NEWS OF THE WEEK.
TT is our devout wish that the holidays may be found to have yielded some of that " good will among men " which is peculiarly associated with Christmas. Lately, good will has been sadly to seek. Not for many years has there been so much recrimination among the parties that is purely wanton or unnecessary. Hotly to attack a statesman or a party when a great principle can be served or saved only in that way is one thing ; it is quite another to indulge in personal bitterness and partisanship when the greatest national need of the moment is thereby obscured or forgotten. Protection is dead ; Mr. Baldwin has lost his majority over all other parties ; a complicated and contorted controversy about the right of Dissolution is upon us ; Mr. Ramsay MacDonald protests, in advance of the facts and without any due warrant, that Labour is not receiving fair play ; he calls the democratic idea of government by a majority—the majority against Socialism—an " unholy alliance." Mr. Asquith, with an acidity that is unusual in his speeches, has " got back " upon the Unionist Party for saying—though personally we did not know that they had said it—that he was " senile," " played out," and " on the shelf "—and yet the only thing that matters is that the unemployed are still unemployed.
