"I must admit, however" Lord Plymouth concluded, "that there are no present indications that such moment is close at hand."
Lord Strabolgi said that Lord Plymouth had made the most satisfactory statement they had heard from the Government bench for some years.
"It looks" he declared amid laughter, "as if the National Government worm has turned at last."
If the grant of export credits to China were done on a sufficiently generous scale, Lord Strabolgi went on to say, it would really take the form of a commercial loan to China.
Lord Plymouth at this point interrupted to declare:—"I did not quite say that.
"What I said was that we are examining certain proposals with regard to export credits, and we are prepared sympathetically to consider those, and any others, with that object in view."
Lord Strabolgi continued by saying that export credits, granted on a long term arrangement, would enable the Chinese to import from Great Britain, and make up for some of the losses incurred by the falling-off of exports from Great Britain.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.