THE PRIME MINISTER AND HIS "PLEDGES.' [To TILE EDITOR OF
THE" SPECTATOR."] you allow me, as an old reader of the Spectator—nearly half-a-century now—respectfully to ask you one question ? When you try to tie Mr. Lloyd George so tightly down to what you term his "pledges," are you not overlooking the fact that every states- man must necessarily, to a certain extent, be—in the best sense of the word—an opportunist ? Mr. Delano, you may remember—out at dinner one evening—was reproached by John Bright with inconsistency. " Mr. Bright," replied the great editor, "you are under a misapprehension. I am not responsible for the Times of yesterday, or for the Times of to-morrow, but only for the Times of to-day." It is, I think, Victor Hugo who says that every great journalist must have in him something of the states- man. May we not reverse the statement and say that ovary groat statesman must have in him something of the journalist ? Are they, at any rate, not alike in this, that both must deal with facts, with events and circumstances, not as they would wish them to be, not perhaps as they had expected them to be, and had laid their plans for them to be, but as they find them, and as in reality they
Stanfield, Babbacombe, Torquay.
[It is of course perfectly true that a pledge may honourably be revised when circumstances change, just as a treaty may be honestly denounced. But there are obvious limits to such prac- tices. When a man within a short period of time, and though circumstances have not changed in the least, forgets his pledge. or is false to it, people generally know what to say about him. Surely our correspondent cannot pretend that the situation in Ireland since the Governmeut pledged themselves to introduce Conscription has changed ? If it has changed at all, it is only in the sense that the facts with which the Government were than dealing have become more clear. Again, as regards the Prime Minister's pledge to North-East Ulster, surely our correspondent cannot pretend that the racial and religious reasons which have always made the Six-County Area protest against a single Parlia- ment for Ireland have in any degree changed P Are not those reasons also more clear than they have ever been?—En. Spectator:1
Previous page
