Mr. Baldwin is a business man of consequence, the head of a Wales. He is not a bit above his great engineering firm in South
trade. Before he gave so much time to politics and London, he knew his business intimately and had a_ personal knowledge of many of the workmen engaged in it. It was not by chance that one of the earliest parties to visit him in London and congratulate him on his Premiership was composed of lads, apprentices and so forth, from his own firm. It was as a business man that Mr. Baldwin was first taken into the Ministry asa junior. Now it is expected of him that as a business man he will apply certain cool commer—cial and economic tests to politics. If it be true, for instance, that the depression of Europe and especially the occupation of the Ruhr is (after a slight temporary spurt) crippling the iron and steel trade of England who should know more about it than the head of Baldwin's, Ld.? rapidly built up. No one coul A Baldwin "legend" is being help building up a legend about anyone so modest and amiable as Mr. Baldwin, especially when he has a wife not less modest and amiable than himself. It has already been said) that he would like to get back to the country and his pigs—a sure title to the love of all those who live in towns and glorify the country and the pigs. He wears simple, almost shabby, clothes sometimes. Then, he smokes a pipe. The Englishman has always been a little distrustful of cigars; they savour of wealth, or "class," or uppishness. He resents it when, at a superior hotel or on the Continent, he is told that a pipe is not permitted. Snobbishness, he calls it. So when he reads that at a great dinner Mr. Baldwin declined cigars and cigarettes and produced his favourite cherry-wood pipe, he thinks more of the new Premier than if he had made a five-column speech described in the newspapers as a;"brilliant'" or a "fighting" effort. Besides, the word has gone about that in political councils, even in the Cabinet, Council, Mr. Baldwin speaks but little. In the popular estimation that, too, is in his favour. Most politicians rise to place and office by virtue of gifts of speech. It follows that if a man is an infrequent talker and yet rises to the highest office, he must be extraordinarily wise. That is what some people say of Mr. Baldwin.
To make this account complete and just, it is only fair to say that some people, who pretend to know him well, say that Mr. Baldwin is not an able or acute man. They admit that he settled the American debt question, but they say that he only saw the commonsense of the situation and that the rest was done by the tenacity which he undoubtedly possesses. For the rest they say that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, that his business was made for him, that he simply stepped into his father's shoes in trade and in Parliament, and that he would never have made a great position in politics had not tor-tune enabled him to lead a party revolt against all his ablest leaders. On this view he is an English country gentleman of cultivated tastes, liking books and the company of authors, and interested. both in business and in politics, but having still to prove that he has anything of statesmanship about Him.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.