THE POLITICAL CRISIS.
[To TILE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.")
am of opinion your article in last week's issue, "A Sort of Co-operation," hardly meets the situation. If Mr. Lloyd George would only give the country the opportunity of being heard he would, 1 think, have a much more rude awakening than suggested in your article. Would he not be well advised to take immediately the step he will very probably adopt later of going over body and soul to the Labour Party, which throughout his parliamentary life he appears to have been so familiar with? Consider the legislation he has directly or indirectly initiated, say, from 1909, and it will be found the greatest measures he has supported have been more or less disruption to the Empire. Land and social measures—few can be found which could be reasonably entitled constructive.
Take the land measures; result, forced sales to duped tenants who are now shouting aloud for the old squire to mend their roofs, gates, fences, drains, &e., and for" the pheasants to eat his turnips" again! What, again, has been the result of legislation intended ostensibly to cheapen land for house building? Answer—builders stampeded, and a Government Housing Scheme in which every Borough and District Council have squandered the ratepayers' money. His costly and mis- applied energies have been so prolonged that he now finds the country exhausted, and he must needs pull up or there will be nothing left to scatter.
Take, again, other than domestic policies. Ireland. I look upon his recent attempt to pacify Ireland as morally wrong. It was only forced upon him for the reason that since the
War the Government has done everything but govern. There is no more reason for granting self-determination to a portion of Ireland than there is to Scotland and Wales. My opinion is if Mr. Lloyd George reigns supreme for another ten years there will be little of the Empire left. Ireland, India, and Egypt will only be a preliminary to the disintegration of the whole. Suggestion is made that there is no man to follow him. My feeling is no Napoleon is needed: let the country have a breathing space for ten years without any more legislation, but with simply a strong team for administration purposes
only. Parliament sitting for, say, one month in each year5 and when not occupied with necessary finance, the sittings to be utilised for discussing and deciding how many of the measures passed this century should be scrapped and put aside. If the country could only be assured of this, it would be the greatest means to the recovery of normal trade and the return to sanity. For God's sake let us give the country a chance to recuperate. It will do this, as with most human ailments, if let alone, but if we keep opening the wounds by administering wrong nostrums there will only be one end, and that an unpleasant one.-1 am, Sir, &c., E. DEAKIN. Egerton Rail, near Bolton.
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