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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  undertaking ­
  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.