SIR,—Sir Andrew McFadyean's contribution to this argument raises, to my
mind, the most fundamental question about the future of the Liberal Party. The contribution of English political parties to democratic govern- ment has been of the first importance, and it has lain in the fact that each serious and enduring party has been grouped around a coherent view of government and contemporary problems which enables it to have a complete alternative policy should the nation come to distrust the party in power. British governments seldom depend, happily, upon shifting combinations of interest-groups as in France, nor on a carefully worked-up aggregate of local differences as in the States. Liberalism is the political expression of a philosophy which has its roots in a view of the ends of man and the purposes of government wholly alien to the collectivist view. The problem of the Liberal Party is to convince think- ing and unthinking citizens that it represents political principles of permanent application, and has an alternative policy with an immediate application. Once this were done all questions of parliamentary group- ing would be trivial, but to obscure the problem by meaningless jargon about Right and Left is fatal. It is using the enemies' weapons to conimit suicide. The problem is complicated by the fact that the Tory Party (by a process of evolution with the brake on) now talks the language of Cobdenite Liberalism, while the Socialists hide the barrenness of their political philosophy under a cloak of liberal and humanitarian phraseology. Nevertheless, the duty of Liberalism is to convince the electorate that the two councils of despair, a static authoritarianism and a static collectivism, need not be followed and that a third and wholly different alternative exists—a dynamic Liberalism. Trimmers have always been suspect, and so long as the Liberals are prepared to accept the popular estimate of themselves as a Centre Parry, so long will they continue to play the Dormouse sandwiched between a Mad Hatter and a March Hare.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant, ALASTAIR BUCHAN.
Fovant Hut, Fovant, Salisbury, Wilts.
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