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Press, Volume LII, Issue 15750, 17 November 1916, Page 6

News from the Western I'Yont continues to be of the most checring character. It really seems at last as if our men could do what they liked with the Germans. Positions supposed to bo impregnable have been taken, with very modcrato losses- on our side, and once taken have been firmly held. The genoral feebleness of the counterattacks i 6 the best evidence both of the enemy's -weakened "moral" aud his lessened powers of bringing up reserves

I for the purposo of concentrating his forces on any particular point.

What is taking place on the Ancre now is almost a repetition of the successes achieved in the neighbourhood of Thiepval a few weeks ago. As described by the correspondent of "The Times," the ground taken by the British towards Thiepval, was one maze of trenches immediately behind the German front line, which had been occupied and perfected by the. enemy for two years. In the middle of this maze, half-wav to Thiepval, was an elaborate stronghold of trench and dug-out and machine-gun positions, which had been generally known as the Wonderwork or "Wundcrwerk." Thig was so pounded by our guns that it was. when' our men reached there, almost non-existent. In the trenches before and around it. however, the enemy was in strength; but ivhen our men came on tho Germans in most of the trenchcs declined to wait. In some places where they did, there was real bayonet-fighting, which a British sergeant described to the r.orre.s]>ondent as "just lovely." The majority of the enemy, however, bolted across the open, and here they mere caught bv the barrage from the British f.uns. It is no wonder that every letter received from our men at the front breathes the spirit of quiet confidence as to the result of the war.

A very curious crisis in the history of British Liberalism has furnished the English papers with a tine topic for discussion. The Ministry of Munitions took possession of the National Liberal Club for war purposes. The public surrender of the Club was graceful enough, and the majority of the membore, although they thought the Department was not h ;jood manager

sincc it cculd have done better, agreed that they could not reasonably C omplain. The ardently pugnacious' Radical wing, howc\ cr. made a vcrv absurd fuss about it. The "Daily* News." the ''Daily Chronicle." and the "Nation,'' and Mr Massingham in his own person, raged against the Government s action as an outrage of the worst fe ort. The fact that the Government simultaneously commandeered a Conservative club, tho Constitutional, did not mitigate their wrath. There was only '"a delusive fairness" in this raid on both sides. To take an ordinary Conservative club, thoy appeared to argue, was nothing; a Liberal club is. a different thing—"the national centre of a great party and a fccin of intellectual activity." the home .and origin of a. mass of "intellectual and spiritual service." I n fact, the outcries of these ardent Radicals meant nothing if they did not mean that the active Radical regards a Conservative club as a mere place <,f rest and food and small-talk, while a Radical political club is something nearly as sacred as a Christian shrine. The "Nation" actually regarded tho commandeering of tho club as a part of the Government's awful "interdict on thought," and raved in this singular manner: "Do we propose to entrust the unchockcd interpretation of our creed to militarists and bureaucrats? If so. we had better scrap our politics, our Parliaments, our clubs, our freedom, and find i u the process of changing all these things to the likeness of the German State that we have no quarrel with Germany save such as springs from the unreconciled ambitions of two Empires." One cannot wonder that an unrepentant Tory could not forbear commenting in this way:— id "^ ut .„. how to endure patiently the lecksnifban pretension that a political club is really a centre of spiritual service—a, sort of annexe to Whitelield's iabernacle or a P.S.A. meeting-place ? Ihis assumption of superior virtue must, we are sure, be not least disagreeable to thoso o n whose behalf it i« made [and who arc modestly conscious that they do not in fact vary from the kind'y race of men. but have just the same organs, dimensions, senses, affections and passions as others. If it were possible to take at its face value all this nauseous cant then would the ground of complaint be even less substantial than it is. For those who affect to regard a place where thoy take their ease and meet their friends and sustain tho inner man as a sort of Little Bethel can the more easily repair the loss they fear so much to suffer. Thoy prove their club to have been a redundancy. J3ut what shall bo said-of t)io spiritual pretensions of those- who, in spite of aH the lessons of the last two years, in spite of tho fact that hundreds of their fellow-countrymen ar 0 dailv sufferin<> death and mutilation for their socuritv" are not only indisposed to make the smallest surrender of their own creature comforts, but are indignant that such a sacrifice should be asked of them?"