Great Expectations

In the House of Commons the chapel-like benches were so crowded that lanky Sir John Simon was forced to squat on the steps of the Speaker's dais. Rotund Tory Winston Churchill, fresh from his startling accusations against Lord Derby and Sir Samuel Hoare (see p. 16), was too late to find a seat on the Government side, and he was forced to cross the floor and perch on a few inches of cushion next to wild-eyed Laborite James Maxton whose hair is longer than Greta Garbo's.

Finally the Chancellor of the Exchequer, fit and smiling after a salmon fishing holiday in Scotland (see cut), entered the House to deliver the speech for which all were breathlessly waiting. Because he was bringing the best news Britain has heard since 1931, Neville Chamberlain blew himself to a new brief case of gleaming yellow pigskin to carry the precious budget of 1934. By tradition Britain's budget is always supposed to be contained in a red morocco box on the Speaker's table. Chancellor Chamberlain slipped his few typewritten pages from brief case to the budget box before addressing the Speaker and the House.

"Sir," said the Chancellor, "the atmosphere is distinctly brighter. Anticipations of a substantial surplus in national accounts have been realized. The improvement has been due almost wholly to an expansion of the home market. The real surplus for 1933-34 was -L-39,000,000. . . . This is the largest surplus in ten years and enables me to begin the long-awaited process of relief from heavy burdens. . . . Great Britain now has finished Bleak House and is sitting down to enjoy the first chapter of Great Expectations.

"I have no hesitation in saying that the relief which would confer the most direct benefit to the country and have the greatest psychological effect and impart the most immediate stimulus to trade and employment would be a reduction in the standard rate of the income tax."

Accordingly the following Great Expectations were fulfilled:

1) Britain's basic income tax rate was reduced 6d in the -L-, or 10%, leaving it still the highest in the world.

2) The 10% cut in the British dole, instituted in 1931, will be restored July 1 as will half the salary cuts which all government servants from King George to the village postmen took at the same time.

3) Britain's famed automobile licensing fees of a pound a horsepower will be reduced 25%, thus aiding the manufacture of more powerful cars.

4) There was no provision for payment of the U. S. War debt.

"Neither last year nor the year before," continued the Chancellor, "did I make any provision for payment of the War debts to America nor for the receipt of War debts or reparations by ourselves. In the absence of any fresh development, I propose to follow precisely the same course this year. . . .

"The British people doubtless have faults. They are slow to realize danger and slower still to change their habits or methods even when the necessity for change stares them in the face. But they have one supreme virtue which you find in every class in the country. Let them once be convinced that their country is in danger and there is no sacrifice whether of conduct, money, health or even life itself which they will not make. . . . Their truest reward is that they have saved the country."

As a shrewd politician, Chancellor Chamberlain puffed his countrymen still farther that same night by comparing the bitter British sacrifices which made the present surplus possible with the loose spending of other nations.

"Where else in the world," asked he, "can you find a country which has been able to show a substantial surplus in its budget for two successive years? . . . Japan has a deficit of -L-46,000,000, Italy and France of -L-75,000,000 apiece. The United States where they always do things on a much bigger scale, have a deficit of -L-1,416,000,000, but the United States have such large reserves that deficits do not trouble them."

In all this it was pretty hard for the opposition to find anything out of which to make political capital. Laborite Colonel Josiah Wedgwood picked on the Government's policy of nonpayment of War debts.

"It means that Great Britain, with her great traditions, has been relegated to the status of a South American republic!" cried he in horror. "It is no longer the case that we cannot pay. It is that we will not pay. ... It is by no means a laughing matter. The only thing we can preserve when all else fails is our honor."

"Why should we preserve our honor?" piped another Laborite, H. Mainwaring.

"Because I am an Englishman," roared Colonel Josiah Clement Wedgwood.

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