Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-09-14
GREAT BRITAIN SEEN.
AT END OF CRISIS
Leadership Restores Favor
able Signs for European
Improvement.
BY EDWARD PRICE BELL.

By Gable to The Star.
LONDON. England, September IA
Slightly more than two weeks ago one
was able to report the best judges in
Washington as believing that the dan
ger point in Europe was past. 1t was
stated then, There is evidence that
Russia wants business more than she
wants trouble, that Germany has been
put in the way of Self-salvation, that
Great Britain Is on the road to a bal
anced budget and to sounder domestic
economic practice, that France and
Italy realize the business and financial
perils inherent in continued Franco
Italian pickering and that all Europe
is increasingly DESTROYS of greater SAN
1ty and tranquility in it's politics.
Today it is possible to reaffirm those
views with added confidence. The sit
uatior in Great Britain particularly has
been improved greatly. 1t has been i'm
proved. indeed. sensationally and prob
ably conclusively. No man alive re-
members much tenser week in this
country than was last week. Strained
expectancy marked the whole public at
titude. People felt again the presence
of danger-felt it as in the fateful days
of late July 1914. Excitement there
was not just that alert and grave gen.
eral demeanor which shows itself when
the British nation is aroused.
Leadership Found.
I'VE are in trouble" the acute listener
could hear the ordinary Briton saying
What do our leaders intend to do
about it?" Only leadership worthy of
the popular mood was needed, and that
leadership, happily for the leaders. was
not looked for in vain. 1t came in the
steadiness and vision of Prime Minis
ter Ramsay Macdonald in the close
support of the strong. loyal men gath
cred about him, and. finally. in the
pitiless and brilliant exposition of in
evitable policy contained in Chancellor
of the EXchequer Philip Snowden's
budget speech. That speech was the
highlight in one Of the really memoir
able days and weeks of the mothers of
parliaments.
What we have witnessed, to speak
compendiouSly, is a characteristic rev.
citation of British patriotism. 1t should
have been expected. Anybody who
knew anything of the British character
and who understood the crisis must
have expected it.. Why? Because the
British always have responded vir-
tually as one man to the call of ma
tional danger, and this was national
danger. Some labor men had forgotten
what lies sleeping at the bottom of the
beings of their compatriots. It was a
bad forgetting.
Patriotism Recalled.
And strange forgetting. Any mind
reaching considerably less than two
decades back ought to have been safe
from such lapse 1t ought to have
remembered the great railway strike
just before the World War, when sec
ton labor tried to paralyze the Nation
and only enacted a picturesque fiasco.
1t ought to have remembered what
British patriotism proved to be when
mailed autocracy took the field. It
ought to have remembered easily also
the general strike of 1925. most serious
of British labor troubles. That was only
five years ago. And it established any
thing but the deterioration of British
patriotism.
Revolution might have come in Great
Britain as result of the existing
travail. Blind craftsmanship could have
produced it. Proof of governmental in
justice toward the masses would have
produced it. The Briton will not put
up with wrong from even his own gov
eminent. But there was no sign of
wrong. All the signs were the other
way. The national government clearly
was bent upon saving national credit
and safeguarding the national welfare
with meticulous thought for the rights
of every class. and especially the work.
ing class. You cannot create revolution
in that manner.
Labor Crash Seen.
But is there still menace in the
kground-something for this coun-
try, and countries politically and
economically related to it, to worry
about? Jumpy people may think so
do think so. They say, 1T is all very
well to throw up our hats and burst
into song over what has been done,
but do not forget the imminent gen.
eral election. Labor may win. Then
what?" Well, excellent interpreters of
the situation expect labor. in the
phrase Of j. L. Garvin, the great edi-
tor, to be crashed by the national
uprising"
Surprising. however. that it is not.
Surprising it sweeps the country and
forms a majority government. Arthur
Henderson is the leader of it. He and
his ablest friends already are COM
mitted to nine-tenths Of all the
economies which the National govern
nent now is proposing. Moreover,
their ideas of taxation are remarkably
similar to those of the Macdonald
ministry and they are gravitating
toward tariffs Still further, and vet
more important. no Labor government
dare devalue the pound sterling. and
thus destroy the only instrument which
can save Great Britain's millions from
famine. Labor government or no
Labor government, the nations econo-
my must be righted and its credit
made unshakable in order that the
people may live.