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 needed. Mr Bailward was a reformer in the best sense. But reforms, if they are to be vital and beneficent and not engines of destruction, must be based on principles which have stood the test of practical application and have been the foundations and bulwarks of national greatness and prosperity in the past.

As a nation we have already travelled far down the "slippery slope," and it sometimes seems to anxious watchers as if nothing could stop a fatal plunge into a gloomy abyss of national bankruptcy both of character and purse. Some among us, however, may hope to live long enough to see the inevitable reaction, the proverbial swing of the pendulum, the painful climb up. They may even experience the sinister satisfaction of unheeded prophets who can say: "We told you so."

SOPHIA LONSDALE