ON ENGLAND
_And other Addresses_
BY
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
STANLEY BALDWIN, M.P.
FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY AND PRIME MINISTER
OF GREAT BRITAIN
LONDON
PHILIP ALLAN & CO. LTD.
QUALITY COURT
First impression April 1926.
Second impression May 1926.
Third impression May 1926.
Fourth impression July 1926.
Fifth impression October 1926.
Cheap Edition April 1927.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, GLASGOW.
PREFACE
I have allowed, with some misgivings, some of the speeches or
extracts from speeches made by me in the last two years or so to be
put together in the following pages. They were in general delivered
amidst the press of thronging duties and urgent preoccupations, and
in this book they appear as the faithful reporter set them down at
the moment of delivery. Without revision subsequently, without at
the time the advantage of the _ultima manus_, they must not be judged
as the leisured product of the study now that they are brought
together in the fashion of a book.
It is a sound, if onerous, tradition which compels our public men to
travel beyond the bounds of Party and to interpret, so far as each
has power, the thought and striving of the Nation at its best,
whether in politics, in industry, in art or in the practice of
charity.
Public speeches are of use if they lead men to dwell on the thoughts
of service to their country and of help to one another: and if these
lingering echoes of former words of mine avail, in however small a
measure, towards that end, those who wished to publish this book will
have been justified.
STANLEY BALDWIN.
10 DOWNING STREET,
_7th April_, 1926.
CONTENTS
ON ENGLAND AND THE WEST
England
My Native Town
Stourport
Worcester Memories
ON PEACE IN INDUSTRY
Peace in Industry. I
Peace in Industry. II
Industry and Psychology
The Gospel of Hate
ON POLITICAL LIFE
Service
Democracy and the Spirit of Service
Truth and Politics
Rhetoric
ON LITERATURE AND THE ARTS
The Classics
Shakespeare
Byron
W. H. Hudson
Art
Artists and Politicians
ON EDUCATION
Self-Education
Political Education
Teachers and Taught
ON SOME GREAT MEN
Bonar Law
Lord Curzon
Lord Milner and Arnold Toynbee
Lord Oxford
ON THE NATION AND THE CHURCHES
Religion and Politics
The Church Army
Christian Ideals
ON THE EMPIRE
Empire Day Message, 1925
Democracy and the Empire
Disarmament
MISCELLANEOUS
Scotland
Ireland
Wales
Glasgow
Anglo-American Friendship
Friendly Societies
Harrow
Some Ancestors
A War Memorial
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
STANLEY BALDWIN
29th Feb. 1908. Mr. Baldwin succeeds his father as Member
for Bewdley.
6th Dec. 1916. Resignation of Mr. Asquith and formation
of 2nd Coalition Government by Mr. Lloyd
George. Mr. Bonar Law becomes
Chancellor of the Exchequer.
22nd Dec. 1916. Mr. Baldwin is appointed Parliamentary
Secretary to Mr. Bonar Law.
30th Jan. 1917. Becomes Junior Lord of the Treasury.
18th June, 1917. Becomes Joint Financial Secretary to the
Treasury.
4th Dec. 1918. General Election.
17th March, 1921. Mr. Bonar Law resigns office in the Coalition
Government.
1st April, 1921. Mr. Baldwin appointed President of the
Board of Trade.
19th Oct. 1922. Carlton Club Meeting.
19th Oct. 1922. Mr. Lloyd George resigns.
24th Oct. 1922. Mr. Bonar Law forms his Government.
24th Oct. 1922. Mr. Baldwin becomes Chancellor of the
Exchequer.
20th May, 1923. Mr. Bonar Law resigns.
22nd May, 1923. Mr. Baldwin becomes Prime Minister.
28th May, 1923. Mr. Baldwin elected Leader of the Unionist
Party.
25th Oct. 1923. Mr. Baldwin's speech at Plymouth on
Protection.
6th Dec. 1923. General Election.
22nd Jan. 1924. Mr. Baldwin resigns.
29th Oct. 1924. General Election.
4th Nov. 1924. Mr. Baldwin again becomes Prime Minister.
_ON ENGLAND AND THE WEST_
ENGLAND
AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY
OF ST. GEORGE, AT THE HOTEL CECIL.
6_th May_, 1924
Though I do not think that in the life of a busy man there could be
placed into his hands a more difficult toast than this, yet the first
thought that comes into my mind as a public man is a feeling of
satisfaction and profound thankfulness that I may use the word
"England" without some fellow at the back of the room shouting out
"Britain." I have often thought how many of the most beautiful
passages in the English language would be ruined by that substitution
which is so popular to-day. I read in your Dinner-book, "When God
wants a hard thing done, He tells it," not to His Britons, but "to
His Englishmen." And in the same way, to come to a very modern piece
of poetry, how different it would be with the altered ending, "For in
spite of all temptations to belong to other nations, he remains a
Briton."
We have to-night to celebrate our country and our Patron Saint. It
always seems to me no mere chance that besides being the Patron Saint
of England, St. George was the Patron Saint of those gallant sailors
around the shores of the Adriatic, and that in his honour there
exists one of the most beautiful chapels in Venice to-day. The
Patron Saint of sailors is surely the most suitable Patron Saint for
men of the English stock; and I think to-night amongst ourselves we
might for a minute or two look at those characteristics,
contradictory often, peculiar as we believe, in that great stock of
which we are all members.
The Englishman is all right as long as he is content to be what God
made him, an Englishman, but gets into trouble when he tries to be
something else. There are chroniclers, or were chroniclers, who said
it was the apeing of the French manners by our English ancestors that
made us the prey of William the Norman, and led to our defeat at
Hastings. Let that be a warning to us not to ape any foreign
country. Let us be content to trust ourselves and to be ourselves.
Now, I always think that one of the most curious contradictions about
the English stock is this: that while the criticism that is often
made of us is not without an element of truth, and that is that as a
nation we are less open to the intellectual sense than the Latin
races, yet though that may be a fact, there is no nation on earth
that has had the same knack of producing geniuses. It is almost a
characteristic of the English race; there is hardly any line in which
the nation has not produced geniuses, and in a nation which many
people might think restrained, unable to express itself, in this same
nation you have a literature second to none that has ever existed in
the world, and certainly in poetry supreme.
Then, for a more personal characteristic, we grumble, and we always
have grumbled, but we never worry. Now, there is a very great truth
in that, because there are foreign nations who worry but do not
grumble. Grumbling is more superficial, leaves less of a mark on the
character, and just as the English schoolboy, for his eternal
salvation, is impervious to the receipt of learning, and by that
means preserves his mental faculties further into middle age and old
age than he otherwise would (and I may add that I attribute the
possession of such faculties as I have to the fact that I did not
overstrain them in youth), just as the Englishman has a mental
reserve owing to that gift given him at his birth by St. George, so,
by the absence of worry he keeps his nervous system sound and sane,
with the result that in times of emergency the nervous system stands
when the nervous system of other peoples breaks.
The Englishman is made for a time of crisis, and for a time of
emergency. He is serene in difficulties, but may seem to be
indifferent when times are easy. He may not look ahead, he may not
heed warnings, he may not prepare, but when he once starts he is
persistent to the death, and he is ruthless in action. It is these
gifts that have made the Englishman what he is, and that have enabled
the Englishman to make England and the Empire what it is.
It is in staying power that he is supreme, and fortunately, being, as
I have said, to some extent impervious to intellectual impressions as
a nation, he is equally impervious to criticism--a most useful thing
for an English statesman. That may be the reason why English
statesmen sometimes last longer than those who are not English. I
admit that in past generations we carried that virtue to an excess,
and by a rebound the sins of the fathers are being visited on the
children. For instance, there was a time when this particular
epithet was more in vogue in political society, and the Englishman
invariably spoke of the "damned" foreigner. Those days are gone, but
the legacy has come to us in this, that by the swing of the pendulum
we have in this country what does not exist in any other, a certain
section of our people who regard every country as being in the right
except their own. It largely arises, I think, among a section of the
population who hold beliefs which they cannot persuade their
fellow-countrymen to adopt.
There is yet one other point. I think the English people are at
heart and in practice the kindest people in the world. With some
faults on which I have touched, there is in England a profound
sympathy for the under-dog. There is a brotherly and a neighbourly
feeling which we see to a remarkable extent through all classes.
There is a way of facing misfortunes with a cheerful face. It was
shown to a marvellous degree in the war, and in spite of all that he
said in criticism of his own people, Ruskin said one thing of
immortal truth. He said: "The English laugh is the purest and truest
in the metal that can be minted. And indeed only Heaven can know
what the country owes to it." There is a profound truth in that. As
long as a people can laugh, they are preserved from the grosser vices
of life, political and moral. And as long as they can laugh, they
can face all the ills that fortune may bring upon them.
Then, in no nation more than the English is there a diversified
individuality. We are a people of individuals, and a people of
character. You may take the writings of one of the greatest and one
of the most English of writers, Charles Dickens, and you will find
that practically all his characters are English. They are all
different, and each of us that has gone through this world with his
eyes open and his heart open, has met every one of Dickens's
characters in some position or another in life. Let us see to it
that we never allow our individuality as Englishmen to be
steam-rollered. The preservation of the individuality of the
Englishman is essential to the preservation of the type of the race,
and if our differences are smoothed out and we lose that great gift,
we shall lose at the same time our power. Uniformity of type is a
bad thing. I regret very much myself the uniformity of speech. Time
was, two centuries ago, when you could have told by his speech from
what part of England every member of Parliament came. He spoke the
speech of his fathers, and I regret that the dialects have gone, and
I regret that by a process which for want of a better name we have
agreed among ourselves to call education, we are drifting away from
the language of the people and losing some of the best English words
and phrases which have lasted in the country through centuries, to
make us all talk one uniform and inexpressive language.
Now, I have very little more that I want to say to you to-night, but
on an occasion like this I suppose there is no one who does not ask
himself in his heart and is a little shy of expressing it, what it is
that England stands for to him, and to her. And there comes into my
mind a wonder as to what England may stand for in the minds of
generations to come if our country goes on during the next generation
as she has done in the last two, in seeing her fields converted into
towns.
To me, England is the country, and the country is England. And when
I ask myself what I mean by England, when I think of England when I
am abroad, England comes to me through my various senses--through the
ear, through the eye, and through certain imperishable scents. I
will tell you what they are, and there may be those among you who
feel as I do.
The sounds of England, the tinkle of the hammer on the anvil in the
country smithy, the corncrake on a dewy morning, the sound of the
scythe against the whetstone, and the sight of a plough team coming
over the brow of a hill, the sight that has been seen in England
since England was a land, and may be seen in England long after the
Empire has perished and every works in England has ceased to
function, for centuries the one eternal sight of England. The wild
anemones in the woods in April, the last load at night of hay being
drawn down a lane as the twilight comes on, when you can scarcely
distinguish the figures of the horses as they take it home to the
farm, and above all, most subtle, most penetrating and most moving,
the smell of wood smoke coming up in an autumn evening, or the smell
of the scutch fires: that wood smoke that our ancestors, tens of
thousands of years ago, must have caught on the air when they were
coming home with the result of the day's forage, when they were still
nomads, and when they were still roaming the forests and the plains
of the continent of Europe. These things strike down into the very
depths of our nature, and touch chords that go back to the beginning
of time and the human race, but they are chords that with every year
of our life sound a deeper note in our innermost being.
These are the things that make England, and I grieve for it that they
are not the childish inheritance of the majority of the people to-day
in our country. They ought to be the inheritance of every child born
into this country, but nothing can be more touching than to see how
the working man and woman after generations in the towns will have
their tiny bit of garden if they can, will go to gardens if they can,
to look at something they have never seen as children, but which
their ancestors knew and loved. The love of these things is innate
and inherent in our people. It makes for that love of home, one of
the strongest features of our race, and it is that that makes our
race seek its new home in the Dominions over-seas, where they have
room to see things like this that they can no more see at home. It
is that power of making homes, almost peculiar to our people, and it
is one of the sources of their greatness. They go overseas, and they
take with them what they learned at home: love of justice, love of
truth, and the broad humanity that are so characteristic of English
people. It may well be that these traits on which we pride
ourselves, which we hope to show and try to show in our own lives,
may survive--survive among our people so long as they are a
people--and I hope and believe this, that just as to-day more than
fifteen centuries since the last of those great Roman legionaries
left England, we still speak of the Roman strength, and the Roman
work, and the Roman character, so perhaps in the ten thousandth
century, long after the Empires of this world as we know them have
fallen and others have risen and fallen, and risen and fallen again,
the men who are then on this earth may yet speak of those
characteristics which we prize as the characteristics of the English,
and that long after, maybe, the name of the country has passed away,
wherever men are honourable and upright and persevering, lovers of
home, of their brethren, of justice and of humanity, the men in the
world of that day may say, "We still have among us the gifts of that
great English race."
MY NATIVE TOWN
AT BEWDLEY
8_th August_, 1925
I have assisted at many functions during recent years, but at none
more calculated to touch the hidden springs of the heart than that in
which I have participated to-day. Bewdley, as most of you know, was
in distant ages a sanctuary town to which a man, whatever his sins,
might flee and be safe from justice. So whenever the rude waves of
the outside world buffet me with more than usual vigour, I have only
to remember that in Bewdley there is a sanctuary even for a Prime
Minister.
This day has, at any rate, shown that there can be an exception to
the truth contained in the words, "A prophet is not without honour,
save only in his own country." I have never failed to find in my own
country understanding, sympathy and support, and even when life seems
most difficult and the fences in front unclimbable, I can turn back
in memory and recollection to this peaceful spot by the side of the
river, where I first drew breath, and in the memory of which I am
able to draw strength.
There could have been no more typical English surroundings in which
to cherish the earliest memories. I remember as a child looking up
the river from the bridge into that mysterious and romantic land of
Shropshire, so close to us, from which my people came only three
generations before, and watching the smoke of the train running along
the little railway through places bearing names like Wyre Forest,
Cleobury Mortimer, Neen Sollars and Tenbury--names steeped in romance
and redolent of the springtime of an England long ago passed, but
whose heritage is ours. Those names must have been familiar to
Langland as he lay on the slopes of the Malvern Hills while the great
poem of _Piers Plowman_ shaped itself in his brain. I remember, too,
the thrill of names like The Welch Gate and The Warden of the
Marches, which brought back to me even in childhood days the fact
that Bewdley, long before it was incorporated in Worcestershire, was
one of the most important towns in the great Marches separating Wales
from England; the title of Lord Warden of the Marches seemed to me
most romantic and dignified. There were memories, too, of the
long-forgotten strife between Welsh and English, of Ludlow, where the
big castle still stood, and of Woodbury Hill where Owen Glendower
came before the great fight beneath its slope, as the result of which
the bones of English and Welsh have lain in common ground for five
centuries. And one has seen how warfare may yield to peace.
It may be the recollection of those far-off days, and the intimate
connection which we in the Marches had with Welshmen, that has given
me a kind of affection for them, and even a sneaking affection, after
all that has passed, for the greatest living Welshman, Mr. Lloyd
George. I have often felt that if it were possible for His Majesty
to revive the great title of Lord Warden of the Marches, I would like
him to offer it to Mr. Lloyd George, on condition that he lived for
three months in the year in Bewdley.
My friend the present Mayor of Bewdley has long been honourably
associated with a house called The Old Pack Horse. That name reminds
me of a day before grass grew on the wharves of the Severn, when
Bewdley and not Liverpool was the natural export depot for
Manchester, and when strings of pack-horses used to come down from
Lancashire to discharge their goods at Bewdley's wharves into the
"prows" which went down daily to Bristol for export to all parts of
the world. Manchester and Liverpool were then smaller towns than
Kidderminster is to-day. The Bridgwater Canal had not been made, and
I have no doubt that in the early years of the eighteenth century the
name of Bewdley was as well known in England as the names of those
cities.
I think it is good for us, on an occasion like this, to dwell on
these things, which show the continuity of history and bring before
us the progress and the changing fortunes of our country. I spoke of
the grass that has grown on the wharves on Severnside. That is true.
But we still have Severn with us, and I think Severn can teach us
something to-day. Rising on the slopes of Plinlimmon, she has flowed
from and through Wales into England, and through our part of England.
For centuries she served as a boundary and dividing line, respected
by Rome and by the Celt; yet the time came when she was no longer a
dividing line, but the proof of union and friendship; and while long
years ago she poured her waters through country full of strife and
fighting, she now waters peaceful meadows and passes through peaceful
towns, with dismantled castles. It may well be that, just as she has
seen strife in this country turn to peace, so again to-day, in an age
when the clouds are heavy and charged with electricity, she may once
more see the storm pass. But she reminds us that these things change
and are effaced like the eddies on her stream; and, as of old, her
deep waters will flow on through Bewdley, carrying their peace to the
dwellers on Severnside, and their healing message into the heart of
England.
STOURPORT
AT STOURPORT
12_th January_, 1925
I suppose there have been many ceremonies at which I have been
present which were more magnificent than this, and made much more
noise in the world, but I have never been to one that has touched me
more, or one in which all the elements that can grip the heart of man
can have been more present. It is a curious feeling to come down to
one's own home, and to receive in one's lifetime a tribute like this
of affection and goodwill, not only from one's neighbours, but from
those who have known one from infancy. It is no good here for me to
pretend to be anything which I am not. If I were to pretend here to
have greater abilities than I have you would soon find me out, and if
I pretended, as I may have done in the course of my career, that I
was more simple than I really am, then again you would know exactly
how far I was deviating from the strict letter of the truth. I think
it is good sometimes that one should come back into that atmosphere
and environment.
I think it is also a good thing that the outside world should know
one or two things about Stourport, known well to us, but known very
little to them. How many people in London, where they know so much,
realize that Stourport was lighted with gas before the City of London
was? Indeed, had it not been for the railways--and as an old Tory I
am against all that kind of progress--Stourport would have been a
very large town by now. We were essentially a creation of those days
when people looked to the canals as being the principal method of
England's navigation, and for that purpose the site of this town was
chosen, I think, with uncommon skill: and, if indeed it be a
desirable thing, of which I am not convinced, to grow to be a big
town, we missed our chance in the early days of the railways, when
the main lines running through the country passed this district by.
Stourport has the inestimable advantage of doing its work in rural
surroundings. If there is anything--I will not say that has made me
fit to succeed, because whether success or not will attend me I
cannot tell, and any way it does not very much matter if one does
one's best honestly--it is my training, which has given me, whether I
can use it or not, a knowledge and a sympathy very difficult for any
man to attain who has had an exclusively political training. I
regard it as of the greatest value to myself that during the
formative years of my life, and during the ten and twenty years when
I first started work in the world, I worked in close contact with all
classes of people in this country, and enjoyed, through no credit to
myself, the goodwill which I have inherited from generations that
have gone before me and left behind a name for honesty, fair play,
right judgment, and kindliness to those with whom they worked.
Through that, whether I succeed or not, I believe I have an
understanding of the mind of the people of the country which I could
have gained in no other way. It is through this that I have that
ineradicable belief and faith in our people which sustains me through
good times and evil, and it is because of this that I have every
confidence that, whatever troubles may come to this country, or in
this country at any time, the native strength and virtue of our
people will overcome everything. There is only one thing which I
feel is worth giving one's whole strength to, and that is the binding
together of all classes of our people in an effort to make life in
this country better in every sense of the word. That is the main end
and object of my life in politics.
WORCESTER MEMORIES
AT WORCESTER
7_th November_, 1923
This is the second ceremony of the kind which I have attended within
a short space of time, each of them of the greatest interest and
honour. For any Englishman to receive the Freedom of the City of
London is looked upon as one of the greatest tributes which can be
paid to a man for his work; but to receive a similar tribute in one's
own home county touches the heart far more, and is an honour that,
perhaps, in some ways is more highly appreciated than any honour that
can possibly fall to one at any time, because it is a message of
sympathy and encouragement from all those who know you best, from
those amongst whom you sprang and were reared, those who know you and
whence you came, what you have done, all your faults and your few
virtues; and yet in spite of that they combine to do this thing, and
the feeling with which it is done, the unanimity, the appreciation,
the goodwill, are exactly the kind of encouragement that a man needs
when he has to perform such a task as mine.
As a Worcestershire man, and standing in the heart of the city of
Worcester, it is very natural that one's thoughts should go back to
many things--to the rock from which you were hewn, the pit from
whence you were digged; and one thinks of those who went before one,
whose work has contributed to make one's own life task possible. One
thinks of those of one's ancestors, who left their old home in
Shropshire about 150 years ago to seek their fortunes four miles
inside this county at a little place that was then growing up, where
Brindley had brought his new canal into Severn. One knows the
struggles that they had in those days, and one knows the hard work
and the careful thought and the thrift and the human kindliness that
went on from generation to generation. It is interesting to remember
the connection, which has lasted for about 120 years, between my own
family and the old bank in Worcester. It was from the old bank 120
years ago that we raised with infinite difficulty £500. It was the
old bank that helped to carry us through the crisis in the 'twenties
of the last century, and much credit is due to them for having
survived a period which brought down so many of the private banks
throughout the kingdom. Time and time again did they stand our
friends in days when we were less able to stand on our own feet than
we are now, and I shall never forget it.
Having been, as it were, an emigrant from another county into
Worcestershire, and having become Worcestershire by adoption, and
finally Worcestershire by birth and ties for so many years, one knows
in one's bones now that one is a Worcestershire man, and that there
is nothing like it. One came out of this red soil, and one will
return to it and lay one's bones in it, and there is no soil like it
in this country. It is remembering all these things, these
innumerable ties that bind one to the city and the county, that makes
a ceremony of this nature so touching at a time like this.
I am just one of yourselves, who has been called to special work for
the country at this time. I never sought the office. I never
planned out or schemed my life. I have but one idea, which was an
idea that I inherited, and it was the idea of service--service to the
people of this country. My father lived in that belief all his life,
and behind him members of my family, in an obviously more restricted
way, practised the same thing. It is a tradition; it is in our
bones; and we have to do it. That service seemed to lead one by way
of business and the county council into Parliament, and it has led
one through various strange paths to where one is; but the ideal
remains the same, because all my life I believed from my heart the
words of Browning, "All service ranks the same with God." It makes
very little difference whether a man is driving a tramcar or sweeping
streets or being Prime Minister, if he only brings to that service
everything that is in him and performs it for the sake of mankind.
It is natural, perhaps, quite apart from one's parentage, that one
should feel this, because I lived as a child in the heart of
Worcestershire, by the side of one of the last of the iron forges
that were left in the rural districts of England, and the impressions
of childhood are those that last, and as you get older come back more
strongly. Among the chief friends that I had in those days--they
represented two sides of life, the industrial and the
agricultural--one was a shepherd who could neither read nor write,
but like many men of those days who could neither read nor write, he
was a great deal more intelligent than many who can do both now. He
had a face like an old pippin, and he talked the undiluted tongue of
our fathers. I learned much from him. Another man that I learned
much from was one who had been a workman, and who rose to be a
manager, and who went to work at ten years old on a twelve-hours'
night-shift, thus being a link with an industrial past which, thank
God, has passed away for ever. But with such friends of one's
childhood, it is little wonder that one learned a profound sympathy
with and affection for the common man, of whom I am one, which has
never deserted me and never will.
I learned instinctively and unconsciously another very useful lesson,
and that is that a man is a gentleman by what comes from within, and
I have known many in my life in all walks. I do not want to go on
"reminiscing," easy as it is, but I did want to say these few things
to you, because if you do not scheme and plan your life, and if you
leave it perhaps in higher hands than yours, and you look back, you
will see how wonderfully the little things which you never noticed at
the time all seem to fit into the ultimate scheme, and that the
preparation for life which you have had, which you did not understand
at the time, turns out to have been the very best preparation that
you could have had. I am quite sure that that intimate knowledge
that I had of working people, both industrial and rural, when I was a
boy, has stood me in extraordinarily good stead in the last two or
three years, because that natural sympathy that I had as a child,
that came from acquaintance and friendship, has so ripened that one
feels when one is giving one's life in service for the people of this
country one is not working for any kind of abstraction or any large
party of voters, but for the human men and women who are carrying on
the daily toil of the world, with whom one has worked oneself and
whom one has known on terms of intimacy. It is a great strength and
a great help.
_ON PEACE IN INDUSTRY_
PEACE IN INDUSTRY. I
AT BIRMINGHAM
5_th March_, 1925
However hardened a public speaker may be, and in however many places
he may have spoken, he cannot rise for the first time in Birmingham
Town Hall before a Birmingham audience without feeling a thrill of
emotion. For a generation this great hall was associated throughout
England with the names of two of our greatest orators--John Bright
and Joseph Chamberlain.
Though we who are called, so far as we are able, to fill their places
in the struggle to-day, may fall far short of them in eloquence, we
can at least be stimulated by their example, so that we do not fall
short of them in sincerity of purpose and in truth, and in an honest
endeavour to improve the condition of our people.
To-night I have no desire to ask you to join with me in a pæan of
victory. You and I are thankful for the decision to which the
country came at the beginning of the winter, but we want to look
forward now and to devote a short time to-night to looking at some of
the problems which lie before us, to see what progress has been made,
and to see in what direction the people of England should look for
their own security.
I think we can best preface such an investigation by casting our eyes
for a few moments at the continent of Europe, a continent separated
from us indeed by a narrow strip of ocean, but joined to us by a
hundred links of commerce and of humanity, indissolubly bound up with
our fate, whether we like it or whether we do not. I think we may
fairly claim that although there is much to be done in Europe, yet
there are signs to-day of what has not been seen hitherto, and that
is a general desire for stability, and what proceeds from desire, and
is more important, the will to achieve stability.
It is only determination that will produce it, and until you have
stability you can have no confidence, and until you have confidence
you can never get that increased productive power which is one of the
absolute necessities for the bettering of our own trade in England.
Now, not long ago Austria, for example, was on the verge of
bankruptcy. Her administrative expenses were all in arrear; her
industries were paralysed. Largely owing to the action of the League
of Nations, and largely owing to the action of her own countrymen,
she has been saved, and she has been put in a path, strait, indeed,
but one which is leading her, and will lead her, into a position
where once more she can make her contribution to the well-being of
Europe, instead of being a black spot from which might spread the
seeds of disease into other countries.
The same with Hungary--the same process, the same contribution, and
the same results. And we see the new states brought into being since
the War--Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Jugo-Slavia--slowly, but surely,
establishing their industries, buying raw material, which is the
beginning, coming once more into the comity of industrial and
commercial nations, and helping to start again that wheel of the
circulation of industrial life which alone can bring health to
Europe, and, by bringing health to Europe, health to us.
And in France, and in Belgium, there is a healthy and progressive
increase in the industrial life of those countries, and bit by bit
over the three years you have seen the healthy spots forming in
Europe and spreading outwards, and gradually driving back the
unhealthy parts, so that we are beginning to have a hope that before
too long the body itself may be whole.
And Germany! The Dawes plan, which has settled--at any rate on
paper--the reparations question has by that very factor increased
confidence in the public finance of Germany, which means confidence
in the public finance of that vast population of Central Europe. The
fact that a successful loan was issued, that the Reichsbank has been
reconstituted, and that the currency has been restored, has enabled
private credits once more to function in Germany. The negotiation of
a commercial treaty with this country means that if she will now play
the game, there is no reason why the interrupted trade with Central
Europe should not commence again to join in the increase of European
and world trade for the ultimate betterment of everybody.
Her internal troubles are diminishing. We in England have, in the
last year or two, made once more foreign loans to help to repair the
shattered edifices throughout the world, and the United States has
come in with loans, contrary to her usual practice, in Europe, to set
in motion the creative energies of the peoples, which energies will
be gradually reflected in the growing purchasing powers of the
peoples.
The failure of that purchasing power and the financial chaos which
followed on the War have been, I was going to say amongst, but I
would say the chief reason for that appalling depression from which
we are only just beginning to emerge in this country.
But what is it that has prevented the recovery of Europe proceeding
at a greater speed than it has, and what is it to-day that is the one
check and the one blight on an outlook which is beginning to look
more hopeful? It is that cursed and diabolic suspicion between man
and man and nation and nation that robs Europe of that sense of
security that is essential to the unity of spirit which we must have
before the world can function aright.
It is to help to abolish that suspicion, to help to show the better
way, that Mr. Austen Chamberlain leaves England to-morrow to see what
he can accomplish amongst the nations of Europe. It is his attempt
to execute that great mission that has prevented him from having the
pleasure of being here to-night, and has prevented you from having
the pleasure of giving him the welcome he so well deserves in
Birmingham. There is no member of the Government who has a more
arduous task than he; there is no one better qualified by training
and by temperament at this time to make a success of that mission.
Now, having said a few words about Europe, let us look nearer home.
There is much the same story to be told--a story of constant
struggle, and, on the whole, a story of ground gained and hope for
the future.
But while in England we can put our finger here and there on the
hopeful signs, there are many that cause us anxiety. We have only a
very partial prosperity, an industry here and there, sometimes one,
sometimes another; but for four years we have hoped against hope that
we might be able to show prosperity in all our industries.
Two years ago the coal industry enjoyed a brief spell of prosperity,
due partly to the conditions in the Ruhr; and in the wake of the coal
trade followed the trades in iron and steel. But, as prospects in
the Ruhr looked better, and greater prosperity seemed in store for
them, so the temporary improvement here gave way to depression. As
those industries tailed off, there has been improvement in cotton,
there has been fairly good trade in the electrical industry; but we
are denied still that all-round and simultaneous improvement which is
necessary before we can feel ourselves in that position of security
and stability which we all desire to see.
If we look at the figures of our foreign trade as a whole, we do
indeed find some ground for moderate hopefulness. We find that the
balance of imports over exports is not larger proportionately than we
are accustomed to, and that our invisible exports come to our rescue
as they did before the War, and we cannot yet say that we have an
adverse balance.
But whatever conclusions people may draw from the examination of
figures of exports and imports, I never can help translating this
story into terms of unemployment. At the end of January there were a
million and a quarter on the registers--practically the same as a
year ago--no real substantial improvement.
Now, you know well enough in Birmingham how the steel and heavy
engineering trades, and you know well enough by repute how the
shipbuilding trades, are suffering to-day. These heavy trades have
in their numbers something like 10 per cent. of the insured
population of this country, but among these trades to-day their
unemployment represents more than 20 per cent. of the total
unemployment. They are trades closely interlocked, and they are
trades closely dependent and immediately reacting on the coal trade;
and I think I ought to say a word or two on the subject of this trade.
The production of coal in Europe last year increased by scores of
millions of tons at a time when there was a heavy under-consumption
of coal compared with the pre-war standard. It is not surprising in
these circumstances that our export of coal dropped by 18 million
tons. The increased cost of production here wiped out all that
margin of profit at which some of the older and less efficient pits
worked.
And you find pits closed, especially in the North of England and in
North and South Wales; and here and there, the unexampled spectacle
of pools of unemployed labour in the mining industry, where they have
little immediate prospect of a resumption of work.
Now, the iron and steel trades have been specially hit by the
condition of the shipbuilding trade. There you have fewer ships
being built; you have an intensively increased foreign competition,
and you have at home an immensely increased capacity in point of
output and a largely increased technical capacity; and you have at
places like Sheffield and Barrow, where there were enormous
accumulations of labour during the War for special purposes, the
almost impossible task of finding in works of peace sufficient
employment to take over not only their old population but the men who
were attracted there for munition work in time of war.
And so it is, seven years nearly after the War, that we yet see this
prolonged and intensified depression, and this horrible figure of
unemployment.
Now, if you look back you will find that in 1908 you had very nearly
as bad a time of unemployment, and you had it in those industries of
which I have just spoken to you.
But what is the difference? In 1908 it was of comparatively short
duration. To-day, we have lived through four years of it, and who
can say whether we are yet at the end? There are, of course,
international factors largely beyond our power to deal with, but
there are national factors within our own control. We stand to-day
at a point where, roughly speaking, one out of every ten of the
insured population is out of work--a thought sufficient to arrest the
imagination of the dullest and the most thoughtless amongst us--and a
challenge to all of us to use every power we have to remedy this
state of things. But there is no direct remedy from the State alone.
There can be no direct remedy by private men alone.
Nothing can be done unless we can all pull together with a will. And
I am--and I speak seriously--quite profoundly thankful that the
Labour Party have been in office, and for this reason: that they now
know that they, no more than any other Government, have been able to
produce a panacea that would remedy unemployment. And in their
hearts they must admit that they have no remedy which can be
guaranteed to cure this disease and at the same time maintain
unimpaired the international position and power of the British Empire.
And it is at this moment, with one in ten of the working population
unemployed, at this moment when in some industries there is a faint
hope of a revival, at this moment when other industries, with the
utmost endeavours on their part, can but just hold their own, that we
witness in England signs of an industrial storm gathering, which, if
it were to break, would spread misery far and wide, and sweep back,
possibly for years, all chance of returning and reviving prosperity.
By the natural evolution of our industrial life in England we are
confronted to-day, and shall be more and more, with great
consolidations of capital managed by small concentrated groups, and
by great organisations of Labour led by experienced and responsible
leaders. That position must be accepted. It is the natural
accompaniment of the large-scale production which is gradually
becoming the predominant force in all the industrial countries of the
world.
It is perfectly true that if the great trade unions of this country,
such as the miners, the transport workers, and the railwaymen, unite
on a policy of trying to enforce a demand for higher wages in their
own trades by means of a strike, they have it in their power to hold
up at the same time many industries in this country, and do them
irreparable damage.
Now, I said when I concluded what I had to say about the state of
affairs on the Continent of Europe, there was one element that must
be removed before you could get stability, before you could get
security, and before you could get what follows on
security--disarmament. That was suspicion, and suspicion must be
removed.
I am whole-heartedly with those men who talk about disarmament on the
Continent, peace on the Continent, and the removal of suspicion on
the Continent, but far more do I plead for disarmament at home, and
for the removal of that suspicion at home that tends to poison the
relations of man and man, the removal of which alone can lead us to
stability for our struggling industry, and create the confidence in
which our people may be able to move forward to better things.
By all means let us aim at having our conferences abroad for these
good ends. Let us not neglect to have these conferences at home for
these good ends, which touch us far more closely and far more nearly
than anything which happens across the Channel.
Why must we reserve all our talk of peace and our prayers for peace
for the Continent, and forget to have our talks and our prayers for
peace at home? It is one of the paradoxes of public life that from
the very lips which preach pacifism abroad we hear the cries for war
at home. Who was it said of Rousseau that he was a lover of his
kind, but a hater of his kin? The children of such a philosophy can
only bring damnation to this country.
Having said that, I want to recognise, in the most generous way that
I can, that there have been speeches made amongst the leaders of
Labour to-day which would endorse every word that I have uttered; and
I recognise the courage of those speeches, because the men who
uttered them are trying at the same time to do their duty to those
whom they represent and to that greater community, their country.
When a man is in public life, whether he be a Labour leader or the
leader of the Tory Party, if he speaks the truth that is in him and
that he burns to tell, often enough he will find many who will be
ready to deride him for what he has said. I want to endorse the kind
of speeches to which I have referred.
I want to plead for a truce.
In the Middle Ages, when the whole of Europe was in conflict, one
part with another and one fragment with another, men of goodwill
strove in vain to get what they called a truce of God, in which
people might compose their differences and live like brothers.
I want a truce of God in this country, that we may compose our
differences, that we may join all our strengths together to see if we
cannot pull the country into a better and happier condition.
It is little that a Government can do; these reforms, these
revolutions must come from the people themselves.
The organisations of employers and men, if they take their coats off
to it, are far more able to work out the solutions of their troubles
than the politicians. Let them put the State out of their minds and
get down to it, as the Foreign Secretary is getting down to it to-day
to try to improve the relations of foreign countries by seeking peace
and pursuing it through every corner and alley that he may. So let
those who represent labour and capital get down to it, and seek and
pursue peace through every alley and every corner of this country.
And just as those who want peace in Europe have ever before their
minds, if they fail in their object, what war may mean to the
Continent, so let those who are working for peace in England realise
that the breach of the peace in industry can mean nothing more than
the prolongation of what is already too much misery among those who
are suffering from unemployment to-day.
Indeed, how much there is for those responsible for the conduct of
the industry--and I mean masters and men just the same--how much
there is for them to-day to try to discover, and to try to understand.
Let me give one illustration. I have a letter before me now from a
British firm which has works in this country, works in France, and
works in Germany. And the making of a machine of exactly similar
type costs £565 here, in Germany £520, and in France £400. Now all
those concerned in industry should try to get at the root of the
reason why a thing of this kind is possible.
Look for a moment at the employers' side.
Are the reasons for our failure to compete connected with
over-capitalisation, are they connected with defective management,
with wasteful use of plant and of material?
Are they due at all to the absence of facilities for economic
marketing?
Are State subsidies granted on the Continent?
Is there a freer use abroad of unskilled labour in various processes?
What is the cause?
And on the men's side, should not they look into the question of
whether in the allocation to different branches of labour, there is
not greater fluidity and absence of demarcation disputes which make
it easier for the Continent to compete?
These are questions no Government can settle, that no Government can
interfere with, and no Government can solve; but to get a correct
answer is life and death to those in industry, whether they be
employers or employed.
These are the kinds of issues that want to be examined by both
parties round a table, and to be approached, not with a view on the
one side to get an increase of wages, or with a view on the other to
get a reduction of wages, but to get at the reasons and see where the
fault lies. All should take counsel together and see where and how
improvement can be made in this country to achieve the desired result.