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THE LEADERLESS LIBERALS.

THE forlorn condition of the Liberal Party, which has within a short space buried its greatest leader and shed two of his successors, naturally forms the topic of much magazine moralising.

(1) THE DECLINE AND FALL OF HARCOURT. "A Radical M.P." delivers himself in the National Review on "the Leaderless Opposition." It is a very racy effusion. He begins :

I do wish Sir William Harcourt and Mr. John Morley had kept their now famous and collusive correspondence in their desks for a day or two longer. Its publication has completely chaosised certain melancholy meditations and bold purposings of my own on the above topic.

THE SOUTH AFRICAN FIASCO.

He then proceeds to pour out some of these "melancholy meditations :

Things were getting very bad with us in the way of guidance down in the House of Commons after Lord Rosebery left us. The first thing that struck me in this connection was Sir William Harcourt's extraordinary fiasco over the South African Report, when he so utterly failed to come up to the scratch. I expected to enjoy the pleasure of walking after him into the Lobby to give Mr. Rhodes the coup de grâce, but found I had to content myself with very diminutive mercies in the wake of "Labby" and Philip Stanhope. I could not understand it. I tried to persuade myself that Mr. Chamberlain had played Jeremy Diddler with him, and yet I knew that Sir William is no fool.

A LEADER LED BY KENSIT.

The writer was "greatly mortified" by Sir William's lukewarmness over the Cretan question :

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Things were not improved when Sir William betook himself to his favourite amusement of bishop-baiting-he does not often, I understand, ride to hounds, or do much in otter-hunting or with the gun--and visited the House occasionally to make up for lost time by giving us an Anti-Ritualist treat. . . It was no doubt, in a sense, edifying to hear Sir William declaiming on the importance of pure and undefiled religion . . . interpreted by Sir William Harcourt and Mr. John Kensit, retail stationer, Hoxton, in the narrowest Low Church sense. This might be magnificent, but it was not politics. wished to know what I was to think about " open doors "pin-pricks" and "long spoons," and I was treated to an essay upon birettas. I do not care two straws about birettas.

THE REAL REASON OF RETIREMENT.

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On the Fashoda question the writer explains his oldfashioned prejudices against "Expansion" and Egyptian Occupation, and his feeling that the French had an arguable case. He recalls the valiant way in which Sir William and Mr. John Morley denounced the advance of the British-Egyptian army to Dongola, and humorously portrays his eager expectancy of some similar utterance over Omdurman and Fashoda. None came, of course, except Sir William's Mansion House tribute to the Sirdar. The writer's own conclusion is then given over this leadership of absence and silence and apparent inconsistency :My own belief, the only thing I have to guide me now, and which has been arrived at by keeping my ears and eyes open in quarters as close to the letter-writers as I could get into, is that Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Morley have not left the ex-Cabinet in a huff or a temper, but substantially because they could no longer get on with a preponderating and a rapidly developing and intensifying Imperialism among their late colleagues and elsewhere in the party, as visible to everybody in the instances of Mr. Asquith and Sir E. Grey, and other quarters that easily suggest themselves. This sufficiently accounts for Sir William's inactivities and ambiguities, distracted as he must

have been between his own convictions and the necessity, a leader, of keeping up the outward show of official unity Ther is reason to believe that Sir E. Grey's famous declaration abor

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the " unfriendly act was off his own sub-official bat, and ser

prised those who should have known it was coming. A grez split, as I believe, is impending in the party over this question of Imperialism. For Imperialism, as I, in common with many othe much better men, believe, strikes at the root of Democracy.

(2) DR. J. G. ROGERS' VIEWS.

The Nineteenth Century has three papers on "The Liberal Collapse." The first is by the Rev. Dr. Rogers who suggests that the first duty of the party is to decide. not who shall lead? but whither is he to lead? He wi not enter into the personal question except to protes against Lord Rosebery being called a Jingo. Perhap the most important passage is this reference to S William Harcourt's "determined Protestant crusade:It has raised my personal estimate of him; but while I donk whether it has directly influenced his present action, I am b to say it seemed to me to make his leadership impossible. For th Liberal Party is essentially opposed to sectarianism. . . . There, is no evidence that the Liberal Party is prepared to enter on the difficult work of revising the Prayer Book in a Protestant sensa As a Nonconformist-and I believe I speak the mind of com vinced Nonconformists generally-I could be no party to su a proceeding.

Dr. Rogers concludes :

Home

A friend remarked to me that the present difficulty made the outlook for the next general election very gloomy. I could on's answer that without it it would have been much more hopeless. (3) WHY NOT A SALISBURY-ROSEBERY COALITION? Mr. Sidney Low propounds "the case for coalition" between "Liberal Imperialists" and Unionists. Rule is "out of politics"; Lord Salisbury and Lord Rosebery agree in desiring to reform the House of Lords: ¡ moderate Liberals have desire for Disestablishment of land nationalisation; the modern Conservative is as eager for Reform as is his opponent"; in foreign politics, Lord Rosebery is "more royalist than royalty itself Liberal Imperialists have more in common with Unionists than with the rump of Radicalism ::

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With Lord Salisbury, Lord Rosebery, Mr. Balfour, Mr. Goschen, Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Kimberley, Sir H. CampbellBannerman, Sir Edward Grey, and perhaps Mr. Asquith, acting together, a truly "National" party could be formedparty which could carry out as much reform and domestic legislation as any moderate man desires, and could confront the foreign complications approaching with a strength like that of Mr. Pitt's Administration after 1794, when the Portland Whigs joined the Government.

The third article by Mr. Keir Hardie and Mr. J. R. Macdonald sees in the situation proof that the Liberal Party, based as it is on Individualism, has done its work. and that "the I.L.P. is in the true line of the progressive apostolic succession."

(4) A NEW RALLYING CRY WANTED. In the Fortnightly the author of "Life in our Villages" heads his contribution "Recreant Leaders." The title really covers only the last paragraph of the paper; the real theme being not the persons, but the principles which the Party ought to follow. The writer begins by referring to the disillusion of those Liberals who hoped so much from the successive extensions of the franchise. Never so wide a franchise, never so much freedom, and never since the Reform so strong a Tory majority in power as at the present day. We have no leader, he groans, we have no policy; we have no great question which power

fully appeals to all, and so can unite all. But he manfully sets about enunciating a principle which he hopes supplies the long-felt want.

66 THE WHOLE LAND FOR THE WHOLE PEOPLE.” He starts from the fundamental principle of Liberalism -"the welfare of the whole population "-and insists on one of two applications, the second not being named, viz., the land question :

At no very distant date that will have to be taken up, not in any spirit of petty tinkering, but boldly and thoroughly, and on the broad Liberal principle of the common good-the whole land for the whole people; for the whole people first, and for the actual possessors of it only in so far as it may be consistent with the good of the whole. The competent man who shall take his stand on that in a downright earnest and resolute spirit will be the leader and inspirer of the Liberal Party.

A man may, of course, by his labour and skill or by judicious application of capital, add to the value of land, and to that added value he has exactly the same right that I have to the pair of boots I have made. But the original land no man has made, and no man has exclusive right to it. It is common property, like the air we breathe, and the rain and sunshine that give to the land its fertility, and the statesmin who shall take his stand on that primary principle, and in all earnestness and honesty push on to a practical application of it, will simply open a new era in the history of Liberalism.

NO CONFISCATION WITHOUT COMPENSATION.

He will not, in the writer's judgment, confiscate, without compensation, the rights of existing owners. He will buy them out at full market value. The State, in place of the present landlord, could exercise powers of development which are beyond the means of any private owner. Land is wanted for public improvements which cannot be had. Land is entailed. Even if we had the freest of free trade in land, the land might still suffer from want of capital, from ignorance and negligence :

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In a thousand ways we are all of us sufferers from a vicious land system, to which we should not willingly submit for an hour if we fully understood the matter in all its bearings. The competent statesman who will boldly and honestly confront that system, and will firmly resolve that by the help of God and the disinherited people he will reform it, will have no lack of enthusiastic support. This land question lies at the very basis upon which all hope of a satisfactory social future must be founded.

WHAT ABOUT THE HOUSE OF LANDLORDS?

And the great landowning House of Lords? Should not the Liberal Party first settle accounts with them? No. The Liberal leader who means finally to settle this land question on out-andout Radical principles will address himself to it without the smallest reference to the House of Lords. His one care must be to convince the great mass of the nation.

If the House of Lords, wise in its day and generation, will yield to the will of the nation and pass the measures, well and good. We do not want needlessly to quarrel with the House of Lords. It is an interesting and picturesque relic of antiquity, and it pleases many of the people, and we have a great many more important things to do. The attitude of the Liberal Party should be one of resolute determination to reform the land system, Lords or no Lords. We will brook no opposition, and if the House of Lords is infatuated enough to present any, then will be the time to set aside everything else and go for it. "RECREANT LEADERS BOTH."

In the last paragraph the writer refers to Lord Rosebery and Sir William Harcourt :

When, each in turn, they are brought face to face with a critical situation, and find a great historic Party looking to them for guidance and inspiration, and both shrink back with querulous whining about factious opposition and sectional disputes, they do but show themselves wanting in the real masterful essentials of leadership, and so far unworthy of the high destiny to which the clear trumpet call of duty has summoned them. Either of

them may yet do greater things, but at present they are reoreant leaders both.

(5) WHO SHALL BE LEADER?

"A New Radical" contributes to the Contemporary a dialogue between "Criticus" and "Laudator," M.P., under the heading, "Wanted-a Man." The ego of the piece is "Criticus." Dealing with the dismal prospect before the Liberal M.P.'s called on to choose a successor to Sir Wm. Harcourt, he reflects that, after all," the only grand electors of any importance are Harcourt and Morley":

Don't you see that if a man of Harcourt's power, having, in any case, a certain following in the House and in the country, and a sort of grievance to play with, were to make up his mind to wreck his successor, he could easily make Parliamentary life unendurable to him?

ONLY TWO TO CHOOSE FROM.

"There are only two to choose from":

They are both good enough-plenty of brains and absolutely honest, which is more than the other people could say of all their chiefs. Campbell-Bannerman is a great deal cleverer than he gets credit for, and those who know Asquith best are ready to take their oath that he is really interested in progress. You have only to make your choice between their defects. The one

is too comfortable and too lazy; the other is as cold as a fish.

ONE CAN WAIT.

The chief merit of Mr. Campbell-Bannerman is "that he has a sense of humour." Of Mr. Asquith, “Criticus” insists

He does not lay himself out to be beloved, and he isn't. I admit that he has probably as serviceable a brain as any Balliol man alive-can you ask a handsomer testimonial than that?but he has no more human sympathy than-well, as I said, than a fish. And it seems to me you can't lead this sentimental and slightly Pecksniffian public without a little visible humanity . . . . Asquith does not make on me--or on most of us-the impression either of any force of character or of any enthusiasm about anything. He is very brilliant-and yet he is very dull. . . . If he has leadership in him it will be all the better for the keeping. 66 THE BEST CHOICE."

"Criticus" concludes :

....

If you decide, as I think you should, that Campbell-Bannerman is the best choice for the needs of the case, you must make him take it, and serve him well. . . . I do expect that if he is made to take his coat off, he may do for you what W. H. Smith did in very similar circumstances for the Tories, and that was an immense service.

"Jonathan and John."

MR. CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS contributes six stanzas under the above heading to the January Century. They put the new Anglo-American creed into portable and picturesque phrase. The first runs :-

Should Jonathan and John fall out

The world would stagger from that bout;
With John and Jonathan at one

The world's greåt peace will have begun.

The next two develop these alternate possibilities more fully

With Jonathan and John at war
The hour that havoc hungers for
Will strike, in ruin of blood and tears,-
The world set back a thousand years.
With John and Jonathan sworn to stand
Shoulder to shoulder, hand by hand,
Justice and peace shall build their throne
From tropic sea to frozen zone.

The remaining three predict how paltry "the grudge of a hundred years ago "will seem in "the blazonry of

their common fame."

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"THE DISRAELI OF LIBERALISM: How LORD ROSEBERY HAS EDUCATED" HIS PARTY. THE Fortnightly contains an unsigned article, of considerable boldness and even brilliance, with the heading "The Disraeli of Liberalism." The "neutralisation of the Foreign Office" in all party conflicts, and the persistent continuity of our foreign policy, are the ideas to which the ex-Premier has, the writer insists, converted party and people. At the outset as at the finish is expressed the doubt whether Lord Rosebery is a strong man or a weak man,-the executor as well as the evangelist of his own ideas. On this point no one is sure, least of all Lord Rosebery."

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A PUPIL OF BEACONSFIELD.

In any case, Lord Rosebery has seen that for his great end there must be genuine agreement on foreign policy between Conservative and Liberal; and this agreement he has—as witness the Fashoda incident-secured. Says the writer :

As a modifier of party views, Lord Rosebery's influence has been the most curious since that of Lord Beaconsfield, to which it may fairly be compared. His Imperialism has been a force more gradual, subtle, insidious, sure, than Mr. Gladstone's unlimited powers of temporary persuasion. Mr. Gladstone manipulated the emotion of his party. Lord Rosebery, along a whole side of politics, has transformed the principles of his party. Lord Beaconsfield himself was hardly more potent as an educator of Conservative opinion upon domestic legislation than Lord Rosebery has been as an educator of Liberal views upon foreign policy. Lord Rosebery's early intimacy with Mr. Disraeli is knɔwn. It is certain, for several reasons, nɔt all of them purely political, that a deep impression must have been made by the arch-politician upon material peculiarly impressionable to the Machiavellian die. The only doubt is whether Lord Rosebery has been an involuntary analogy or the conscious Disraeli of Liberalism.

He must, thinks the writer, despite all expressions to the contrary during Midlothian campaigns, have had "inward and instinctive sympathy with the spirit" of Lord Beaconsfield's foreign policy.

THE OLD LIBERAL FOREIGN POLICY.

When he began “in foreign affairs the Conservatives were strict Nationalists; the Liberals inclined to be philanthropists at large." The foreign policy of the Manchester School, which ruled Liberals in the early 'eighties, was one of peace and unrestricted commerce, and strongly opposed on moral grounds to a “strong spirited" foreign policy :

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We travelled without pistols, because we reprobated the practices of highwaymen. There was no more certain method for the propagation of highwaymen. The Manchester principles of foreign policy, as exemplified by the retrocession of the Transvaal, the abandonment of the Soulan, the helpless perception of the encroachments of Russia, and the pained endurance of Bismarckian contumely, resulted less in a general adoption of Broadbrims than in a general development of brigandage. The partition of Africa was inaugurated in contempt of Earl Granville and Lord Derby. The scramble for Africa set up new and feverish impulses towards aggrandisement with which American Imperialism and the gathering of the eagles over the carcase of China are not remotely connected. The advocacy by one party of what in practice was perilously near to a policy of passive resistance, was simply a stimulus and a premium to the policy of active aggression by every other Power. The theory of travelling without pistols resulted in the impunity of the highwayman. Humiliation after humiliation was followed by aggression after aggression.

THE NEW DEMOCRACY AND ITS VIEWS. This was the condition of affairs on which Lord Rosebery entered. He "saw that a strong foreign policy

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If the future of the empire depended upon unanimity in foreig policy, it must have been apparent to Lord Rosebery that upa the identification of Liberalism with a strong foreign policy, z. its dissociation from the reproach of a weak tradition, deponder the future of his party. Lord Rosebery began to educate i party.

SUCCESSIVE STEPS: THE BATOUM DESPATCH.

He declared "a continuity of policy in foreign adminstration" to be the aim with which he took office in 1880, He kept up the policy of Lord Salisbury :—

The celebrated Batoum despatch of 1886 brought the doctrin of continuity into conspicuous action. The master-issue between the Conservative and the Liberal Party had been the difference of their attitudes towards Russia. To one Russia was the "divine figure in the North;" to the other, Russia was the dark enemy in the North. The Penjdeh incident had perhaps done something to disconcert the angelic theory. Lord Rosebery paid little heed to it when he wrote the despatch ! denouncing as an intolerable perfidy, in the nearest approach to plain language allowed by diplomatic usage, the violation of the clause in the Treaty of Berlin constituting Batoum a free port. The Batoum despatch left British prestige where i was. But it was something that a Liberal Foreign Secretary had opened his mind about Russia in terms that were comfortable to the Unionists, while by no means unacceptable to Liberalism at large. There was a beginning of the rapprochement in principles.

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"THE TRUE CRISIS IN LORD ROSEBERY'S CAREER.” The next decisive step concerned Egypt. In 1891 the Liberal leaders openly advocated evacuation, and Mr. Gladstone, in the speech approving the Newcastle programme, seemed to accept their policy :

This was the true crisis of Lord Rosebery's career. He had enunciated his principle of continuity. His task now was to make it prevail upon the Liberal Party against the Libera! leaders; against Sir William Harcourt, against Mr. John Morley, against Mr. Gladstone. Lord Rosebery declined to join the Cabinet of 1892 under the terms of the Party declarations which would commit the new Government to the old spirit in foreign policy and flagrantly repudiated the new.. Lord Rosebery would not move, and Lord Rosebery was indispensable. When he joined the Cabinet upon his own terms the battle seemed to be won, though it was not.

"MR. RHODES' COMPLEMENT AT WHITEHALL." His African policy appeared in the apology extorted from the insulting young Khedive and in the retention of Uganda :

Up to this point Lord Salisbury could have done nothing less and nothing more. Beyond this point Lord Rosebery went, where Lord Salisbury would, perhaps, have declined to follow, and where Lord Salisbury's initiative would certainly not have led. More vitally than any one else except Mr. Rhodes, Lord Rosebery believed not only in the maintenance but in the expansion of the enormity of Empire. . . . His speech of March, 1893, at the Royal Colonial Institute, marked another step in the process of public and party education. "We are engaged in pegging out claims for the future," he said. . . . Mr. Rhodes had found his complement at Whitehall. It is necessary to remember that Lord Rosebery became the official sponsor of the Cape-Cairo route. Of that great departure, the reconquest of the Soudan, the Fashoda crisis, and the conscious inauguration of the new epoch in foreign policy, were direct results.

AND FASHODA.

66 THE UNFRIENDLY ACT In the Anglo-Congolese agreement Lord Rosebery made the mistake of not first consulting Germany. Defeated on this point, Lord Rosebery left an objective for his successors, and issued the historic warning about the "unfriendly act" :

In the recent crisis, it will be observed, England founded herself upon Lord Rosebery's principles. Lord Salisbury based his summary action against France expressly upon the warning of his predecessor. Lord Rosebery nastened to point out that in this memorable instance of a 66 strong" foreign policy, the usual course was reversed. The Liberals were not reluctant adopters of Unionist views-the Unionists were the executors of a Liberal idea. But Lord Rosebery's speeches upon the Fashoda crisis were required to reconcile his party to the greatness of its own merits. The Liberal Party, which as a whole up to seven years ago, if not very much later, was inclined to contemplate the abandonment of Uganda and the evacuation of Egypt in the old mood which had made the retrocession of the Transvaal and the withdrawal from the Soudan possible, realised its claim to have originated a policy which meant nothing less than that, even at the risk of war, England was prepared to enforce her claim to the whole Nile from Uganda to the Mediterranean. In view of the close connection between this fact and Lord Rosebery's effort in 1894, to open an all-British route from the Cape to Cairo, it would be difficult to conceive a bolder model of a strong foreign policy.

HIS ONE "VOLATILE INFIDELITY."

The writer would fain have seen here the "final ascendency" as well as the "powerful operation" of Lord Rosebery's ideas. But Lord Rosebery's action is not always in accord with his most pronounced principles. In 1896, on the question of the advance to Dongola, designed as it was to enforce his warning about the "unfriendly act," Lord Rosebery "surrendered to the lead of Mr. John Morley and Sir William Harcourt." This the writer regards as" a volatile infidelity to a great idea" :

Nothing can be more obvious than that Lord Rosebery was not really opposed to the Soudan expedition. Nothing is more certain than that he made himself appear to be opposed to it. THE HERO OR THE HAMLET OF POLITICS?

This aberration raises the question, is he a strong man or a weak man?

He may be the hero in politics as in recent weeks he has been proclaimed. There is at least as much reason to dread that he may be not the hero, but the Hamlet of politics, whose powers of analysis and exposition are at once extraordinary and paralysing. If there were a Public Orator of the Empire, Lord Rosebery would be the immediate and the ideal selection. Hamlet is the Public Orator to mankind, with his preternatural insight and deep utterance. But that does not help him to do his business.

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HE HAS NEVER HAD HIS CHANCE."

As though by way of extenuation the writer proceeds :

There has been a Government which included Lord Rosebery. There has never been a Rosebery Government. He has never had his chance, nor has he yet given his full measure. He has had a bitter education, and he has the faculty of development. The difficulties of his position in the last Cabinet were far greater than any modern Premier has ever had to encounter.

He was

not the head of his Government. He was the figurehead of their Government. He was not a Minister who had established an ascendency in politics before rising to the highest office, who had chosen his colleagues and given the organic impress to his own Cabinet in its formation. He was less a Premier supported by a Cabinet than a Premier in the custody of a Cabinet. There was open and arrogant sedition; there was desertion, opposition, lack of sympathy, hopeless incompatibility of temper. These were circumstances that would have unstrung the nerve of Hamlet, but might also have paralysed the vigour of a Fortinbras.

"THE MOST POPULAR OF ALL STATESMEN." It is certain, on the other hand, that his mind is the most influential in politics, and as an educator of parties upon foreign policy he seems to have completed his work. He has asserted at last a real as distinct from a titular supremacy in the Liberal Party. He is the most popular of all statesmen, and is even more universally admired among Unionists than among Liberals. At the present moment he is probably the statesman of most widely national influence since Palmerston.

PARTY FEELING ON TURKEY AND RUSSIA. Candour compels the writer-a Liberal Unionist, if we mistake not-to own that not the Liberal attitude alone has changed :

Nor would it be accurate to represent the actual approximation of view as a surrender by the Liberal to the Unionist Party along a whole side of public questions. The Unionists, as a matter of fact, have abandoned the tradition of friendly relations with Turkey. Lord Beaconsfield is dead as we know. Party differences even upon the Eastern Question no longer exist. Lord Salisbury has directed language against the Sultan more contemptuous and minatory than any that Lord Rosebery would have used. The Cretan settlement is the result of Liberal and not of Conservative ideas. Upon the other hand, the Liberals have modified their attitude towards Russia as completely as the Conservatives have changed theirs towards Turkey. THE CREATION OF A NEW EPOCH.

The anonymous critic closes thus :Lord Beaconsfield is dead. So, indeed, is Mr. Gladstone. The Disraeli of Liberalism is the heir of both. His future is commonly said to be in doubt. In the sense of official importance it is not in doubt. Lord Rosebery may return to the Foreign Office under whichever Party he chooses. Whether he will become the chief helmsman as well as the chief spokesman of the Empire remains to be seen. But the new epoch in foreign policy is his work, and in th. decisive idea he has rendered service to his country with which few achievements in office will compare.

THE I.L.P. PROGRAMME.

NEW AND SOBERED-DOWN EDITION.

MR. KEIR HARDIE and Mr. J. R. MacDonald write in the Nineteenth Century on the Independent Labour Party's programme. They declare that the Liberal Party has done its work, and that the I.L.P. is in the true line of "the progressive apostolic succession":

The foundation upon which the Independent Labour Party builds itself is Socialism, just as the foundation upon which Liberalism built itself was Individualism. But British Socialism is not Utopian.

The programme of Socialist principles, put forward by the I.L.P. at the last elections, was intended to bring some "largeness of purpose into party aims" and to insist that Socialist theories could not be overlooked by the progressive-minded elector."

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unnecessary officialism may hamper them in undertaking the management of public services and experimenting upon such questions as the municipalization of drink and the relief of the unemployed; a complete revolution in our educational system, especially a considerable rise in the standard and age at which children may leave school; a drastic reform and extension of the law of workmen's compensation for injury, and employers' liability, together with far-reaching budget reforms, such as OH Age Pensions raised by a special tax on the swollen incomes of the rich, are necessary before our State approaches even to the condition of some Continental countries.

It is to be feared that some Liberals will feel difficulty in distinguishing this programme from much that has been put forward by their own advanced comrades.

MORE CONCILIATORY TACTICS.

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The new tactics of the I.L.P. show an even greater modification of the old than appears in the new programme. The writers assert :

...

The I.L. P. has never been adverse to alliances, provided they were with bodies whose aims it could trust. . . . Independence is not isolation, and in so far as co-operation with kindred sections is possible, whilst retaining our freedom, there is no barrier to it in our methods or tradition. . . . We have always been aware that a policy of wrecking for its own sake would not commend itself to the thinking portion of the electorate... The proposals outlined above indicate the practical work which might be forced upon the attention of Parliament and the country by a group of Socialists speaking from the vantage point of the floor of the House of Commons, and it is proposed to follow up this declaration of opinions by a method of electioneering to which the most sensitive partisan can find little to object.

"OUR PLANS FOR THE NEXT GENERAL ELECTION." It is but fair, if we are to ask for independent democratic support, that we should make no secret of our plans for the next general election. If there is any serious intention to let us alon? in a certain number of constituencies, an early announcement of what these constituencies are may lead to that harmony which, we are constantly assured, some of our opponents desire.

The Party will put forward candidates for some twenty-five constituencies at the next election. Bradford, Halifax, Glasgow, Manchester, Leicester, South-West Ham, Gorton, will be fought, as will several other seats contested by us three years ago. The list will finally be made up so as to distribut our contests well over the country in proportion to the distribution of our strength, placing altogether, say, two in the northern counties of England, four each in the Midlands, in Yorkshire and in Lancashire, two in the south, two or three in the sou hwest of Scotland, and so on.

The I.L.P. continues its independent course, say the writers, because it, as neither of the other parties does, stands for "Democracy in the political, and Socialism in the industrial State." Economists will note one passing concession with some interest :—

Socialism and the Marxian theory of value are often regarded as inseparable; but if Marx's position in economics became untenable to-morrow, the case for Socialism as an improved system of production and distribution would not be touched.

He

A FRENCH APOLOGIA FOR MR. CHAMBERLAIN. To the second December number of the Revue de Paris M. Victor Bérard contributes a particularly interesting and well-informed paper on Mr. Chamberlain. dissects the Colonial Secretary in the most scientific manner imaginable, and exhibits him as the consummate personification of Birmingham, as at once the most finished product and the absolute dictator of that city. M. Bérard's description of Birmingham is really a masterly summary of the influences-geographical, commercial, scientific, religious, and political-which have contributed to build up that remarkable entity with which the name of Joseph Chamberlain will ever possess an unique association. When he deals with the actual

political career of Mr. Chamberlain, M. Bérard is not afraid to tackle the inconsistencies, to use no harsher term, of his hero. He quotes from the famous little book, "Before Joseph Went into Egypt," the usual wellknown extracts from Mr. Chamberlain's earlier speeches, which appear in such violent contrast with his present position and attitude. But M. Bérard accounts for it all. Chamberlain is Birmingham, he says, and Birmingham is Chamberlain. The periods of his life are clearly divided. From 1854 to 1873 he was making his fortune in business, and at the same time benefiting Birmingham thereby. All this time Birmingham, by her debating clubs, her libraries, and her local self-government, which afforded an insight into the practical management of affairs, had been forming him after her own spiritual likeness. From 1873

to 1876, the period of his municipal power, he transformed Birmingham from an insanitary mass of mean streets and factories into the present modern municipality. Then from 1876 onwards is his Parliamentary career.

"THE ADMIRABLE UNITY OF THIS CAREER.”

M. Bérard declares that Mr. Chamberlain is not the inconsistent flighty politician depicted by his opponents. He detects throughout his career a unity of purpose and of Radicalism-in short, of Birmingham. Of course, Mr. Chamberlain has travelled some distance from the oldfashioned peace-at-any-price Radicalism. The following passages may be quoted here :

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、Already the reader must grasp, beneath the apparent variety in the manner and methods adopted, the admirable unity of this career, entirely devoted to the service of the people and the interests of Birmingham. By water, by road, or by railway, you can make the same journey," said he one day. In the Radical train, on the Liberal boat, and in the Unionist mail coach he has always advanced towards the same goal, the happiness of the greatest number. His route has had three great stages-municipal, 1870-1876; national, 1876-1886; and Imperialist. It has never had but one limit, the greatness of the people through his own greatness. The first stage won him! a medallion on a city fountain, the second a bust. He is working for the statue. And in the same way the admirable unity of this mind, so fertile, so active, and yet so simple, must now be clear. He has never seen or studied or understood anything save with relation to Birmingham. Every time at problem has arisen for solution, he has sought to know wha the people of Birmingham would say of it.

"HIS POCKET BIRMINGHAM."

Every time he goes away from his people he carries as it were a reduction of them in the person of his thrall, Jesse Collings. He is his sole confidant, his private adviser, his pocket Birmingham. He takes him with him everywhere, to Parliament, to Sweden, to Egypt, to the Ministry among the Liberals and among the Unionists.

At

To-day this practical man is the arbiter of the situation. Minister for the Colonies, it is he who by the force of things as much as by force of his ambition decides and often imposes the gravest measures, and his authority goes on increasing day by day. A Conservative Ministry, wishing to touch home matters as little as possible, always turns towards foreign affairs. present the whole foreign policy of England is a colonial policy, for the Foreign Office no longer feels up to battling for the grand politics of former times, for Peking against the Russians, for Constantinople against the Germans. The old empires that of yore were bolstered up with a view to exploitation are now abandoned to their fate. The only thought now is for the building of a new empire wherein shall be united the existing colonies and everything which it will be possible to take in neighbouring territories or in countries without a master. . Joseph Chamberlain is not, therefore, th inconstant man, the flitting politician depicted by his enemies, and cannot be neglected. He has always had the language and manner of a tru: Radical, always he has remained to the uttermost the Birmingham man.

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