accrued between 1919 and the spring of 1922. On the new terms the annual charge for interest and sinking fund would be about 34,000,000l. so long as the interest was at 3 per cent. and the rate of exchange remained as it was. So long as the debt was unfunded the interest alone, without provision for sinking fund, amounted to over 46,000,000l. per annum. Thus the new arrangement effected nominally a saving of 12,000,0001. annually-at any rate for the first ten years-besides providing for the extinction of the debt in sixty-two years. But of course the interest from this point would have to be paid regularly, and therefore become a fixed annual charge like that of the National Debt, instead of a debt which could be renewed from year to year.

During the greater part of January the unemployed were much in the public eye. Just before the New Year a number of hunger marchers had tramped from the North of England and Scotland to London, and there they demanded an interview with the Prime Minister, which was refused. Although not professedly Communist, they were undoubtedly stimulated by Communist propaganda, which was actively carried on among them. At the same time they were supported by the Trade Unions, and under the auspices of the Trade Union Congress demonstrations were arranged for the first Sunday of the year, January 7, in some 150 towns, the chief being in Trafalgar Square, London. This was the first occasion on which the official Labour movement had taken joint action with the unemployed organisation. At each demonstration a resolution was submitted demanding the immediate meeting of Parliament to deal with the unemployed problem. The Communists were well to the fore at several of the demonstrations, particularly in London. An harangue of extraordinary violence was delivered by a Communist speaker in Manchester, and listened to with marked approval by an audience of some 3,000 people.

With this ebullition the discontent due to unemployment may be said to have reached its high-water mark, and from this point it commenced slowly to subside. The chief reason was that just about this time an appreciable improvement in trade made itself felt, and during the next few months the number of unemployed showed a continuous decline, though the registered figure never sank much below 1,200,000. The fulminations of "Unemployed Sunday" produced no more serious effect than the despatch by the Trades Union Congress of a deputation to the Prime Minister on January 16. The hunger marchers were not represented on the deputation, nor did they succeed in obtaining a separate interview with the Premier. The Communists did their best to provoke a general strike, but met with

no success.

On meeting the Prime Minister, the deputation reiterated its demand for the early assembly of Parliament, stating that the workers regarded the long Parliamentary holiday as an indication

of indifference on the part both of the Government and the Legislature. Mr. Law replied that there was no holiday so far as Ministers were concerned, and he saw no point in summoning Parliament. Their efforts to assist the unemployed would be hindered rather than helped if the House of Commons was sitting all the time. It was absolutely essential that Government departments should have time to prepare properly for the work of the coming Session. The Government, proceeded the Premier, was sensible of the evils of unemployment and felt it was its business as far as possible to remedy them. But he was convinced that the scheme recommended by many members of the House of Commons, involving a complete upsetting of their present social arrangements, could make things not better but worse. It had been pointed out by one of the speakers that there had been a fall in wages of something like 600,000,000l. a year. How was this money to be got? One way was by giving the workmen a larger share of the profits of industry. But it was quite certain that profits from which such a wages fund could be drawn were not now being made; in fact, many businesses were being run at a loss simply for the sake of being kept going until better times should return. Another way was by borrowing. He admitted that the situation as regards unemployment had been made a good deal worse because, rightly or wrongly, not this Government only, but its predecessor also had come to the conclusion that in the long run the first essential to real prosperity was to pay their way and balance the Budget. He was certain that if they were now to borrow money in order to set the stream of wages going, they would be permanently destroying the chance of getting back to normal conditions. He saw no hope of any scheme that would give employment to the whole of the unemployed just now. If, however, there was suffering, it was fair to remember that unemployed relief was being given on an unexampled scale. The State was paying on unemployment half the total amount which was spent on running the country before the war. In his belief the only hope lay in an improvement in trade, and what he most feared in this connexion was the effect of European complications. With regard to the marchers, he was convinced that they sought an interview with him chiefly for the sake of publicity, and to this he declined to be a party.

The uncompromising attitude of the Prime Minister caused some resentment in Labour circles, but the demand for an earlier meeting of Parliament to deal with unemployment was not pressed any further. Nor did the Government make any move in the matter till March 5, when the Minister of Labour, Sir M. Barlow, introduced in the House of Commons an Unemployment Insurance Bill to make provision for a further grant of uncovenanted benefit as from April 19. He said that in the past they had been disposed not to look sufficiently far ahead, but they were now attempting to make reasonable provision for a period of eighteen

months. Under the Act of 1922 the Government possessed borrowing powers up to 30,000,000l. and so far only 17,000,000l. had been borrowed. The amount expended under the Act during the last two and a half years had reached the colossal figure of 125,000,000l., of which the State had contributed 33,000,000l., employers 48,000,000l., and workers 44,000,000l. The Government's insurance scheme was criticised by Unionist members as being actuarially unsound, and by Labour members as inadequate from the worker's point of view, but the Bill was read a second time without opposition.

Towards the end of January the Prime Minister, acting on the recommendation of the Royal Commission on Honours [see ANNUAL REGISTER, 1922, p. 144], appointed three members of the Privy Council-viz., Lord Dunedin, Lord Mildmay, and Sir Evelyn Cecil, M.P.-as a Committee to consider the recommendations for honours on account of political services which he proposed to submit to the King. The duty of the Committee, conformably to the recommendations of the Commission, was to be purely that of scrutinising the names of persons recommended for honours, and the scrutiny was to be confined to cases where the recommendation was made "on account of political services." The Committee was to make such inquiry as it thought fit, and report to the Prime Minister whether it considered the recommendations suitable. The Prime Minister was to be at liberty to recommend persons for honours against the advice of the Committee, but in that case the King was to be informed of its report. The Committee was appointed for the lifetime of the Government.

Owing to the delay in appointing the Committee the New Year's Honours List was not issued till February 7. Its most striking feature was the elevation to the peerage of Sir George Younger, who had since 1917 been Chairman of the Unionist Party Organisation, and who in the previous year had by his opposition prevented Mr. Lloyd George from dissolving Parliament in February, and had thus indirectly assured the Conservative victory in the autumn.

The Report of the Commission was discussed in the House of Lords on March 7, when Lord Southborough asked the Government whether they proposed to introduce the legislation recommended by it, viz., that penalties should be imposed on anyone who undertook for payment to become instrumental in procuring an honour for another, or who promised payment in order to obtain such an honour. Lord Curzon, who replied, said that broadly speaking the Government-which shared the opinion that this was a matter of first-class importanceaccepted and were prepared to act on the Report of the ComHe thought the country at large would have noted. with satisfaction that the Commission had declared that little fault was to be found with the distribution of the great mass of honours. Grave uneasiness had, however, been caused in many

quarters by the excessive number of additions to the peerage in recent years, since in many cases the suspicion existed that titles had been conferred on persons who were unfitted for the honour or as a reward for contributions to party funds. He thought that the real check on abuse in this matter consisted not merely in any machinery that they could set up, but in the improving standard of public honour in the country; the best safeguard in fact was a vigilant public opinion.

On February 4 the Conference at Lausanne broke up after sitting for eleven weeks without having secured any definite result. The Turkish delegates at the last moment refused to sign the treaty presented to them by the Allies, and Lord Curzon returned to London empty-handed. He immediately issued a statement to the Press explaining what had occurred at the Conference. The proposals of the First Commission, over which he presided, and which dealt with the question of frontiers, Thrace, the Ægean Islands, the Straits, Constantinople, Turkish Army and Navy, minorities, exchange of populations and other cognate subjects, had been accepted in toto by the Turks. Further, he had on the last day made two considerable concessions, by withdrawing the restriction which hitherto had been placed on the numbers of the Turkish Army in Europe, and agreeing to postpone for a year the reference of the Mosul question to the League of Nations, in order to admit of friendly discussion between the British and Turkish Governments. With the acceptance of this concession by the Turks, all important matters at issue between them and the British Government in particular were at an end. But there were other points notably the question of the Capitulations and the financial and economic clauses-for which his two colleagues were more particularly responsible; and it was over these that the breakdown finally occurred. The attitude of the Turks had seemed to him unbelievable at the time, and as he left Lausanne he had felt convinced that when they realised what they had done they would recognise the extent of their error in rejecting a settlement more generous than had ever been offered by a victorious group of States to a vanquished Power. In his view the Conference had succeeded and not failed, and he had come back, not with defeat but with victory, and the treaty, far from being torn up, would still be signed. Whatever the future might be, he consoled himself with the reflection that he had declined to swerve from the position he had taken up before he went to Lausanne, namely, that only by absolute and unbroken solidarity between Great Britain, France, and Italy would peace be won and a treaty secured. When others had talked about concluding separate treaties he had rejected their overtures; he preferred to fall with his Allies rather than win a victory on the field of self-interest or exclusively national advantage.

Lord Curzon's conduct of the negotiations at Lausanne came in for some criticism in the House of Commons a little later on

the second day of the debate on the Address. Lieut.-Colonel Herbert thought that he had been too high-handed with the Turks, and Mr. N. Buxton considered his attitude towards Russia was largely responsible for the failure of the Conference. The Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Mr. R. McNeill, in defending Lord Curzon, said that he did not think there was a shadow of foundation for the suggestion that their relations with Russia had anything to do with the failure at Lausanne. The real fact was that the Turks knew perfectly well that although this country was powerful, yet the very last thing it desired was to draw the sword. Lord Curzon, he said, had done his best to obtain for the Armenians something in the nature of a territorial and national home, but precisely on that point had found the Turks adamant. Every one who had been to Lausanne, he said, paid the highest possible tribute to the British delegation, and especially to the extraordinary knowledge, skill, patience, and courtesy displayed by Lord Curzon in the conduct of negotiations.

The critics of Lord Curzon were by no means satisfied with this defence, and a fortnight later returned to the attack in the debate on the supplementary estimates for the Foreign Office. The Under-Secretary having proposed a token vote for 101. for embassies and other purposes to cover the Government's expenditure on the relief of war victims in the Near East, Colonel Wedgwood moved to reduce the vote by half as a protest against British policy in the Near East. He said they were being asked to find money on account of the bankruptcy of the Curzon policy to which the troubles in the East were mainly due. They were now witnessing the funeral of the peace of Sèvres, which was Lord Curzon's peace. Mr. Mosley said it was a habit of the late Government to back the wrong horse, and back it with other people's money. However, the critics of the Government finally agreed that though the policy was to be condemned they must abide by its sequel.

Meanwhile the proceedings of the French in the Ruhr were observed with growing indignation in England, particularly in Labour circles. On January 24 the General Council of the British Trades Union Congress and the Executive of the Labour Party passed a strongly-worded resolution expressing the solidarity of British Labour with the working population of the Ruhr in their resentment at the French invasion, and calling on the Government to adopt a policy of definite diplomatic action, and to support any proposal that might be made for submitting the matter to the League of Nations. On January 30 Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, as leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party, after consultation with his colleagues, reminded the Premier of his promise on December 12 to summon Parliament earlier than February 13, should a situation arise in which it would seem that the House of Commons ought to be consulted. The Prime Minister, however, while recognising the gravity of