Probably the most acute criticisra of Mr. Baldwin's proposals which
has yet been made was contained in Mr. Asquith's speech on Monday. Fiscal policy has, of course, always been Mr. Asquith's favourite topic. It suits ideally his limpid lucidity of exposition, his unruffled flow of language as polished, if as cold, as a still pool. When he speaks on a question, such as Tariff Reform, requiring intellectual penetration, the other party leaders arc apt to sound, by comparison, sadly bombastic and amateurish. To accuse Mr. Asquith of raking up a dead issue because he restated the home- truths of the science of Exchanges is about as rational as to accuse a mathematical teacher of plagiarism because he corrects an error by quoting the laws of mathematics. Alone of the Prime Minister's critics Mr. Asquith was not content with generalities :— " When Mr. Baldwin and his friends come out of the dusk into the open, and present anything in the nature of a working scheme, we shall be able, as we are not at present, to submit them to process of definite and detailed interrogation. It was that process which killed Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's proposals twenty years ago, and I predict with confidence that the same -process will kill these belated and half-hearted substitutes to-day. Mr. Baldwin disclaims any intention to initiate a 'raging and tearing propaganda.' I am not surprised. There is not much in anything he has yet said to rage or to tear about. The time for calling in the priests of Baal with their lacerating knives has not yet come. And, indeed, apart from the raging and tearing, it is difficult to start a propaganda without any definite idea of what you want to propagate.
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