TOPICS OF THE DAY
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THE BRITISH PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN. THE British people have spoken, with a result which we believe will prove for the welfare of the nation and Empire. The Government of the middle course is retained in power by the votes of middle course electors. That, when Party disappointments are forgotten, will emerge as the essential fact. Once more we have proved that when confronted with great issues the majority of the British people always show themselves to have Left-Centre minds. Now, as always in the past, the people want freedom and progress, but want them guided by moderation and common sense. This does not mean that our people are ever going to carry moderation to the point of immoderateness. Unless we are to forfeit the spirit of the race, there will always be among us a strongly progressive element as well as a strongly cautious element. If we did not have both, we should not have that resolution of force which is the salvation of States. Unhappy' is the country ruled by representative institutions in which there is not a strong Opposition, for without opposition Parliamentary institutions can never fulfil their functions. Truly did the Victorians talk of " Her Majesty's Opposition " as well as of " Her Majesty's Government." Therefore, no citizen who looks beyond the mere Party standpoint will in the end regret that the present Ministry will not have it all their own way in Parliament. If they did, whatever their professions, hopes and instincts, they would not be able to keep the middle way. But that middle way is at the present moment the thing to be desired above all others by true friends of their country. We rejoice in a strong Unionist and Constitutional Party, but we are equally glad that the Independent Liberal Party has been able to reconstitute itself, and also that the Labour Party has been able to get the representation to which it is entitled by the numbers of its supporters in the constituencies.
We have dealt with the facts and figures of the Election in our "News of the Week." Here we must speak of the more general aspects of the contest. The first, the most conspicuous feature of the Election, is the discomfiture of Mr. Lloyd George and the personal Party which he was trying to form. For the last six years Mr. Lloyd George has given what we think may be quite fairly and without prejudice described as an autocratic twist to the Constitution. It was possibly not his conscious desire to do this, and it is only fair to say that the change was in great part due to the extraordinary con- ditions of the latter part of the War and to the equally anomalous conditions of the first years of the Peace. Mr. Lloyd George, instead of being a Prime Minister such as we have known during the greater part of our history, became something in the nature of a Grand Vizier. Instead of being merely primus inter pares, the first among a body of equals, he was the President of the Cabinet. No doubt a Prime Minister has always had a special and commanding position, but the voice of the Government has hitherto not been merely his voice. His control of the Administration has been exercised through and in the Cabinet, and not by direct interference in particular Departments. Mr. Lloyd George, especially in the region of foreign affairs, as recent events in particular have shown, has claimed and exer- cised a direct control. His plan was to short-circuit his Foreign Minister and act for himself. Mr. Lloyd George has, in fact, been acting more like the President of the United States than • like the British type of Prime Minister. His Cabinet Ministers were in a sense his clerks.
The result has been the overthrow- of his Cabinet, first by the action of the Unionist majority in the Commons and now by the endorsement of the country. The issue at the Election has, in fact, been one of con- fidence or no confidence in Mr. Lloyd George personally, and with a surprising unanimity the country has con- demned the late Prime Minister. Every vote cast for the supporters of Mr. Bonar Law and the present GovernMent luis been a vote against Mr. Lloyd George. Every vote given for the Independent Liberals has also been against him, with the exception, perhaps, of a portion of the votes given for Independent Liberals in Scotland. The only candidates who asked the voters to return them because they were supporters of Mr.
Lloyd George were the National Liberals, and tiviy have suffered the most signal of all the defeats at the polls.
They have come back a shattered remnant. In former times one of the ways of estimating a man's political integrity was to ask, " Whom is he acting with ? Who are the men who are willing to support him and back his views ? " If we ask this in the ease of Mr. Lloyd George, the answer must be, " He is acting with a dis- credited and attenuated band of personal followers."
The two ablest and most important of this clan arc Mr. Winston Churchill and Lord Birkenhead, both of them men of great ability, but both of them, as their careers show, political adventurers—that is, men of very much Mr. Lloyd George's own political and intel- lectual complexion. They are the quick-change artists of politics or the freelances of Parliament. And now Mr. Churchill has been beaten at the Polls and is in search of a scat.
The other principal feature of the Election is the great advance made by Labour. Labour has not done as well as it expected to do three months ago, but it has done a good deal better than it expected to do after the writs were actually issued. We may deplore, and in a sense do deplore, that so many electors should have been misled into thinking that the true interests of Labour can ever be really furthered by the kind of blow to the industries of the country which would be dealt by a Capital Levy, coupled with that system of greatly increased direct taxation which the Labour Party advocates. In spite, however, of this fact, we arc glad to see Labour well represented. Certainly that representation should give no fears to Mr. Bonar Law. Labour cannot trouble the Government much except by a combination with the Independent Liberals. But the Independent Liberals could not combine with Labour on any of the great issues for which Labour cares—such, for example, as the Capital Levy—without breaking up their Party, and that is a thing they will not do. For the same reason, the Liberals are not going to take on a man so discredited as Mr. Lloyd George as their leader, because that would also destroy their Party.
Again, owing to the line that Mr. Lloyd George has taken at the Election in regard to Labour, the Labour Party is in no mood to trust him. Finally, we may dismiss the notion that Mr. Lloyd George will be able to pick up a Party by splitting a chunk off the Labour Party and another chunk off the Independent Liberals. Such a scheme, even if it could be accomplished, would canse so bitter a feeling in the remnants that he could never found an Administration upon his cleavages. To put it plainly, we can see no combination at present which will turn out Mr. Bonar Law's Central, Constitutional and Conservative Government unless, of course, he and his colleagues are foolish enough to enter upon some doubtful and dangerous line of policy.
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