TOPICS OF THE DAY
MR. BONAR LAW.
MR. BONAR LAW'S position in the country at this moment is one to which it is difficult to find a parallel. In the first place, there is a feeling, which is as near unanimity as anything can be in a country so strongly divided in politics as ours, that he has delivered us from what had become a nightmare—the feeling that we were helpless in the grip of the old Coalition Ministry. That meant, of course, in the grip of Mr. Lloyd George, and there appeared to be no means of getting rid of the giant incubus. The nation tossed uneasily, half stupefied and half awake, absorbed in its miserable situation and the risks it was running, and yet somehow feeling too much paralysed to think out any method of escape. Though, in one sense, it was perfectly easy for it to make an effort and to disembarrass itself of the danger, somehow it could not make that effort. Like De Quincey in his opium dream, people knew that if they had the will to be free they could be free ; but the will was wanting. " The weight of twenty Atlantics was upon them." They lay still and listened to terrifying voices prophesying evil and disaster if they moved. " Before they got rid of Mr. Lloyd George they must find someone to take his place."—" But who was there ? "—" Might not a new man and a new Govern- ment be worse than the old ? "—" Were they going to be ungrateful to the man who had won the war ? "- "Were they sure that new dangers were not coming on us from which he alone could free them ? "- There stood the Labour extremists ready to plunge them into all the unspeakable miseries of Soviet Russia."- " How if it should prove that he and he alone was capable of chaining up the dogs of Anarchy and Bolshevism ? "
And then, suddenly, the country woke up and found that the fears and anxieties were a dream, and that thanks to Mr. Bonar Law and the men who acted with him there was a band of competent administrators ready to carry on the nation's government, and, greatest relief of all, to give them a Ministry free from recklessness and extravagance accompanied by perpetual boasts that the ship of State had been saved from dangers— dangers which should never have existed.
The sense of relief at the awakening from this delirium of despair is almost beyond belief—certainly beyond description. But, though the relief is so great, the British people are showing, we arc glad to say, their greatest and most attractive trait. -There is no unjust cry for vengeance, no attempt to talk of our having been betrayed, no desire for any sort of reprisal upon the fallen Minister or the people who supported him. If he will only have the good sense and the good taste not to make personal attacks—strong criticism is quite another matter—on those who have succeeded to the power which, of late years, he has been exercising with such astonishing recklessness, and finally with positive ineptitude, there will be a general desire to let bygones be bygones. The British nation is not merely not revenge- ful, it is generous to a fault, and even those who have never come under the spell of, the enchanter will be perfectly willing to admit that Mr. Lloyd George's intentions were patriotic and that, even where he failed most, he was doing his best as he saw it. After all, the majority of the nation who allowed him to retain office so long after his usefulness was gone, and still more who permitted him to play the part of an excited Grand izier rather than of 'a Constitutional Prime Minister, must bear their share of the blame. They have no right to turn upon him now as though he were the only person in fault. No reasonable and just man can turn round upon the servant whom he has voluntarily kept in service and talk as if he himself had had no share in the general misdoing's.
But it is not only that the country's relief is such as we have described. There is also an immense, and as we believe well-founded, confidence being shown in Mr. Bonar Law. The country has always liked and respected him, for it was obvious that he was not a man who played a selfish game in politics, or who intrigued for place or powei or longed for office on ignoble grounds.. On the contrary, the nation's only complaint against Mr. Bonar Law has been that he was too ready to efface himself and too little willing to take responsibility. He was not, they thought, bold enough when boldness was needed—too distrustful of himself and too trustful of others. Now, however, Mr. Bonar Law has shown that, if he is slow and by nature disinclined for combat and in2lined for compromise, he can in a great emergency play the big game. And he has played it, and played it in exactly the way the British people like to see it played.
By nature Mr. Bonar Law happens to represent almost exactly the present mood and the present desires of the nation. He is a man who likes quiet, sensible, unim- passioned ways in politics. He wants to see things well and orderly done and not in a scrimmage of exaltation aggravated by guile. He is the very opposite of the states- man who is always in a passion or a prayer. Though he will probably be amused at the suggestion, he has in strict fact the Whig mind—the Left Centre attitude of mind—in public affairs. At the moment that is exactly what the country demands. He is, in a word. the man of the hour. Think for a moment in detail what the country does want. It wants, and wants it with an earnestness to which no living man can find an analogue in his experience, the putting in order of the national house : the abandonment of mad commit- ments, of foolish schemes abroad, and of visionary projects for universal beneficence at home, projects which are only too likely to turn into universal misery and pauperization. Above all, it wants sound finance and a system under which men, instead of being over- taxed, over-officialized, over-blarneyed, can live their lives and bring up their families by the exercise of their own abilities and their own hard work. Working men loathe to be at the beck and call of muddle-headed officials with a Government dole in one hand and a sheaf of unintelligible forms in the other.
Previous page
