THOUGHTS OF LEADERS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19737, 13 March 1926, Page 23

THOUGHTS OF LEADERS.

FUTURE OF LIBERALISM, OMNISCIENIE OF THE PRESS CONTINENTAL SOCIALISM. (Fbom Od.b Own Cobbespondenx.) LONDON, January 26. Mr Churchill at Bolton: . . “If the Socialists’ only object is a s. deal, and an improved standard ot ing for the masses, and a -mid hand against monopolies and vested what is the need to go and teach thou sands of good-hearted English people o perform these ridiculous antics ot Continental Socialism (Cheers). the good of making them all swallow the drea'v doctrines of Karl Marx; to teach them to sing the Internationale out ot tune (laughter); to regard the National Anthem as a party tunc; to teach them to applaud and cheer and champion the red Hag, which has brought nothing but disaster wherever it h<v3 been flown; and to look with disdain and dis ike on the Union Jack, which for centuries has sheltered the growth of freedom in every quarter of the globe? , , ‘That is Ihe condemnation we make ol them. Let them quit these gospels of envy, hatred, and malice. bet them eliminate them from their politics and programme. I ot. the abandon the utter fallacv, the grotesque, erroneous, fatal blunder ot be.ioving that by limiting the enterp-.se of man, by riveting the shackles of a false equality upon the efforts of 11 the different forms and different classes of human enterprise, they will increase the well-being 01 the world. Let them abandon these: let them hold firm to principles of individual liberty, and strike against abuses wherever they mav be found, and they will inimediately restore in England the situation of two parties which may differ profoundly in the ordinary struggle and ebb and How of party polotics, but which, nevertheless, will be united on certain grave fundamental issues vital to the welfare and prosperity of the nation as a whole. LIBERALISM NOT DEAD. Lord Oxford and Asquith at Hull: “I am here to tell you—and to tell my fellow Liberals throughout the length and> breadth of the country—that so far as the great actual living conditions of our British politics are concerned the Liberal party intends, and is determined, to retain its identity and its independence, vv e received a rebuff at the polls at the last general election, but the Liberal party to-day show r s more signs of effective vitality than the other two political parties combined. Liberals are a small band in the House, but in political knowledge and resource they arc more than a match for the Government and the official Opposition. The party has been receiving and is receiving growing accessions to the real, personal, and political resources which public life in this country possesses. I say to the Liberal Party, this is no time for compromise or for any coalition. It is a time to stand upon your own legs, to maintain yourself by your own resources, and to present not merely strong consciousness, that you have vital principles and policy that make for the government of this country in the future on Liberal lines.” LANDLORDISM BROKEN DOWN. Mr Lloyd George at Cardiff: “We make uo attack on any class, landlords, fanners, mortgagees, not even lawyers (laughter) but we say that the landlord system Las broken down, through no fault of the landlords in the main. Landlordism, whose function it has been in the past .to supply permanent capital, expenditure on the land, has broken down largely through the taxation of the war, and is no longer able to fulfil that function, and in consequence the land of this country is gradually deteriorating and producing less. A good deal of the land is not as well cultivated as it ought to be and would be if the cultivator had complete security that would enable him to reap the full benefit of his efforts and expenditure. The largest class of cultivators —the agricultural labourers —are still underpaid in many areas. Wo have in this country a phenomenoi that we cannot witness in any other country in Europe or in the world—a landless peasantry of 900.000. That is three cultivators without land to every one with land. Men who have a bit of land have no time for Bolshevism. Get your 900,000 labourers rooted in the land. They have not yet been captured by Bolshevism. That is the one thing that stands between this country and Socialism; —the fact that the agricultural labourer has not yet been captured by them. Let us see that justice is done to him, and done in time, and Liberalism alone can do it.” LORD BIRKENHEAD AND THE PRESS. Earl of Birkenhead at the London Press Club: “We politicians recognise the power of the Press. Even grey-haired specialists who have grown old in the Foreign office and have made a study of the subject, all their lives, know less about the intricacies of their special part of the world than the young gentleman who has had the good fortune to spend perhaps six months’ apprenticeship on one of those newspapers which can be secured day by day at a quite i: expensive price.—(Laughter.) While we politicians are giving such powers and such industry as we possess to the study of the various complex problems which come before Governments to-day, and while we even muddle through three whole Cabinets, confusing each new topic with our cumulated incapacity (Laughter) and in the end have the greatest difficulty in reaching a conclusion at all, we have only got to read the leading article in—well, I shall not name the paper (laughter) to find the whole stated with such a confident certitude that it shames one to think how uninformed are the politicians. (Renewed laughter). “We read one day of ‘The Four Black Pennies,’ which are going to impoverish an already impoverished, nation; another day we read of impending massacres in Mesopotamia: and on the third day we can no longer hope to avoid a foul and bloody rising in Palestine. (Laughter). If one of those things happens well, it is a ‘winner.’ —(Renewed laughter.) Supposing the thing does not turn ont right, well, f >re are lot of other thinss to talk about. Mesopotamia has gone, but what is wrong with China? (Laughter). And there are always Moscow and Peru, and it would be very odd indeed if a murder or 1 did not turn up in the interval.— (Laughter). I confess you have got us all beat. (Renewed laughter). The Government is really gratefr to the Press, and in its individual capacities it looks to the Press with a liv, 'v sense of favours yet to come.’ There has never been, not in the prime of Athens, nor in the great davs of revolutionary France, or to-day in that great Remiblic in whose harbour still stands the statue of Liberty (laughter), a greater, freer, a more independent or more consistent Press than that of Great Britain.” TRIBUTE TO JEWISH EDUCATION. Mr Winston Churchill, speaking to the President and members of the Jewish Religious Education Board: “Almost continually in my political life I have been in friendly, pleasant relations with the Jewish community. I have not only been brought in contact with the Jews in my political work here in England, but when I visited Palestine I had an opportunity of seeing the marvellous work which is being achieved by the Zionists in the reclamation of barren desert wastes and the creation, in the midst of the most inhospitable surroundings, of smiling lands, with verdure and moisture and trees and fruits and wine. (Cheers.) Your educational system is one which has grown up as the result of many political battles and as the result of compromise, by which policital battles in England happily are nearly always settled. In the case of private schools for a denomination like your own, it is essential that there should be effectual voluntary provision to maintain that religious education which is supplied in the ordinary course in the non-provided schools. You are right to make this continuing voluntary effort to promote the religious education of the children. The voluntary effort behind the religious movement is far more effective than an equal effort which is managed in a mechanical manner through the agency of the State. . . . That it should have survived and reserved its strength, its destiny, its power for good, its power to develop and to guide and aid by its development tho march of the human mind, would never have been achieved or completed but for the main sheet-anchor to which the Jewish people have been attracted, unshakable in their unswerving adheren. 3 to the faith of their fathers. In our island I believe it to be true that the storv of the Jews has been a banpier one than in almost any other land.”