Londo, Aug. 5. defence of the Winston Chur eller of the Exchequer, the House of Commons to-day passed the Second Reading of the Approprid tion Bill, Mr. Lees Smith (Labour) attaeked the return to 4 gold standard as premature and blamed it for increasing unemployment, He eom= plained that there had' been decrease of internal prices to correspond with the increase of ex ternal prices and declared: "Everybody knows that the Australian Government was told to raise money in New York and not here."
Mr. Churchill said that no ree sponsible party challenged the principle of the gold standard and remarked: "If we had not taken this, action, the rest of the Empire would have taken it without us and there would have come a gold standard, not of the pound sterling but of the dollar." Among the "solid remarkable factors" to be considered as consequences of the gold standard, Mr. Churchill mentioned that capital issues for domestic purposes during the first six months of 1925 exceeded by more than double similar issues during the first six months of 1924; that sterling hat recovered to the parity of the golf dollar; that the equilibrium of the Australian and South African Cur-rendes had been established; that the Bank of England's gold holding had increased by eight to nine millions pounds sterling; that the general money rate had eased and that the general tendency of foreign countries towards currency stablization had ineveased: for instance, India could now consider the sterling rate at which to stabilize the rupee.
The Chancellor added that the coal subsidy war very objectionable, but it was greatly preferable to. a j veiled subsidy on exports.—Reuter,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.