MR. ASQUITH.

Wairarapa Age, 26 March 1920, Page 5

MR. ASQUITH.

A Fighting Spsech.

APPEAL TO LIBERALS.

(By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (Australian-N.Z. Cable Association.) Received Last Night, 9.30 o'clock. LONDON, March 22.

The Right Hon. H. H. Asquith, in a speech at the National Liberal Club, said that the Prime Minister's challenge ought to be taken up immediately. The fusion was being watered down into a closer co-operation. The real point was whether they wore going to respond to the Premier's inviation, since Labour was hostile, and since Independent Liberalism intended to remain independent. Were they going to link up with the Tory organisations, which were only organisations satisfying Mr. Lloyd George's definitions, and likely to 'supply his need. Why should they? Why should the Liberals abdicate their primary functions as a great and historic party? He expressed the opinion that nothing more would be seen of the antiDumping Bill, and declared that the Government's Irish Bill did not seek to amend, but to repeal the Home Rule Act, and to substitute therefore a fantastic scheme, which was a travesty on self-government. The Liberals were asked to agree to the fusion owing to the new peril, vulgarly called Bolshevism. He denied that there was any antithesis between Liberalism and Labour. Labour owed everything to Liberalism, and there were, many roads which they could travel side by side. The Premier's appeal was on the lines of class cleavage, and was most mischievous. *

Freo Liberals were not going to be to the Tory chariot wheels. They were going to retain and preach and practise their principles.