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This attitude lent awful weight to a cool declaration by Sir Herbert last week which was promptly backed up by Viscount Grey of Fallodon, the Marquess of Crewe and the Marquess of Reading: "In our view the whole policy of hard bargaining on trade between the governments of the different parts of the empire is wrong. We regard the continued unity and harmony of the British Commonwealth of nations as of supreme importance to its own members and the greatest value to the world at large.
"That purpose cannot be assisted by conferences such as that at Ottawa. In our view it can only be imperiled.
"The process so clearly in evidence during the proceedings was pressing one part of the empire to make unwilling sacrifices in order that another part of the empire may be induced, equally unwillingly to make counter-sacrifices."
Finally Sir Herbert & orthodox Liberals took the legal position that the Ottawa accords are unconstitutional (i. e. unprecedented) because Parliament in order to enact them would have to bind future parliaments to fixed tariffs & quotas for fixed terms of years and "Parliament itself cannot properly enact a statute of that nature."
This statement, backed by the opinion of the Marquess of Reading (Lord Chief Justice of England 1913-21), might well have given the Imperial Triumvirate pause.
"Very Big Job." Not being creatures of precedent but men of emotion, Prime Minister MacDonald and Conservative Leader Baldwin stood together as if nothing had happened last week, ably assisted by King George, who gave his necessary approval to all Scot MacDonald's acts.
The big and of course secret scene at No. 10 Downing Street was a purely emotional appeal by Mr. MacDonald to Lord Snowden and the Samuelites not to resign. When they resigned all the same and filed out of No. 10 amid cheers & boos, the Prime Minister raised his leonine head and said for publication: "We put our hands to a very big job a year ago. We knew what it meant. The same determination to disregard all ordinary partisan interests which we showed then we show still! . . . "
The work is not finished and cannot be finished until one way or another there is a reparations and debt settlement and there is a world economic conference, and we must continue until these things are done."
This was the first reference by a British statesman since the opening of the U. S. presidential campaign to the coming reduction, by hook or by crook, of what Europe is going to pay the U. S. Though embarrassing to President Hoover, it was under the circumstances, about the only thing Prime Minister MacDonald could effectively say.
"Conservative Cabinet" Oddly enough Scot MacDonald seemed to hope that he could draw Lord Reading into his Cabinet last week, but emotional appeals to the great jurist (who served for two months as Foreign Secretary in the National Government last year) fell flat.
It was therefore necessary to replace Viscount Snowden as Lord Privy Seal by having Mr. Baldwin, who was already 'Lord President of the Council, consent to serve also as Lord Privy Seal "but without pay" (both offices are sinecures and Mr. Baldwin is too honest to accept more than one salary for doing nothing).