There is something very nearly pathetic in the implacable resolve
of the Liberals to rush down a steep place into the sea. Here, for example, is that hard-headed financier, Sir Andrew McFadyean, suggesting, apparently in all seriousness, that one way of ascertaining the strength of Liberalism in the country would be for Liberals, at any election where there was no Liberal candidate, to go to the poll and spoil their voting papers. Is this the true Liberal's view to the elementary civic duty of voting ? I decline to believe it. However, there is the choice : so to show yourselves Liberals as never to forget that you are citizens ; or so to show yourselves citizens as never to forget that you are Liberals. And when Mr. 'Granville announces that Liberals in the House will abstain from voting (there are no voting papers to spoil there) "because they decline to turn the House into an annexe of the Conservative Central Office for electioneering purposes" one can only conclude that these superior beings live in a rarefied atmosphere in which common mortals find it hard to breathe. (Yet the Liberal rank-and-file aren't like that a bit.)
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