Note, which I think is an infamous note!"

"The Labor party?" shouted Mr. Churchill, visibly surprised, yet formulating on the instant though incoherently the question that was to trap the cripple.

"The Labor party certainly did not subscribe to the Balfour Note," shouted back Mr. Snowden, "and it should hold itself open, if circumstances arise, to repudiate the conditions of that note."

"I think it is a very dangerous thing for Mr. Snowden to utter such words i "boomed the Chancellor. "They might endanger the payments which are even now being made [to Britain by France and Italy] and on which we were counting this year."

Seemingly beside himself, Mr. Snowden spoke even more rashly: "Does Mr. Churchill then maintain that an agreement which is made by a government supported by a party [Conservative] which happens to have a temporary majority in the House of Commons, commits every other party [Labor and Liberal] in the State to the confirmation and acceptance of that agreement in future? If that is to be so, it is a doctrine to which I cannot subscribe!"

In his calmer moments, even Philip Snowden knows that the Empire's foreign policy is traditionally supposed to have a broad continuity whichever faction is top dog; secondly, that the Laborites did not repudiate the Balfour Note when they were in power; thirdly, that the principle laid down by Lord Balfour is now so firmly embroidered on the warp and woof of Reparations and War Debts that to dis entangle it would rend the fiscal fabric of Europe. Unwittingly, the angry pixie had given his Conservative enemies a chance to scare British voters by telling them that the Laborites are so unprincipled (and probably Bolshevik, too, by gad!) that they even repudiate Lord Balfour, and say that France is worse than Russia ! Next day in the House of Commons rash Pixie Snowden, still defiant, received a Conservative broadside. Sir Austen Chamberlain was present and rather more than close to tears. He has said frankly in the past that he loves France "as a man loves a woman." "Mr. Snowden has used a most offensive term!" cried anguished Sir Austen. "A most offensive term about a friendly nation -- our nearest neighbor -- describing them as 'bilkers!' An offensive slang term from the gutter! ... I say deliberately that no worse day's work has been done in any Parliament! Nor any greater harm!" Sir Austen seemed actually beside himself with grief and shame. "Bilkers!" his French friends had been called "Bilkers! !" As other Conservatives followed the Foreign Secretary, all flaying Mr. Snowden and all greatly exaggerating his slip, he became positively livid with rage. "I retract not a word! I refuse to apologize!" he shrilled, emphasizing his exclamations with cane thumps. "I am sufficient of an Englishman not to be content to see my country and my people bled white for the benefit of other countries far more prosperous than ourselves. You are all just electioneering, just tub-thumping!" Impressively, on behalf of the entire Cabinet, a statement was read out, deploring Mr. Snowden's "wanton and reckless act," and affirming that "the Balfour Note is the foundation of the Government's policy." At this point political dopesters freely opined that Pixie Snowden's rashness would cost the Laborites whatever chance they have to win the approaching election. Though Conservatives and Liberals are as cats and dogs, a Liberal spokesman, Rt. Hon. Walter Runciman, backed up the Government and declared before a cheering House, "The world must realize that once Great Britain has put her name to an undertaking she will carry it through in spite of the vicissitudes of political fortune." Anxious hours in conference with prominent Laborites had convinced Leader MacDonald that as leader of the party there was but one thing for him to do. Rising late in the evening, he began by rebuking the Conservatives for insinuating that should the Labor party be returned to power they would not preserve "England's word as good as her bond!" Sir Austen Chamberlain (with a Victorian shudder): "That is the only inference that can be drawn from Snowden's words." Mr. MacDonald: "A totally false inference! I have always declared that the American debt settlement was bad; but inside this House and out of it I have said that so far as we are concerned, until that agreement is changed by mutual consent, we shall pay every farthing, whatever burden it may impose on this country. And that policy is going to continue!" Soon premature headlines blared, "SNOWDEN THROWN OVERBOARD!" Careful reading of Leader MacDonald's speech showed, however, that he had thrown overboard only the superficial, ugly idea of "repudiating" the Balfour Note, but retained the basic principle that Labor stands for a quiet, mutual forgetting of the Balfour principle if and when the U. S. proves willing. Within half a day, thousands of letters were pouring in on Mr. Snowden, approving his basic stand if not his rash words. Correspondents found him grinning. "Nothing could be of greater advantage to the Labor party," he declared, "than that this issue should be made prominent! I never said we should repudiate the settlements made. What I said was that a Labor government would not be bound by the principle of the Balfour Note on any negotiations which may be opened for the revision of these settlements." Though it was too early last week to gauge the trend of public opinion, dopesters were inclined to think that Pixie Snowden might have struck--rashly, dis-cordantly--a deep popular chord. There are still a good many Englishmen who think that somehow there ought to be a way of inveigling the U. S. into willingly holding the bag for Italian, French and British "bilkers"--only they must not be called by that gutter word.