THE DOMINION. SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 1912. A PARTY SPLIT IN BRITAIN.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1515, 10 August 1912, Page 4

THE DOMINION. SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 1912. A PARTY SPLIT IN BRITAIN.

e Evidence that the British Liberal party is threatened with disintegration is accumulating very steadily. On the one hand there is a powerful section of the party in a state of irritation at the refusal of the Ministry to restrict the naval expenditure or water clown its foreign policy. On the other hand an increasing number of Liberals—a fresh ease is recorded to-day—are becoming restive under. the activities of Mr. Lloyd-Geohge. His violence was all very well in 1909 and 1910 when every party nian had his blood up in the fight with the House of Lords; but that fight is over, for the time at least, arid the more moderate Liberals are able to take a calmer view of the Chancellor's significance. And they do not like what they see; they do not like the spirit of lawlessness which he did so much to. encourage, they are not at all- enthusiastic for Home llule, they are alarmed at the Radical land policy of the Chancellor, and they arc shrinking from the Insurance Act. It. is now a couple of months »inen Me. H. W, Jlabsisoham, coming to

the point oi his veiled campaign agausl the Imperialist and mociiV <U> elements in the Government rtild in the party, began to declare war against them, nnd he has been freely using the Daily News as well as his own par.er The Nation to intimidate tho Ministry.

Writing in The Nalinn on June Jo, apropos of the elevation of LotlD Haldane to the Woolsack ttnd of LIONEL (SEELY-"an eSv-ConserVittive nffi rUlt i ,° i ;he hejul of the War Umce, he laid about him as lustily as one would expect of a very "advanced" .Radical and Little Engjandor witnessing something like the isolation ot Mil. Lloyd-Geoboe. "As the Cabinet stands to-day," lie said, it contains one definite Radical. jUR- U.OYD-GEOROE, two Olatlstonian Loud Mokiey nnd Ml). ■aAHCOUJiT, and Mn. Bufexs, who is it httlc difficult to classify." As for the rest, they are- Imperialists, and arc accordingly hopeless. "In times eilch as these," he declared, "when elements of change and eVeli of dissolution aro in tho air, the rechargiug of the Liberal party with fresh knowledge and feeling strikes us as a primary duty of a provident manager of its interests. These words mean, as one critic pointed out, that i? it does not wish to go to pieces, the Government must allow- the Chancellor to dominate it. Two days later Mn. MassisohaJi repeated his sermon in a Daily News article. The Government had been definitely steering, it was urged, towards "Imperialism in foreign policy and a very moderate advance at Home." Gladstonianism had almost ceased to be represented in the Cabinet, and as for Radicalism, its flag was upheld by "one solitary figure, Mb. Lloyd-George, with whom Mr. Chukohill is no longer to be reckoned in • the close association of a year' ago." _ The Editor of The Nation gloomily proceeded:

'What are the factors in such a Ministry which tend to keep the general if tacit Liberal-Labour treaty as a'working instrument of policy? Not very firm, not too reliable. What is its attitude to the. peace question,- to armaments, to Continental relationships, to the overwhelming issue of an.Anglo-German understanding? Not promising, not improving. What kind of touch does it keep with the soldiers of Liberalism, the rank and file who fight the battles and have no great share in the spoils? It might bo a great deal more representative- of mid-dle-class Liberalism without being a whit less able and efficient. The Cabinet is mainly Imperialist. I doubt whether half -a dozen members stood out against :tho step's which last autumn brought us within an ace of war with Germany. I am sure there are not half a dozen such stalwarts to-day. On foreign policy, indeed, the two new members of the Cabinet are, like the new Lord Chancellor, Imperialists. The new outside appoint.ments are Imperialist. In other words, the great mass of the Liberal profess , views on peace, on foreign policy, en reform, on armaments, have moral and political ideas and habits of thought,! which are only represented in tho Cabinet by a tiny fraction of the whole body. And so he solemnly warned. Mr. Asquith that he and his wing were dissatisfied and that unless there was a change, the unity o,f the party would not be maintained till the general election. Of course the Unionist r.arty_ is far from being united, excepting on the Irish question, but no amount of confusion in the enemy's camp will heal the deep-seated dissensions in the Liberal party. It has come nearly to the parting of the ways, and ere long its chief _ men will be forced to choose definitely whether they shall be known as Advanced Radicals or Moderate Liberals. The party contains a large section whose proper place is the Labour camp, and sooner or later these will have to secede from the main body, just as very 'shortly the so-dalled "Liberal" party in Opposition here will have to sort itself out into Liberals and Socialist Radicals. In this country the readjustment will produce two clearly-opposed parties, but in Great Britain it may lead to the three-party system, with Mr. Lloyd-George as the head of the Radical-Socialists. The drift of the less level-headed Liberals towards that State Socialism which is further from true Liberalism than it is from Toryism, hasbeen strong and continuous. In his interesting little book» on "Liberalism," Pbofessoe Hobhouse accepts Lloyd-Georgeism as the natural development of Liberalism, and seeks to show that Liberal principles are a warrant for So-cialist-Radical theories. So many people in England calling themselves and believing themselves to be Liberals, share the same opinions that a third party led by Mr. LloydGeoUge would be so strong that the necessity of preserving England and the Empire would possibly force the moderate Liberals into a compromise with the older wing of the Unionist