Mr. Baldwin, answering Mr. Lloyd George, denied that America would
ever have agreed to the cancellation of debt. In any case we did the right thing in paying promptly. Dealing with the Italian debt he produced with unusual effect a declaration which Mr. Sidney Webb had made to an Italian newspaper, the Tribuna. Accord- ing to that declaration the Labour Party thought that no settlement could possibly be too favourable to Italy. " We," Mr. Webb added, " shall not be the people to criticize it if it meets with your desire." He regretted that the policy rested " entirely in the hands of the Conservative Party." But now that the Conservative Party has exceeded all Mr. Webb's dreams of what the settlement should be the Labour Party cannot in decency try to make capital—the only kind of capital approved of by Labour—out of Mr. Churchill's Italian settlement.
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