The Dominion. TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 1912. LIBERALS AND RADICALS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1529, 27 August 1912, Page 4

The Dominion. TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 1912. LIBERALS AND RADICALS.

The suppressed split in the British Liberal party, which occupied a great deal of attention last month, is evidently one that will have good results. The cabled summary of the "bombshell" article by Me. H. W. Massingham in the Daily News of July 15 consisted of little more than the concluding warning to Me. Asquith that if he sought to chain his party to Me. Churchill's naval policy he would loso Mb. Lloyd-George and nine-tenths of "the thinkers and fighters of Liberalism." With the article now before us, we regret tho failure of the cable agent to give us some of Me. Massinghah's antecedent arguments, for they reveal, in the most alluringly . simple fashion, the soul of Radical' demagogy, and the road along which the Radical partisan's mind is moving. After an exordium of announcement that the time had come for candid, even hostile, criticism of the Liberal leaders, Me. Massingham asked "whither is the Liberal party being led," and this is his answer: In domestio policy-with falterings. and errors suck, as beset all Governments at all timos-in a right direction. But iu foreign policy anil in armaments? That is a different story. The two questions are intimately related; are. indeed, merely two aspects of democracy. Yet while oil one question tho avowed appeal is to democratic- opinion, interests, forces; on the other no kind of importance is attached to the favour or the beliefs of Liberal thinkers. Tho appeal is to puro torce, pure materialism, and, as in all such policies, no limit is assigned or assignable to its use. Every year the Chancellor of the Exchequer has to fight, as tho Apostle fought with the beasts in Lphesus, to save enough from tho war services to keep Liberalism in some kind of distinctive attitude and purpose as compared with Toryism. What is his position to-day? It is a desperate position. Unless the Radicals are not—as everything suggests that they arebeing found out in most countries just now, the English public will have little difficulty in reading between the lines of this loftily-phrased picture of Mn. Lloyd-Geoege's difficulties. The Radical game, it is quite obvious, is not to keep Liberalism pure, and to keep it active and fruitful, but to keep it sufficiently different from the policy of the Opposition to lead the democrats into believing that they should support it. Quite frankly, Mi:. Massingham presents Mn. Li.oydGeouge as fighting desperately to starve the Navy in order*, to have a margin for the financing of those schemes of "social justico" which wi)l lead tho ignorant into keeping the Chancellor where he is. In New Zealand the unlamcnted "Liberal" Administrations bent all their energies towards maintaining a fund that would keep up their reputations as the dispensers of "rare and refreshing fruit." Mn. Massingham and Mr. Lloyd-Geouoe arc realising that the game of providing State largesse >.Lo capture new armies of. voters can.-*.

not, be easily played in Great Britain. It can only be played by raiding the war services: only by keeping the Arm,* tuid Nan 'k-low par can they vMuht that margin of reveime^which they want for distribution in vote-buying enterprises. The distinctive attitude and purpose" wnicli they are anxious to conserve tor the Liberal party is the attitude and purpose i>£ the benevolent gentleman who used to appear on the racecourse, with an open umbrella and Su 0 " 115, Thc - V know well ttrat the resources of Britain cannot oe enlarged by a mere Act of Parliament; they know-far better (bcine advocate of' Free-trade) than the J. arm Ketormcrs—that their so-called schemes of "social justice" are humbug; but they cannot bear to see any other party in office. And so they offer the British elector the choice between British naval supremacy and mr. Lloyd-Georoe. Unable to raid anything else, they wish to raid the war services. * Mn. Massisoham pretends that the demand for naval safety is a trick and that Mr. Asquith and Mr! Churchill are helpless little children whom the Daily Mail and Mr. Garvin can lead by the Hose. He says that scores of thousands of Liberals will ask themselves what blindness bas seized their leaders that they do not see in these devices [the representations that Britain must not relax her naval exertions] the resolve to bring about the division of our party and the wreck of our cause." 'llio Government's determination to put the Navy before everything may, indeed, end by wrecking the Liberal party and driving Mr. LloydGeorge into the desert of oblivion, but the Government knows as much about that as anybody. It differs from Mr. Massinohah and those who think with him in believing that it is more important to keep England safe than to keep the Liberal party solid. Mr. Asquith and Mr. Churchill are willing to go a great length—they actually have gone a great length—to keep their party in power, _ but they draw the line at sacrificing the Navy to party solidarity. The revolting Radicals know well enough, or they ought to know, that the more glorious they make England by making her nava'lly weak the more succulent a morsel they will make her for the invader. But their game is to look after to-day and let the future look after itself. Mr. Massingham's picture of the Chancellor as fighting the Admiralty for money to buy votes is one that will surely become historic.