HOME POLITICS.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16033, 26 January 1920, Page 3

HOME POLITICS.

SPEECH BY MR ASQUITH

Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. LONDON, January 24.

Mr Asquith, speaking at Cambridge* recalled that forty years ago there were two parties. Now Labour was a most formidable rival. He said that Lord Haldane’s magnificent unparalleled services to the country would be vindicated by time—and before long. He expressed the opinion that the heaviest indictment of the Coalition Government was that while the Peace Conference was redistributing territories, repainting maps and imposing burdens, it made no serious or sustained attempt to secure even the foundation of possibilities of peace with Russia. The Coalition’s Russian policy was ill-inspired and mistaken from the first. Such a large community as Russia must decide for itself —whether rightly or wrongly, whether for ill or good—its own form of Government. Now, at last, the Government had apparently settled on a policy, namely, a refusal to inquire. Could there he a better illustration of the drawbacks of a Coalition Government than this zigzag, this series of compromises, improvisitions, accommodations, insincerities, and inconsistencies?

Dealing with Home Rule* Mr Asquith said that it was impossible to govern Ireland with coercion in one hand, and conciliation in the other. The only way that Ireland could be made loyal to the Empire was to apply the principles of the League of Nations, giving to the Irish people in a most complete and most uncompromising form control over her own affairs.

Mr Asquith declared that the AntiDumping Bill not only violated all the principles of free trade, but also the fundamental principles of Liberalism. But for the Liberal Government, of which he had been the head, we should have had no enfranchised democracy. We should have had greatly restricted and monopolised trade, and had Labour still at the mercy of Capital. It was by following the principles of the Liberal Party, and this alone, that we could secure for the country a destiny worthy of its past.

TO CONTEST PAISLEY SEAT. LONDON, Jannary 22. Mr Asquith has accepted the Paisley invitation to contest the seat. The Paisley Unionists' Association has selected Mr Mackean as Coalition candidate, and there are also prospects of the extreme Labourites adopting Mr Owen as their candidate.