The Liberal Party.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18230, 14 November 1924, Page 12

The Liberal Party.

We arc all familiar with the plaintive defenco of the Liberal Party with which a correspondent whoso letter we print to-day opens hia protest against our remarks yesterday on the political situation in Great Britain. '' England owes a very "groat deal to the great Liberal Party "of the past,, whose principles now prevail amongst all parties." Few people will deny that British Liberals have in the past rendered good service to the kingdom, although bpiniona may and do, differ, regarding the value of some of their achievements. Nor -will it be disputed that some of the principles for which the early Liberals fought are now generally supported, but it is a mistake to suppose that all parj tie 3 have adopted all the principles of | Liberalism. It is notorious that the Socialist or Labour Party has a policy which rests upon a negation of Liberalism, and equally notorious that the Liberal Party to-day has in some particulars abandoned some of the soundest pieces of its political inheritance. As for our correspondent's suggestion that "it is the Tory spirit that has almost "disappeared," wo need not say mueh more than that the word "Tory" is so loosely and often so inaccurately used in political controversy that its use rarely has a precise Significance. Torios, in the true sense of the word, are very far from extinct'in Britain, are not all ishamcd of their and know

' perfectly well that some of their Toryism lives in a majority of. Englishmen. Whatever may have happened to what anyone likes to call "the Tory spirit," the- General Election showed plainly thai rational Conservatism is by far the ■ largest single force in Britain the Con- | servatism which believes it better to conserve and improve the social organisation than to attempt to break it in i pieces. And this result is a natural consequence of the distrust inspired by & Liberal Party which professes moderation but which has steadily drifted towards Socialism. Englishmen cannot afford to allow their action in presentday crises to be directed by their remembrance of useful work done by Liberal statesmen in the past. They may be, and doubtless are, grateful for what their society owes to the work of Liberal reformers of a bygone day, but they do not feel that they are under an obligation to support a Liberal Party which in personnel and in character has completely changed. In New Zealand the position is very similar to the position in Britain. The Liberal Party has gone downhill because it ceased to think or to create and made the 'mistake of supposing that it could rest on its laurels in a society made static. But society is not static. New ideas and new needs and new problems emerge and move and call for action, and the people have no use for a Liberal Party which has no distinctive principles whatever and which has given no sign that it has strength and intelligence to face the problems of the day in the seat of government.

The death of a Canterbury centenarian on Monday reminds us how few survive long enough in any country to arouse doubts of their actual years. The list of those who are known to have lived to bo a hundred years old is so small that the addition of a newname, from whatever country, is always a matter of interest. The most famous of all centenarians, excluding Biblical characters, is "Old Parr," wlxo was born in Shropshire in 1487, and lived to such an age that when he died there were villagers whose grandparents had known him only as an old man. Parr married twice, at 80 and at 122, and according to the records, was still so hearty at 130 that he was able to go out into the fields and thresh wheat. Modern prophets will not be surprised to hear that when his end came .at the age of .148 it was due to a change to an unsuitable diet. Parr had been seized upon by the Earl of Arundel as a '-'remarkable piece of antiquity," and the sudden change to high living in London accomplished in a short time what all the years had failed to do.

Parr's record was considered so remarkable that a resting-place was found for his remains in Westminster Abbey, and until recently liis "score" remained unchallenged. Now, however, there has been discovered a Chinese centenarian, Yuan Kwo-Chang, who claims to be 163; and the claim has made a sufficient impression on the Manchurian war lord, Chang Tso-lin, to earn a special pension. But whether there really lives a Chinaman who is 163, it is probable that thero are to be found in every country in the world to-day a few men, and some women, who have celebrated their centenary—men and women whose memories go back almost to Napoleon, and who have seen a new world arise, with its trams and steamers, and wireless and aeroplanes, and moving pictures. And we naturally ask, if a hundred and sixty, why not two hundred and sixty? And that brings us up against the mystery of death.

This mystery scientists are now attacking. Already they have got as far as to prolong the life of the fruit fly 900 per cent., and to keep alive for a decade tissue cells which were taken from the heart of a chicken embryo and "placed in a> suitable nutrient medium. And it does not detract from the importance of these early experiments that the methods employed could never be applied to human' life. The fact remains, as one savant puts it, that " the non-fixity of the life cycle has" been demonstrated, and there are many conceivable modifications that could affect the human life cycle." If it is argued that most of us are more concerned with the retention of all our physical and mental faculties than the extension of our life cycle—that we would sooner die in harness at sixty than linger on as onlookers to a hundred and sixty—the reply is that the forces which sond us from football to bowls are the forces behind the mystery of death, and that science does not wholly surrender to them. When specialists are tonding fruit flies they are fighting for both the prolongation and the rejuvenation of human life; and it would bo aB reckless to say that the struggle availeth naught as it would be foolish to begin laying plans for our second century,