The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Nor Uro. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1926. LORD OXFORD RETIRES

Southland Times, Issue 20002, 16 October 1926, Page 6

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Nor Uro. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1926. LORD OXFORD RETIRES

It is impossible to dissociate the recent disputes in the Liberal Party from the announcements of Lord Oxford and Asquith’s relinquishment of the leadership. Some time ago there were reports that his health was causing his friends anxiety, but* undoubtedly the prospect of a contest with the more vigorous Lloyd George has hastened the leader’s desire to be quit of the acrimonious atmosphere into which the divided opinions of the Liberals have led the organisation. Lord Oxford’s retirement marks the withdrawal from Imperial politics of a man whose name will always be associated with some of the greatest events of the Empire’s history. He states he will not drop out of public life, but in Britain a man without a party is out of politics. He succeeded to the leadership of the liberal Party on the death of Campbell-Bannerman and he owed that honour not merely to the dialectic skill he had already shown, not merely to his achievements as one of the principal lieutenants of the dead leader, not merely to his great moral courage and scrupulous honesty, but also to the faith of such men as Morley in his capacity to advance the cause of Liberalism without falling a complete victim to the Radicals in the party. Mr Asquith, as he was then and remained until he realised that his days of usefulness in the House of Commons were numbered, was never even the democrat that Campbell-Bannerman was and though he led the party to the introduction of many measures which were decidedly Radical in character, he was never a Radical. He was really an intellectual Liberal, with one foot always on the Right side of the party, never able to give his heart first place in the prosecution of the party’s campaign. Mr Lloyd George, that ’ardent advocate who was the fiery Ney of the army, could plunge boldly ahead because his heart told him he was right, laying about him regardless of the hurt he was causing and surer of his friends than of his readiness to stand by them; but Mr Asquith, coldly and calmly, followed the lead of his intellect, cared less for the attitude of his friends than for his loyalty to them, and breasted the storm conscioift that - the course he was following was the wisest. In modern times no man was put to more searching tests personally and emerged with more credit. He was pressing forward with a campaign having as its aim the changing of social conditions in the Old Country, and some of his closest supporters were inclined at times to wonder if he was too patient in the face of opposition. His fiercest lieutenants were assailed bitterly, and so was he, but when the storm was at its ugliest, when charges threatening the moral reputations of his colleagues were pressed forward ruthlessly he shaped his course so that he satisfied at once his loyalty to his friends and his loyalty to the high office he held. It is typical of the man that under the greatest possible provocation he never descended to personalities, he never replied to personal attacks on himself, though he was keen to enter the lists on behalf of his friends and make their foes his own. Even in the war when he might have felt as Caesar towards Cassius, he did not belittle himself with personal recriminations. His one outburst came in a dignified, a convincing answer and reproof to those critics who in the fury of their disappointment sought to oust the Government by maligning the dead Kitchener: the Government might fail, but the defence of Kitchener would be complete. It was in such moments that Mr Asqpfth as a Parliamentarian was at his best. His ardour never led him into extravagances, never cluttered up his speech, but was revealed in clear, calm tones which played through dignified sentences and demolished the fallacies in the arguments he attacked. His dispassionate examination of the Tariff question was too much for Joseph Chamberlain, it was too much for the more elegant sophistries of the other eloquent Parliamentarian of the pre-war days, Arthur Balfour. Mr Asquith did not possess the magnetism necessary to electrify great crowds, which

is the explanation of the superiority of his speeches in cold print over those of say, Mr Lloyd George, whose appeal is more to sentiment than to sense. He was not possessed of the evangelical spirit, the selfsustaining belief of Gladstone, but it is to be remembered that he, and not the more ardent leader, put the Home Rule Bill on the Statute Book, and would have seen it through if the war had not intervened. When the war broke over Europe, Mr Asquith it was who marshalled public opinion definitely against Germany. Sir Edward Grey’s speech was a clear statement of the nation’s position, but it was Mr Asquith who shredded the German arguments and led the nation into war, not with cries of intoxicated patriotism, but with the clear-eyed recognition that with a great task before us there would be no sheathing of the sword until justice was done and the enemies of peace were defeated. He was always a constitutionalist, always a Parliamentarian and his inability to meet the exigencies of the war in those early terrible days was due largely to his adherence to the forms in which his faith was founded. But in all the attacks levelled at him he never thought of deserting a colleague. He himself was deserted and those fierce foes who had sought for a long time to pull him down, declared when he fell that it was like a pin dropping, so little stir his removal made. They lived to learn that in the tumult of war even the greatest may fall without causing much noise. He could at least say that he fell without loss of dignity, without incurring the reproach of his friends. After the war the struggle was beyond him. The fever of the post-war days did not fit men for listening to intellectuals, they pursued the people who could make slogans, who could speak in the tejms of newspaper headlines, and it may be said that his career closed with the election which saw the smashing of the Liberal Party. Later when the party was re-united superficially, the old struggle between the Left and Right sections, between the Radicals and the Liberals waited the moment for renewal. Mr Lloyd George, secure in the leadership of the Parliamentary section, proceeded wiih the fight and disruption was inevitable. The quarrel over the Strike was merely an incident in the contest, but it must have shown the leader that his reign was over. Unable to effect re-union he could do only one tiling: retire and leave the battle to the younger men. And so he passes out of the line, confident that Time will do him justice, that his friends are still his friends and that he still commands the respect of his opponents.