SPEECH BY ASQUITH

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 103, 26 January 1920, Page 5

SPEECH BY ASQUITH

INDICTMENT AGAINST COALITION GOVERNMENT

THE IRISH QUESTION

(By Telegraph-Press Association-Copyrifrht (Rcc. January 25, 5.5 p.m.)

London, January 21. Mr. n. n. Asquith, speaking at Cambridge, recalled that forty years ago there were only two parties. Now Labour was a most formidable rival. He said that Lord Haldaue's magnificent and unparalleled services to the country would be vindicated bv time and before long. He expressed the opinion (hat the heaTiest indictment against flic Coalition Government was that while the Peace Conference was redistributing territories, repainting maps, and imposing here, tliere, and everywhere among the Into enemies intolerable and impossible burdens, it made no serious or sustained attempt to secure even a foundation for possibilities of peace with Tiussia. Tho 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, namelv. a, refusal to inquire. Could there'be a better illustration of the drawbacks of Coalition Government than tliis zigzag, this series of compromises, improvisations, accommodations, insincerities, and inconsistencies? Dealing with Home Rule, he .'.aid 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 peple tho most complete and the most nncompromisius form of control over their own affairs. lie declared that tho AntiDnmning Dill not only vio.ated all the principles of Free-trade, but also the fundamental nrineiples of Liberalism, riut for tho Liberal Government of which he had been the head we should have bad 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 tho Liberal Party, and in that way alone, that wo could secure for the country a destiny worthy of its past—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.-Reuter.