10 JULY 1909, Page 2

A correspondent who signs himself "Disgusted Liberal" asks us what

we think of the following passage to be found in a leading article in the Daily News of Wednesday :—

" He [Mr. Lloyd George] had to provide for more than this year. He had to discover expanding sources of revenue which would meet. the growing needs of defence and social reform. The former have, we think, been much exaggerated, the latter cannot be put too high. For many a year to come, and, indeed, we see no end to the process, there will be uses, urgent and clamant uses, for every fresh million which can be obtained by taxation. It would be ruin to our national efficiency, a disaster to Liberalism, and a, &Same to our humanity to neglect any longer the appalling problems of unemployment, which can best be met at the one end by insurance, at the other by the development of labour exchanges and the promotion of such permanent relief as can be got from forestry. National education, tried by the best Continental standards, is capable of indefinite improvement, above all by the raising of the school age. The Poor Law has yet to be recast, and no one has yet even attempted to estimate the cost of adopting the hopeful constructive ideas of the minority Report. And if all these needs were satisfied, we still urgently require a surplus for the encouragement of agriculture, and more especially, of the subsidiary aids to small holdings."