WHAT WILL LLOYD GEORGE DO NOW?

Hokitika Guardian, 29 November 1924, Page 4

WHAT WILL LLOYD GEORGE DO NOW?

(Ily the Rev. J. J. North for the “Lyttelton Times.”) • Thousands of people are asking that question. Indeed, it is an inevitable question. The recent election leaves it as an outstanding conundrum. It teases the British mind. Answers are returned as separate as the poles. Like till his great predecessors l.loyd George is both loved and haled, both to the nth degree. That was Gladstone’s fate and Dig/.y’s and Earnell’s.

That mail his party deem a hero His foes a Judas or a Nero.

But those who hate the Welshman nvist must admit that of all Britishers he is easily the first in the world's eye. No other man of our blood landing on the shores of this Dominion would receive such a welcome as he. No other orator would so enthuse the thousands who would tread on each other to hear him. 11 is recent tour in the United States was that of a king. Yet this master of assemblies, this “win-thc-war" premier is at the head of the most thoroughly routed of all modern political parties. There are forty-three Liberals. " All that is left of them, left of four hundred.” The prophets are busily handling the possibilities. Can the Liberal Rnrty survive P Can so manhandled a group lilt again their heads. Here is the Tory Rnrty openly committed to what Lord Randolph Churchill called “ the Tory De-

mocracy.” While the Liberals were bathing their clothes were stolen. The “Squire and Raison Rally ” has persuaded the enlarged democracy and returns with a thumping majority. They underwrite ideas that have always worn the blue brand of l.ibeialisie. On the other band is the Labour Rnrty securely seated as his .Majesty’s Opposition. They have been sobered by office. They have famous foreign results to their credit.and they have .Mr Snowden’s budget. They till the old Liberal role of pathfinders in unexplored folds <i| social activity. With their expound.-.I programme annexed l.v riglil and uilli their tentative program lie anticipated bv the left what room remains for that great party to whom the nation is profoundly in debt. Nothing other than a hardening Toryism on the right, or a development of screaming Bolshevism on the left will make right away for this once potent party. .Mexico has about twenty different political parties, till wearing smart labels, and all represented, in the Senate. Rcrhaps that explains .Mexico. But the blunt Britisher is sorely bothered if more than two parties are in the political, field. Third, issues on ballot papers, and in division lobbies play the devil with John Bull. This simple fact makes the future of the Liberal Rnrty dark indeed. The comfort is that “ a rose by any other name will smell as sweet.”

There are people who foresee l.loyd George as dedicated to the task of galvanising Liberalism,. They see him toiling desperately to overcome the handicap, to turn the tide, to reach again the place of power. Wo do not share tlie vision. We do not anticipate a return of D.L.G. to No. 10 Downing Street. Kor the matter of that he has had a full share of executive ofliee. lie has won the enduring gratitude of the nation and nothing more that he could do would increase his maim. He certainly will not eat out of the hands of the Tories" as his lieutenant Churchill has done. Churchill had aristocratic antecedents.

George is llie son ol' n consumptive schoolmaster and a man of Idle chapels, and he does nol forgot eitlier eirennistanee. X’or will he join forces with Labour, lie was horn too far hack and is too deeply committed on certain issues. We do not, to put it briefly, see any future for the Welsh man as a party politician in Hritain. Hut George is not an extinct volcano. He has splendid powers. He | has a Celt’s idealism. He has personal magnetism. He has the qualities that would lead him to success in a more splendid service than anv lie has yet undertaken. His quite remarkable career awaits a crown, and there is one within reach. We may yet see' him animating a nation and leading them to a benelicient victory. We seem to hear his cry

Once more into the breach, dear friends.”

It is one of the remarkable differences between the Victorian age and our own, that under the Queen there were Knights Errant in the political arena. It is also remarkable that these Knights Errant won those victories which are the particular glory of that age. The abolition of slavery (.to go a little further back) was not won by a party leader, but by an enthusiast who was safd to be mad, but of whom someone said, “ ft' Wilberforce is mad I hope he will bite us all.” The abolition of the hated corn tax was secured quite apart from party allegiance. Cobden made it his question. He suspended the party system and secured right away by the logic of the case and by the providential potato disease. Shaftesbury has a niche all his own. It is an enduring romance, the devotion of this aristocrat to the wronged masses. Xo King was ever carried through more moved multitudes to his burying than this friend of the common people. li*e stood apart from, the

noise of party polities. Ilis Tory attachment was slight in the extreme. John Bright is not remembered because of his brief and not glorious connection with Gladstone's Ministry. It was his lonely service in the unmasking of war, and in the securement of an enlarged franchise that he has his place among the immortals.

Wo submit that the times arc ripe for another specialist, for another monomaniac, who will live for his idea and who will end all his speeches in the old stubborn Roman way: “in tny opinion Carthage should be destroyed.” Modern inventions seems to favour the incursion of such a crusader. The Press monopoly' has been destrdoyed by Radio. An orator <J George’s stamp can address a million a night. Into tlie sitting-roohis of i,he middle class, into the tea-rooms of the multitude his words can enter, with the charm of accent and with the familiarity that belongs to the spoken as against the written word. It seems to us to lie along the line of Lloyd George’s genius that he should fill this niche. By nothing could lie so directly benefit bis nation than by an appeal apart front party for some reform that, would elevate life and brighten the general outlook. It might be impertinent to make suggestions. The liquor question is of great importance and in Britain is in a neglected condition. The American conditions made a great impression on him. But perhaps a more comprehensive question will attract. That brilliant economist, Tawney, has developed the idea of service as the root idea of social life. That service rendered to the community should be the one honorable title deed to wealth is a slogan that might infect the nation, and that would lift all things on to a sweeter and truer basis. The famous Limehoit.se speech showed that George is well aware of the magnitude and of the ramilicntions of such a proposition. That he should adopt it as his question, that he should surround it with the charm of his imagination, that he should by expert mid exact economic investigations set the issue til broad foundations, that lie should make it a question as superior to party considerations as (ye gods and little fishes) the gambling question is with ns in New Zealand, that he should compel right of way by the creation of an irrestable popular demand, that would, we think, he an achievement greater than any yet won by a politician. Will Lloyd George do that nr something like that, or will he lie content to figure as the leader ol a section of the once powerful but now eclipsed Liberal Rnrty of Great Britain ?