Jan, 12.
Dismissed in a couple of lines fin the cabled report of the debate in the House of Commons lon the American Debt issue, Sir Robert Home's brilliant vindication of Mr. Stanley Baldwi historic settlement with America deserves special notice now that 2 report of the proceedings hi come to hand. It was oval shadowed, for cabling purposes, by the greater importance of the immediate issue of the payment lof G$95,500,000, which Sir Robert, as a former Chancellor of the' Exchequer warmly supported. Younger members of the House were, it is true, inclined to be restive over the resurrection of past history, but they probably agreed that Sir Robert Home, as the Chancellor immediately preceding Mr. Bald. win in that office, had a prescriptive right to meet the persistent and assiduous di semination mong our people at the present ime that the whole Settlement of 1923 was a vast error and a great wrong to the British people"
Mr. Baldwin, as responsible for that settlement, has been singled lout for bitter attack by a certain section of the press which is controlled by Lord Beaver brook and by Lord Rothermere. Moreover, Mr. Lloyd George, perhaps out of a desire to prove is own "unvarying prescience"
use the "phrase of the Parliamentary Correspondent of "The Times"—as well asa constitutional dislike of Mr. Baldwin's placid indifference to Mr. Lloyd George, has given a good deal of assistance to this 1923 Settlement to have been bad. "Mr. Baldwin has been pictured as a guileless innocent or a negligent steward who was bested by the astute American Government. Lord Beaverbrook has been shouting, on weekdays and Sundays, that Mr. Baldwin "must go," because, forsooth, this sacrifice of British interests made nearly years ago, has become suitable subject for stunting in headlines and notes of exclamation.
So it was not surprising that, when Sir Robert Home remark-led that the whole burden of the Jattack on the 1923 Settlement was directed against Mr. Baldwin that it was time somebody Jsaid what he knew about it, the record of the proceedings showed the bracketed comment of the Commons as-—"Loud and prolonged cheers." Sir- Robert left the press attacks alone, He went for the bigger game. He showed that Mr. Lloyd George himself was virtually a party to the Settlement although actually Mr. Baldwin made it as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Bonar Law Government. Just before that Government replaced the Coalition Government of which Mr. Lloyd George was the Prime Minister, the latter had [decided to send Sir Robert Home America ta make a Debt [Settlement, payments to the American ' Government having been resumed at the rate of £50,000,000 annually, the first half-year's instalment being made in October 1922. Mr. Lloyd! George and his colleagues had firmly supported the idea that some settlement should be reach-led. "It was only the acci the political upheaval arising from the Carlton Club meeting of October 19, 1922 that led to the substitution of Mr. Baldwin for [Sir Robert Home and Mr. Bonar Law for Mr. Lloyd George. In January 1923 Mr, Baldwin in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.