TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE GENERAL ELECTION.
rilHE British People are " Left Centre to the core." I_ That is a statement which older readers of the Spectator will remember appearing again and again in these columns during the past fifty years. Its truth was never more signally proved than at the General Election which has just taken place. If there was ever a verdict for moderation in politics and for keeping the country upon an even keel, it was this one. The British People, indeed, never showed themselves more able to be greatly touched to great issues, more capable in the exercise of supreme power and more worthy of its possession, than on the 14th of December, 1918. There were plenty of circumstances which might have excused a less clear and plain verdict. A vast number of persons untrained to deal with political questions were added to the electorate, both male and female.. The old constituencies were broken up throughout the country, and elements of uncertainty were introduced. The steadying power which the old Party Organizations gave had com- pletely broken down. The country might be described as in the delirium of joy caused by the end of the greatest struggle in history. And finally, a very large number of the electors were on foreign soil, and though able, as it was proved, to vote, were not, one imagines, in a position to give their votes with wisdom and deliberation. Yet flushed as the nation was by its great military triumph, and excited by every sort of hope, vision, and aspiration as to the new heaven and the new earth which many people imagine are going to he the outcome of the war and a com- plete system of Democracy, the hand of the Nation did not shake at the voting-urns. Our men and women gave their judgment as coolly as if they were deciding upon some trivial matter of localpolitics and not upon a reconstruction of civil society. Truly there could be no better illustration of Lord Beaconsfield's saying that he trusted the instincts of an Imperial people.
For ourselves, we hoped and believed that in all the circum- stances the electors would support the Coalition Government., as the only course open to men and women of moderation and good sense, and the only way of marking their gratitude to or displeasure with those who during the war had been trustees of the Nation's interests. But we did not merely hope for a Coalition victory. We felt quite sure that it would be attained, and attained as fully as it has been. What made it certain to our mind was, to be quite frank, not the merits of the Prime Minister or the existing Govern- ment, but the palpable demerits of those who opposed them. It is for this reason that we regard the Election as less a personal triumph for Mr. Lloyd George than a notice to quit to those who during the war have proved themselves incapable of interpreting, or even understanding, the will of the British Democracy. In our opinion, what the Nation was determined to do at the polls, and what it did do at the polls, was to set its mark upon the brazen fore- heads of the political Pacificists and pseudo-friends of Germany, those strange advocates of democracy and alleged haters of tyranny who throughout the five years' struggle found themselves in a kind of working alliance with such upholders of freedom and popular government as the Autocrat of Germany, the Emperor of Austria, the Sultan of Turkey, and the King of Bulgaria. When those strange bedfellows of the exponents of republican and ultra- democratic frenzy in this country needed apologists for their worst misdeeds, they found them in persons like Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, Mr. Lansbury, and Mr. Snowden.
The country, then, felt that its prime duty was to snake it absolutely clear that it has not, and never will have, any use for men of this kind—men with so little judgment and so little sympathy, men of the true Jacobin type, men who with the platitudes of Democracy on their lips will never really bow to the Will of the People except when that will coincides with their own frigid schemes of pedantic revolution. And here we may note in passing that the country by its verdict has not only freed Parliament from the presence of a group of pupil-teacher or Sunday-school Bolsheviks, but incidentally has also freed, and so greatly improved, the Labour Party. The voters have relieved it of the pragmatical parasites who usurp the name without the wholesome training of hand-labour, and who indulge the licence without the manliness of the true Trade Union leaders. The Labour Party would have been always much wiser to trust to the true Trade Union leaders than to the thin-lipped prigs and wirepullers of the Inde- pendent Labour Party. We hope, now that those false guides have been for the most part overwhelmed at the General Election, we may have a true Labour Party, led by men so worthy of confidence as Mr. Barnes, Mr. Thomas, Mr. Clynes, Mr. Roberts, Mr. Stanton, Mr. Bower- man, Mr. Havelock Wilson, Mr. Hodge, and Mr. Walsh. We are fully aware that these gentlemen hold views very different from those of the Spectator, and we have no doubt that we shall often be in extreme disagreement with their policy. But we are also sure that if they hit hard they will fight fair, and that even when they are in our view moat wrong-headed they will never fail in those high qualities which are the political heritage of the true Englishman. The country in developing the Labour Party and adding largely to its numbers (a result which we not only do not regret but in which we find no small satisfaction) has also pruned it of most of its worst features. This process of priming has also been applied to the Liberal Party in a way which will cause satisfaction through- out the Empire. Almost all the Members of Parliament who at the beginning of the war were prominent in their desire that we should.basely desert ourFrench Allies, and play the game of the tyrants of Europe, have been dismissed. It is with what we can only describe as supreme satisfaction that we record the fact that such men as Mr. Ponsonby and Mr. Charles Trevelyan have at last learned what the country thinks of them. We fear that they are wrapped too closely in their fleece of sophistry and paradox, and are too essentially unteachable, to make any use themselves of the lesson they have received, but at any rate their fate may be a warning to others. As for the Libeial Party as a whole, it has met with the fate it has long deserved. It had become to a very great extent an organized hypocrisy. It was enervated during its years of plenitude of power before the war by the lavish showers of titles given for Party services and Party subscriptions ; and when the Marconi scandal rose to darken the horizon, the Party preferred to pretend that all was well and all was clean, rather than to face the task of washing and thoroughly cleansing its dirty linen. We very greatly regret that Mr. Asquith has lost his seat. He erred grievously in allowing friendship rather than higher considerations to guide his conduct in the crisis of which we have just been speaking, but his personal honour is as untarnished as his patriotism. He did great service to the Nation and to the world at the beginning of the war, for had he failed us then we might have come to a wrong decision and been too late to bring help to France. Apart from this, we are sorry that he will not be able to be in Parliament to lead the Opposi- tion, for a sound and patriotic Opposition is, in our opinion, greatly wanted to steady a Government with so tremendous a majority as that secured by Mr. Lloyd George and the Coalition. Very probably, however, some arrangement may be made by which Mr. Asquith will soon find his way back into the House of Commons. At the same time, we can hardly wonder that the electors of East Fife acted as they did, for in moments of crisis weakness is never rewarded at the 'polls, andeven the most strenuous opponent of Mr. Lloyd George might well feel that Mr. Asquith had shown lamentable weakness in his dealings with his Celtic; colleague from the time when he became Prime Minister down to the final &Acre in December, 1916.
But though we are so greatly delighted with the general aspects of the Election, we cannot but be disappointed that the only woman who has been elected should be the Countess Markievicz, a woman who, but for the combined weakness of Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George, would never have been in the position to be the sole representative of her sex in the new Parliament. It is, however, a comfort to think that the Countess Marliievios will not come to Westminster, but will confine her political activities to some hole-and-corner Sinn Fein Conventicle which apparently is to assemble in Dublin. The victory of the Sinn Feiners, since they do not intend to come to Weet- minster, may indeed be regarded as a blessing. The sane and loyal side of Ireland will be well represented by the strong body of patriotio men returned for North-ltast,
Ulster, amongst whom-wa are delighted to note Mr. Lynn, the.highly capable editor of the Northern Whig.
Though we cannot admit that the General Election is, or was intended by the British People to be, a mere vote of confidence in Mr. Lloyd George, it no doubt gives him a very great opportunity, and the part he will play in the history of the race depends upon whether be makes good use of that opportunity. If he does, all that is disagreeable in his past may be forgotten. If he does not, but simply plays the game he has so often played before in politics of " tall " talk and abject action (how else can we describe Mr. Lloyd George's pledge about Irish Conscription, and his almost instant surrender to the rebellious insolence of the Nationalist hierarchy 1), the country will soon find him out, and refuse to excuse him on the ground that there must be no swapping of horses while we are crossing the river. The first duty before Mr. Lloyd George is to remake his Ministry, and to remake it, not by recruiting more of those bravoes of politics who, like Mr. Winston Churchill, will lend their swords to any one who will pay high enough for them in power and influence, but by enlisting the support of the best and ablest men in the land. Mr. Lloyd George can, if he will, make a really great National Ministry for the purposes of Reconstruction. But the first necessity is that he should drop the band of Political Undesirables who have defaced the expiring Ministry, headed by Lord Reading and Sir Alfred Mond. No doubt it would be a disagreeable task for Mr. Lloyd George to purge his Administration of these prominent features, but if he wants to win the real confidence and the real affection of the country he will do so. There is not a true Englishman in the country who would not hear with relief that the Political Undesirables bad been cleared out of the Coalition Ministry. If instead they are not merely retained, but the sinister rumours which have been heard of late prove to be true—if we learp, that is, that Lord Reading is to occupy one of the great positions in the Cabinet, that Mr. Winston Churchill is to receive further high promotion, that Sir Alfred Mond is to obtain some great office, and further that Mr. Montagu is to become Chancellor of the Exchequer—then we may be sure that the life of the new Administration, in spite of its magnificent majority, will be short and precarious. Our hope is better, however. Mr. Lloyd George has one quality which will make it easy for him to do what we desire, and what we believe the country desires—i.e., that he should settle down and forget ins past. That quality is adaptability—that interesting Celtic peculiarity of being able not merely to ignore, but honestly to forget, the past and treat it as if it had never been. Until our hopes are overborne by events we shall therefore refuse to believe the ugly rumours as to Govern- ment changes, and shall hold that Mr. Lloyd George, who has never wanted vision, will recognize that he must make a new Ministry worthy of the new Parliament, and worthy also of the tremendous responsibilities that are to be cast upon his Administration.
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