Evening Post. THURSDAY, JANUARY 20, 1910. THE TIDE OF BATTLE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 16, 20 January 1910, Page 6

Evening Post. THURSDAY, JANUARY 20, 1910. THE TIDE OF BATTLE.

The result of the 42 polls taken on Tuesday is that the Unionists have won 13 more seats and the Liberals one. A net gain for the Unionists of 12 seats' in 42 contests represents th.c best day's work that they have done yet. The actual total is not quite so large as those of the two preceding days, which were 13 and 16 respectively, but the proportionate gain was decidedly heavier on Tuesday. The aggregate net gain of the Unionists is now 41 in the 230 English and Scotch constituencies whose returns are to hand at the time of writing. As there are 337 of these constituencies still to be polled, our inference from the first day's polls that the net Unionist gain would be about 100 continues to look a probable one. If the counties do not upset the calculation, Mr. Asquith's majority in the late House of 334 would be reduced to 134, and this margin would be almost exactly represented by the Labour men and the Nationalists. The parallel with Mr. Gladstone's position in 1885, to which the Daily Chronicle has referred, would then be very close. Exactly half of the House of Commons elected that year was Liberal — the numbers being Liberals 335, Conservatives 249, Nationalists 86. Mr. Asquith's position promisee — or threatens — to be very similar, if we are justified in""including the Labour Party among his supporters. Otherwise it will be decidedly worse than Gladstone's, who had no such independent phalanx to reckon with. In any event Mr. Asquith will be as dependent as his predecessor upon the Irish vote— unless "all moderate men and wise Liberals" determine to relievei him from so embarrassing a position by voting in the opposite way to that in which they are urged to rally by the Daily Mail. The most regrettable feature of Tuesday's polling from the personal standpoint is the defeat of Colonel Seely, the Under-Secretary for the Colonies. He was returned as a Conservative at a byelection in 1900, but fiscal reform an,d Chinese labour proved too much for him, and finding further allegiance to Mr. Balfour impossible, he resigned his seat in 1904, and was re-elected by the same constituency — the Isle of Wight — as a Liberal without opposition. The constituency had never returned a Liberal before, and apparently was not expected to do so again, for at the general election he abandoned it for the Abercromby Division of Liverpool. Personal reasons had probably, however, something to do with the change, since the Abercromby Division, which had been consistently Conservative since its foundation, offered no stronger prima-facie inducement to a Liberal. The gallantry of Major Seely, as he then was, had its reward in a victory by the narrow margin of 199 votes I on that occasion, and it is no matter for surprise that the result has now been reversed. Colonel Seely has done so well at the Colonial Office that it is to be hoped that some other constituency ma£ soon be found for him. The contest in another division of Liverpool has a personal interest for New Zeaianders. Mr. E. G. Jellicoe, formerly of this city, who polled more than 5000 votes for the Walton Division at the general election of 1906, though he was then en route from New Zealand, had to be content on Tuesday with the sorry total of 491. The reason is not that Mr. Jellicoe's personal attentions to the constituency were so unattractive as to alienate ninety per cent, of the electors who had previously supported him, but that he was on the Liberal ticket when he first stood, and off it on the second attempt. Other striking examples of the power of party have been supplied at Preston and at East Marylebone. In 1906 Mr. Harold Cox was returned for Preston as a Liberal with 8538 votes to his credit, and he has shown himself in the House to be one of the most clear-headed and strong-backed men in public life. But as a Liberal of the old school he objected to Old Age Pensions and the land proposals of the Budget almoEt as Btrongly as to Tariff Reform, and so, neither party having room for him, he was at the bottom of the Preston poll with 2704 votes. We may remark in passing that another sterling man — Sir John Gorst, who had previously been on the Conservative side but as a social reformer was won over to Liberalism by the Budget — also went down at Preston in a Unionist triumph which captured both seats by majorities representing turnover of about 2000 votes. In East Marylebone the fate of Mr. Richard Jebb supplies from the opposite camp another warning of the perils of independence. Tariff Eeform and "Colonial nationalism" — the phrase is his own coinage — have had no sturdier or more enlightened advocate than Mr. Jebb, who was selected as the Unionist candidate for East Marylebone by the lending party organisation in the district as soon as Lord R. Cecil had been induced to take his freetrade heresy to Blackburn. But Mr. Jebb has spoken almost as freely as we have ourselves of Mr. Balfour's shuffling with the fiscal question, and the result is that, in spite

of the cabled report that the differences among the Unionists had been healed, he is rewarded with 702 votes, while some pliant party cipher heads the poll with 3134. Verily the way of the non-trim-mer is hard!