The Economic Interpretation

HE arguments advanced by the Ministers who addressed the specially convened Trade Union Conference st week were hardly such as to justify the calling of e meeting at all. Certain sacrifices had, it is obvious, o be made for it. The Government had, in the first lace, to admit by implication that the raising of the ext loan is a matter of difficulty; in the second place, his comforting news was to be published in Germany here men may easily conclude from our Government’s ppeal to the proletariat for money that the nation is own to its last shilling; and, in the third place, the isk had to be run that the Trade Unions would have heir heads turned by being called into consultation on subject usually past their function. Under these rcumstances it might have been expected that the overnment would have prepared its case with the tmost pains that nothing, at any rate, should be lost y it. Not a word should be said that could provoke ntradiction; not an inch outside the common and admitted facts would any official speaker allow himself to ravel ; but everything should be simple, straightforward and answerable. On the contrary, however, it ppears that as little pains were taken to prepare the overnment case as if either nothing depended upon it or the Conference was of such an intelligence that anythingwould be swallowed. Not only Mr. McKenna nd Mr. Runciman found themselves repeatedly and uccessfully challenged on matters of simple fact, but even Mr. Asquith, who is usually criticism-proof in affairs of this kind, had to beat one or two hasty and gnominious retreats. ***