HOIS. H. ASQUITH

Hokitika Guardian, 26 January 1920, Page 1

HOIS. H. ASQUITH

V ij y Electric Telegraph—Copyright.,

LONDON, Jan. 24. Rt. Hon 11. H. Asquith, in a speech at Cambridge, recalled that forty years ago there were in Britain only two parties, now, he eaid, the Labour Party, has come, and it was a most formidable rival. '

He said that Lord Haldane’s magnificent and indeed unparalleled services to his country would yet be vindicated. b-jy time, and that before long.. He expressed the opinion that the heaviest indictment that would be uttered against the Coalition Government was the fact that ,while the Peace Con-

ference had been “ redistributing territories, 2 )a inting maps, an<| imposing here, there and everywhere among their late enemies wliat were simply intolerable and impossible burdens, yet it (the Conference) made no serious or sustained attempt to secure even a foundation for a possible peace with Russia.” The Coalition Government’s Russian policy was, Air ’Asquith said, an ill-in-spired and a mistaken one from the first. Such a large community as Russia must decide for itself—whether, rightly of wrongly, and whether, for ill or for good—what its own form of government should be. Now at last, lie said, tbe Government liad apparently settled on a policy. That policy was just this: “A refusal to enquire.” Could there be better illustration, lie ■asked, of tbe drawbacks of a Coalition Government than “tbi s zig-zag, this series of—compromises, improvisations, accommodations, insincerities, and inconsistencies.”

Dealing with the Home Rule question Mr Asquith said that it was “ impossible to govern Ireland with coercion in one hand and conciliation in the other.” The only way that Ireland could bo made loyal to the Empire wa s to apply to her the principles of the League of Nations, and thus giving to the Irish people, “in the most complete and most uncompromising form, control over their own affairs.” He declared that the Anti-Dumping Bill not only violated all the principles of free trade, but also the fundamental principles of Liberalism. But for the Liberal Government, of which he had been the head, he continued, ,“Wo would have had no enfranchised democracy; we should have had greatly restricted and monopolised trade; and we should have had Labour still at the mercy of capital. It was following principles of the Liberal Party—find by this alone that we could "secure for the country a destiny worthy of its past.” LONDON, Jan. 24. Mr Asquith has accepted the-Paisley Liberals’ invitation to contest the Paisley seat. The" Unionists’ Association there has selected Air AlacKcan a s the Coalition candidate. The are also prospects of the Labourites” adopting Air Owen ns their candidate.'