The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 1923. THE DUTY OF LIBERALISM.

Auckland Star, Volume 55, Issue 3, 4 January 1924, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 1923. THE DUTY OF LIBERALISM.

For the cause that lacks asaistanoe, For the icrong that needs resistance, For tlie future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

; The prediction of Mr. .1. L. Garrin, editor ol" tlie Lomlon ••Observer."' that at the next election the Liberal party will be split and the two-party system will be restored—"the sooner the hotter" — will please Conservatives in every country where there is a triangular political contest. In these condition* Conservatism is most anxious that Liberalism should join it in its light against "revolution,"' and the only explanation it professes to bo able to find for Liberalism's refusal to commit suicide is party selfishness. The Christ - church "Press," for example, which never loses an opportunity to deride .Yew Zealand Liberalism, finds an "extreme similarity" between Liberal tactics at Home and here, which "compels even the least interested to reaiisc how rapidly Liberalism is disintegrating." The threeparty system, it say*, "would be vexatious enough it' three real pnrties existed; it becomes intolerable when one party is a dunimy." Liberals who are bent on change, it says, will choose the party of revolution, and those who desire cautious progress will join "the moderates." Both the "Observer" and the "Press" arc Conservative papers, and the wish of Liberal disappearance is father to the thought, though this does not excuse such absurd depreciation as to describe as h dunimy a party 108 strong led by Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George. Liberalism has a definite part to play in politics, and it is not going to disappear to please its Tory enemies. It represents the middle course between two extremes, and it is because it stands for this moderation, and a great tradition which is rich in hope for the future, that Liberals regard it as their duty to the nation to keep their party in being. We dealt recently with the argument that it is only selfish party interest that stands in the way of British Liberals joining a coalition, and we are interested to find that in an issue of the "Weekly Westminster." published shortly before the elections, so prominent a Liberal as Mr. Ramsay Muir uses similar words. "One of the obligations of a Liberal party." he says, "is to ensure that Liberal ideals and principles are made operative in the life of the nation. This can be done in a real degree, though imperfectly, while the party is in a minority, so long as it is vigorous and united. It can't be done, at all if the party is shattered beyond remedy." Liberal principles are a sacred trust —the Conservative would say the same of Conservative principles —and to put them in peril of total extinction would be too big a price to pay for the uncertain hope of political stability.