should have thought it was one of the attributes of
Liberalism to be able to sec just how fundamental are the factors making for unity between the two factions of the Liberal Party and to appre- ciate the triviality of the issues on which they are divided. Miss F. L. Josephy, to judge from her letter published last week in The Spectator, Is able to perceive only the discords. Though Independent Liberals supported a pre-war policy of " collective security " based on ram- shackle military alliances and diplomatic pacts which—to say the least—meant skating on very thin ice, the National Liberals, typified by Lord Simon, preferred what probably seemed to them a slightly less dangerous policy of British self-reliance based on the realities of the situation. Whereas the realists supported rearmament, as M. r. Stein points out, the thin-ice skaters scorned the provision of hfe-saving gear. I hold no brief for either side, for the policy of Waltzing into Europe in pursuit of the peace-mirage reflected by the League was as distasteful as the isolationist belief that peace is divisible Into wartight compartments.
Miss Josephy reproaches Lord Simon for his opposition to British guarantees on the Continent, but if I am rightly informed it was the fetters placed on our foreign policy by Our commitments to certain buffer States that caused the original negotiations for an Anglo- Russian alliance to fail. These differences of opinion will fall into their true perspective once the possibility becomes manifest of making collective security mean what it says, namely, by setting up as a " peace nucleus " a strong, just and successful federation on the open-door principle. Miss Josephy will; I know, agree that this would provide the stabilising factor without which no world-will= international system could succeed. This fundamental belief she shares with Mr. Hore-Belisha, the distinguished chairman of the opposite camp, another indefatigable advocate of the federal idea, which in Mrs. Roosevelt's words is the only constructive idea that has emerged from this war. Rather than magnify petty differences, let the Liberals delight in searching for and discovering those ideals
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