Oct. 30.
Mr. Stanley Baldwin has said the right thing: "the nation has won a great and decisive! victory." The nation has voted with unparalleled unity for Mr. Ramsay MacDonald. It has riven him those of his own immediate following who have been staunch enough and—as it turns out—wise enough to stick to him. It has decided for the rest to giv him Conservative followers in great numbers. The leader of the Conservatives 1 recognises that this decision does not imply} a mandate for any particular party policy. It demands national ce-operation. Had the majority in favour of the Conservatives been less formidable there might have been some argument for converting the Government into onz lon party lines. The very fact that the Opposition is reduced to mere handful of amiable second-benchers impels rejection of the view that the electorate was thinking on normal party lines, Moreover Mr. Baldwin is enabled more freely to give proof of his perception of the true national interest for the simple reason that the size of his personal following! makes it possible for him to be independent of the shackles of the relentless tariff reformers. Tt would be safe to say that, in the present mood of the electorate, any attempt to claim a victory for a sectional movement, however vocal, would be immediately condemned in the severest terms. Mr. Baldwin has at once condemned it by implication. Sir Herbert Samuel, fresh from defeat such a plan at Darwen, goes straight to the point in emphasis: ing the conditional character of the power given to the Conservatives. Mr. MacDonald clinches the issue when he draws attention to the union of men who "may!
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.