120 
THE HOUSING QUESTION 
" me point out to him that there was no promise with 
regard to War Savings. It was a contract, which is a very 
difierent thing from a promise. There have been no contracts 
with regard to houses, and the only promises that I know of in 
regard to houses were made on election platforms. . . 
Sir F. Banbury was of course wrong. The promises 
were not merely made on election platforms. They 
were made in the House of Commons by Ministers 
when the Housing Act of 1919 was passed, as has been 
shewn above. 
But what a strange thing it is that undertakings 
given to property owners are “ contracts " and " debts 
of honour," but when given to the working classes and 
the general mass of electors are mere “ promises " 
which can be broken as easily as pie-crust and with 
equal impunity. 
The Nation can find £60,000,000 to compensate 
railway companies, and £50,000 to give to Sir Eric 
Geddes, the great axeman, to honour an alleged under 
taking made to that champion of the taxpayer, by his 
former employer, the North Eastern Railway; but if 
asked to build the houses to deliver the men who 
won the war from the pigsties to which they have 
returned*—well it is only a promise and not a contract. 
Why trouble any more about it ? 
* "To let them come back from the horrible water-logged 
trenches to something little better than a pigsty here would be 
criminal and a negation of all that has been said during this war." 
—Lord Long, when President of the Local Government Board, 
1916.