FUTURE OF LIBERAL PARTY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 135, 9 June 1926, Page 8

FUTURE OF LIBERAL PARTY.

MR. LLOYD GEORGE AND "RECENT

DEFECTIONS."

Speaking at the annual meeting of the 1920 Club at London on April 19. Mr. Lloyd George said that if everybody in the Liberal party were of the same size, colouring, and flavour, it would be a dish which would not he worth setting at a table. He was all for having in every party men of different types and sentiments, and, within limits, of different opinions, too.

They always had the two different types—the pioneers, who wished to stimulate partiee to new efforts; and the other men, who said that the pioneers were doing a lot of harm and should be fired out. They (the Liberal party) had men who were very advanced 30 years ago. (Laughter.) They were men of great tenacity. They clung to the same spot. (Laughter.) Well, they wanted them, too. There was nothing he deprecated more than a policy of proscription on the part of those who were intolerant of people who did not walk as fast as they did. He 'regretted recent defections from the party. He though if there had been more patience it would have been found that the party (was making sound progress.

The story of Liberalism had not yet been told. Whether it would have a definite responsibility for the peoples of this great Empire such as it had had in the past, or whether it would act in combination with others, as it had practically since 1886, and what combination and associations there might be, he was not going to predict. But he wae quite sure of this; —that the central ideas that Liberalism stood for were vital to the life and continuity and progress of this nation and of,the world. Liberty was not as popular as it was when he was young. Liberty was at a discount in many lands. The rulers of Italy mocked at it. They said, "You want prosperity, discipline, authority. You want material well-being. What is all this talk of liberty? Its day has gone." In Russia there was a revolution. A revolution was created by the desire for liberty. Then came in the great sinister force which dethroned liberty almost before it had taken the sceptre into its hand, and said: "No, you don't want liberty. You want the rule of the proletariat." Tn Spain constitutional liberty for the moment had disappeared. Pie did not know the result of the revolution in Greece, but there was no doubt that liberty hnd lost its magic power on this generation. There were other ideas, other appeals.

\ But liberty would come back. It was something which \va9 one of the most vital ingredients in human progress. Material prosperity could never make up for the loss of it. It was because Liberalism represented—in the hour when liberty was discredited and under a cloud—something which was eternal on the way to the emancipation of Man, that he was in favour of every organisation like that club, which brought yourig men and women together to work for it.

He felt very strongly the raiding of the National Health Insurance funds, the taking away of the accumulations of savings of millions of men and women, which had been earmarked and allocated for the protection of the health of the people and their maintenance in time of ill-health. He felt it very strongly because lie had a considerable share in carrying that Act through.