THE LIBERAL CLEAVAGE

Lyttelton Times, Volume CVI, Issue 12588, 24 August 1901, Page 2

THE LIBERAL CLEAVAGE

LORD ROSEBERY’S “LAST PHASE." [From Our Correspondent.] V LONDON, July 20. The position of the Liberal party this week cannot be better summed up than it is in “Punch’s” cartoon, which pictures the Leader of the Opposition before a looking-glass laboriously trying on a coat Which meets in front but behind is rent from top to bottom. “Right Hon. Sir H-nry C-fnpb-11 B-nn-rm-n (after a successful effort): Well, thank goodness! I’ye got the two sides to meet.” But no sooner .has the Liberal leader pulled bis party coat of many colours together in front, than, a still greater Liberal leader points out that the split is past repair. Lord Rosebery has broken his five years’ silence. He displays the chasm to the public gaze. But he does hot—Marcus Curtius like—throw himself into it and cause it to close. The City Liberal Club asked him to address it on the political situation, and Lord Rosebery with academic and philosophical aloofness expresses his views in a letter, not a speech. Ho as convinced, he says, “that there is a great Liberal force in the country, that it could effectively combine on a domestic policy, and that it is capable of indefinite extension. As to domestic policy it has indeed a great opportunity. Bub it can only become a power when it has made up its mind on Imperial questions, which are at this moment embodied in the war. The whole Empire has rallied to the war. What is the attitude of the Liberal party? Neutrality and an open mind. This is an impossible attitude, arid! only spells Liberal impotence. No. party can exist on such conditions. The area of comprehension is too wide. On this question it embraces the human race. And this question, is vital, morally and politically. Morally, either tie war is just or unjust; cither the methods Are uncivilised or legitimate. If the war be unjust and its methods uncivilised, our Government, and our nation are criminal, and the war should be stopped at way cost. If the war be just, carried on By means which are necessary and lawful, it is our duty to support it with all our might in order to bring it to a prompt and successful conclusion. These are supreme issue’s; none greater ever .divided two hostile parties. How, then, can one party agree to, differ on them? Cavaliers and Roundheads might almost as well have combined on the basis of each maintaining their different opinions on the policy of Charles I. w . . The severance is one nob simply on the war, which will terminate with the war, but a sincere, fundamental and! incurable antagonism of principle with regard to the Empire at large, and our consequent policy. One school, blind, to the developments of the world, is avowedly insular; the other places as the first article of its creed the responsibilities and maintenance of our free and beneficent Empire. Take, for example, Sir Wilfrid Lawson and Sir Edward Grey, both honoured names In. Liberalism. Both hold with intense conviction opinions on, foreign and Imperial policy which cannot by any conceivable compromise be reconciled. And yet the party is to unite on the recognition and toleration of bqth. A party cannot contain these two schools of thought, and remain an efficient instrument. The two sections may call themselves by the same name and row in the same boat. But if so, the boat can never advance, for. they are rowing in opposite directions. Until the crew make up their mind towards what point they are to row, their bark can never move, it can only revolve. The real cause of the weakness of the Liberal party is an honest and irreconcilable division of opinion on a group of questions of the first importance. One school or tbe other must prevail if the Liberal party is once more to become a force. Until that time arrives it is of no use to speak.of the grand old principles of the Liberal party.” This is a lucid and logical statement of the situation l , and as Lord Rosebery says the question of what these principles are as applied to the British Empire, in the present condition of the world is a matter of national importance. This, he says, “is a crisis in our history, which may have an unlimited effect on cur future.” True, oh Lord, but what do you propose to do at, this time when “ foreign hostility and international competition need all the vigilance, power and ability at our command?” Apparently to “sib on a stile and continue to smile,” for he declares that he has no desire to re-enter the arena of party politics, and will never voluntarily return to it, bub that he believes “ that there is a useful and uncoveted place in the Commonwealth for on© who, having held high office, and having no desire to hold it again, can speak his mind with absolute independence.” We have had enough of “words, words, words.” What is wanted is a leader,with the experience, ability and standing of Lord Rosebery, who will place himself at the head of the Liberal Imperialists, lay down some practical principles, and devote all his energy to the formation of a strong patriotic Liberal party, free from pro-Boers andl Little Englanders. Bub it looks as if Lord Rosebery were philosopher rather than politician. Tbe Press as a whole condemns Lord Rosebery’s attitude as candid critic, and describes him variously as a signpost which points the way blit “does not walk dt, a pensiver outsider, a, “sage,” a sleeping partner, a political Napoleon in the “ Last Phase ” on a self-constituted St Helena. The “Daily OhronkCs’’sums irp the situation thus:—“The Liberal Imperialists must try to permeate the whole mass. In the country there is a great body of opinion AVlr.ch. is Liberal at heart, and •which only awaits a National Liberal lead in order to show its Liberalism at the polls. The idea that “Imperialism” of the kind that Lord Rosebery advocates is inconsistent with devotion to social reform and with a progressive creed is an entire delusion. One has only to look to the colonies to see its refutation. In Great Britain there are strong reserves of Liberalism.. They are composed of men who desire to further many social causes, and who recognise strongly the necessity for searching reforms in our educational system, and in every •branch of the national organisation. But they are devoted also to our ‘ free and beneficent _ Empire.’ They do not accept it grudgingly as an unwelcome burden ; still less do they regard it as a ‘piratical ’ enterprise. Nor, on the ether hand, do they rejoice in it as an instrument cf vainglorious bounce and aggression. Rather does its maintenance appeal to them as a trust, an opportunity, and therefore a. duty. If the Liberal Party is to resume its old position in the State, it must combine such ideas as these, with the pursuit of domestic reform.” SIR EDWARD GREY’S VIEWS. By an interesting coincidence it fell to Lord Rosebery’s lieutenant, Sir Edward Grey, to be the first to reply to his former chiefs letter. Sir Edward, at Peterborough, declared that if Lord Rosebery wanted the party brought to one mind, he should give it a lead. Sir Edward enunciated three, things that the Liberal Party had to do: get rid of the distrust attached to it with regard to external affairs, prove that Imperialism is not Jingoism! viz., “an inability to express our pride in the British Empire without appearing to pub the Empire in antagonism with the rest of the world,” and to show that on. homo affairs the party has a fertile mind. Education, temperance, overcrowding, “cue man one vote,” these social reforms required attention. The war. Sir Edward maintained, had been carried on. more humanely than any 'previous Avar, he opposed a general amnesty, and refused to make any speech lending colour to “an unworthy imputation on our troops that the war is not being conducted, by legitimate methods.” A REUNION OF LIBERAL IMPERIALISTS AND UNIONISTS REQUIRED. Sir Edward’s speech only proved how wide is the gulf between the ■lmperialists and the Little Englanders and pro-Boers. As a matter of 'fact, the'country labours under the disadvantages of a make-believe situation. Horae Rule is dead as a door-

nail, and there is now no real difference between the Liberal Unionists and th© LJberai Imperialists. Avoilld bs simply a reunion. As' it is, the Liberal Imperialists cannot make headway because they haA’e on their back the pro>Boer OM Man of the Sea. The Liberal Unionists, on the other hand, cannot carry out a really progressive Liberal policy of domestic social reform because they hay© to compromise. Avith the Conservatives. Mt Heber Hart is the first to state frankly the advisability cf a coalescence of these, two great branches of the Liberal Party. He puts it tersely in the “Times’:—- IhO Unionists' must : ha\'o our co-operation if they are to Avithstand the reactionary tendencies of Toryism. We need their assistance if we are to relegate the Little Luglanders Lo- the outskirts of the Liberal The oountrv is sick of the futility of the Hotel Cecil, and the true solution of the political problem: lies not in a patchedup true© between Imperialists i aI1 “ proBoers, but in the union of Liberal patriots. PLOUGHING THE LONELY FURRO'Vy. Lord Rosebery dotted the “i’ s letter yesterday, in his speech at- mb dbnual meeting of the City Liberal C.ub. The most important of his utterances were I must plough my furrow alone, but bmqr© I get to the end of it it is psofcibl© that I may find myself not alone, ’ &fld hiß expression of a hope that in a reconstituted Liberal party “ there might be comprised those Liberal Unionists, ' who e.t’o ®ofe Liberal than some of their representatives who do not conceive that- they have lost right to the first adjective _ of their complicated name, and that their is to support a Tory Government. ASQUITH’S ASPIRATIONS’.’ Mr Asquith, at IhVmucfcdiscussed dinner, Avhich has at last been, dined, gave a spirited and patriotic exposition of what the policy of the Liberal party towards the 'Empire should by. H® denied the accusation that the Liberal party was divided into tAVo water-tight compartments, one filled with Little Englanders, the other Avith Liberal Imperialists, and yet the whole of his eloquent speech Avas in effect a condemnation not only of the extreme proBoers bub of that very leader _ in a vote of confidence to Avhom he hid joined) Only a feAV days before. Sir Henry CampbellBannerman referred' to our methods of barbarism. Mr Asquith, while reserving the right to criticise the Government, said that that criticism should “start with the assumption that British officers, British soldiers, aye, and even British Governments, whatever faults or errors of judgment they may have committed', are animated by humanity and consideration for the feelings of those to AVhom tlie fortunes of Avar have compelled them to he opposed.”. Referring to the Steyn letters, be declared that our duty was to prevent the continuance of the destructive delusions entertained by the Boerg as to the grovring uneasiness of public opinion l . But whence did- those delusions arise but from the utterances of the Little Englanders and pro-Boera? A NATIONAL PARTY. ‘ In his definition of the attitude of the Liberals to the Empire Mr Asquith was at his best. The- Empire, he said, was “ tho greatest and most fruitful experiment the Avorld had ever seen in the corporate union of free and self-governing communities. . , , Great colonial statesmen from the great Liberal democracies, wyhero they are carrying year by year democratic reforms upon a scale and Avith uncompromising idealism that would stagger the most progressive thinker in. this country, all say to me, ‘ Hoav is it that you, tho Liberal party Of Great Britain, with Whose social aspirations and whose legjSlititft programme we are in complete sympathy, have allowed your opponents to monopolise and 'exploit for their oaati patty purposes the name and prestige of the Empire?’ If the Liberal’party is to become not only the dominant political force in this .country, but the acknowledged. Centre end fountainhead of Liberal ideas throughout the length and breadth hjs/MnjeSty’is dowinieno, We must be firmer in our faith; or; at aiiy rate, more articulate in ite expression;” ■ A National party was wanted. “If the Liberal party is to succeed it must appeal to sober-minded and level-headed men in all strata of humanity .and in all quarters of the King’s dominions. It must first convince the people that it is a national party to which yon can safely entrust the fortunes of tho Empire. And nCxt, that it is the Liberal partv, distinguished in tradition, in principle, in spirit from 'those to whom it is opposed; the party Avliich neither fears nor favours classes or interests,, the, party which strived everywhere and dt all times to enrich the national character and intelligence, to AA'ideu the range of opportunity, and to raise the standard rite life.” But so long as the Little Englanders and' pro-Boers ire iri the party it Avill nob convince the "people that it is a party to Avliich the Erhpirc can be safely entrusted. Mr Asquith is trying hard to. rim a threelegged race with Sir Henry Campbell-Ban-nerman, bub “it won’t go.” A renunciation of Home Rule and a re-union of all real patriotic Liberals is the only tune; St Cecilia’s organ ia about played out.