TOPICS OF THE DAY,

THE REAL CRISIS.

DOLITICALLY, the country is in a very unwholesome condition. Open before us are several very important problems which the British people have got to settle. The first is the problem involved in the non-renewal or denunciation, whichever is the correct view, of the Treaty of Alliance with Japan. If we refuse to renew it beneficial political opportunities will immediately arise. First we shall be able to bring about that mutual understanding between us and the United States of America which all loyal members of the English-speaking race so ardently desire. Next there will be an opportunity for helping on the policy of disarmament, and for producing a settlement in regard to the present danger-spot of the world—the North Pacific—under conditions which may prove as permanent as can any diplomatic agreement. The second main problem is the smaller but more imme- diately dangerous one of Ireland—the problem how to meet the demands of the Southern Irish without doing cruel injustice to the North. Thirdly, there is the great and always present economic menace—the question how to prevent bankruptcy and dearth and their revolutionary

sequelae.

These are matters which are fully discussed in the news- papers, on public platforms, and in Parliament. Behind these visible and deeply important opportunities and difficulties stands another and still more vital matter. It is at present unnoted by the ordinary man, but at any moment it may become violently and painfully visible. That is the question, Who is to direct our Government, mid under what party auspices ? We have got to decide, and probably very soon, what is to be the machinery under which we are to work our Constitution and Representative System. Though the Coalition may seem strong and firm, it is not so. It is dying, if not dead. Though it wins great numerical victories in the Lobby, though its speakers make fine speeches, and though every now and then there are what look like proofs that the Prime Minister still holds the country, the Coalition has already perished. It is warm and it has not stiffened yet, but the life has one out of it in spite of these appearances of continued animation. Once it was strong and active; • now it is only strong in appearance.

"Stout was its arm, each thew and bone Seem'd puissant and alive—

But, ah ! its heart, its heart was stone, And so it could not thrive 1"

Why is the heart of the Government turned to stone ? Why cannot it thrive ? The views held by its members are those held by the country, and the majority of these members have individually the confidence of the electorate. What, then, is amiss ? The answer is to be found in a single word. That word is "Coalition." It is not true, or, if it is, it is useless to say it, that England hates Coalitions. To be exact, the country does not hate Coalitions in the abstract, but only hates them when, so to speak, they are out of season, have done their appointed work, and have ceased to be either efficient or appropriate. A Coalition, no matter what the origin of the word, has come to mean a grouping together of antagonistic elements for the performance during dangerous times of a specific object, that object being the securing of the physical safety of the nation. A Coalition is rightly regarded as a stopgap—something provided to answer the cry, "All hands to the pumps, or the vessel will founder."

THE NEED FOR PARTY.

When the moment of danger has passed, Coalitions in countries governed by a Party System, like ours, are naturally disliked and distrusted. What the country feels about them is something in this way. "To get an ordinary peace-time job thoroughly well done, the men who do it ought to be in agreement as to what they want. They ought to be a real team with common aims, common objects, common hopes, common aspira- tions. They must feel confident that they are going to stick together for good and to act loyally, towards each other. In addition, they ought to feel that the tie between them and those who support them—that is, the rank and file of the party—is a permanent and not a temporary one. The whole idea of government by a party is that the party is an organized body of men with agreed common purposes, a body of men who have given up a certain amount of their individual opinions, individual ambitions, and individual freedom of action in order that the Government should be carried on under policies pointing in a particular direction. The excuse, and a perfectly sound excuse if it is not carried too far, for a closely organized and strictly disciplined party is that without it we should be at the mercy of irresponsible leaders—political condoitieri—who, so to speak, would make personal bargains with the State to conduct its affairs, and who would in this way becume the masters, rather than the true servants, of the public. Under our present or rather pre-war system the party leader when in office ought, no doubt, to have great powers, but they must be the powers of a constitutional monarch rather than of an autocrat or despot. Now, in order to keep the proper balance between the powers of the leader and his dependence on his followers, the Prime Minister should draw his strength from a homo- geneous party—a party not necessarily with only one thought in it, but a party in which there is the maximum of agreement—a party with common aspirations on the great affairs of State, and still more a party which feels an absolute trust in its leader's honour and character. The rank and file must feel not only that their leader will never dream of deserting them, but that he cannot desert them because there is nowhere else for him to go. The leader must have burnt his boats and pledged himself as absolutely as a man can to sink or swim with his party. It is this feeling of solidarity and of mutual loyalty between the leader and the led which is one of the great antiseptics of the Party System. It is this, indeed, which makes the Party System work, which renders it tolerable in times of peace, in times when men are not prepared to say, "We will do everything and give up everything, and forget all differences in the immediate work of pre- venting the vessel going under." These are truths which, though in one sense very old and very obvious, are only just being discovered by the general public, and especially by the members of the Unionist Party — that is, the larger section of those who support the present Coalition. The country—and still more the House of Commons—is in a state of dangerous political malaise, and has been so for many months, and now it is beginning to realize that the cause of this malaise and discontent is that we are being ruled by a Coalition after the need for a Coalition has passed, and therefore being badly ruled, or, to be quite fair, let us say ruled in a way which does not satisfy the nation. The cause of this breakdown in the work of Government is becoming clear. The Coalition Ministry is not supported by a homogeneous party, but by a confused, incoherent, and therefore irresponsible concourse of political atoms. It is becoming evident that to get the things we want out of Parliament and out of the Administration the chief direct- ing brain must be that of a man who has become an integral part of the organism to which he looks for support, a man who has cast aside all other political allegiances and all thoughts, hopes, and ambitions which he does not share with his followers. While demanding great sacrifices from those he leads, he must be himself willing to make comparable sacrifices. He must forgo the right to .pick up power how he can and when he can and to manipulate and negotiate with special groups of the House of Commons. His strength must be drawn solely or, at any rate, habitually from those who placed him in power. To put the matter quite specifically, the time is coming— and may indeed come very soon—when Mr. Lloyd George will be told that he must take his choice and become, not the head of a Coalition, but the head of a true party. At a day's notice a political crisis may arise in which, whatever the apparent cause, this will be the real and dominant issue.

Mr. Lloyd George is not, of course, going to be crudely told that he must become a Unionist or else look out for another situation in another party. No one will treat him, or wants to see him tzeated, in that way. The larger section of his present mixed bag of followers would be quite willing to obtain the homogeneity which they are beginning to see is essential, by what would nominally be the foundation of a new party, though in reality it would be the old Unionist Party under another name. In theory the Unionist Party possesses a very good name, even though we all hope that its Irish impli- cation may soon be unnecessary. Unionism has another meaning. It means a union or political combination for securing certain political ends. In spite, however, of this fact, if homogeneity and mutual trust could be better secured under another name, and if the path of Mr. Lloyd George and his Liberal supporters could be made more easy and more consistent with their personal feelings and dignity by a change of name, then by all means let us have such a change.

THE NEED FOR A NAME.

The difficulty of finding a new name, whether for a house, a street, a limited liability company, or a newspaper, always seems very great till the point is settled. As soon as it is settled the difficulties vanish, and people are astonished that there was ever so much anxiety and trouble about so simple a matter. In our opinion, the ally thing that is of real importance in choosing a new name is that it should be made quite clear that the party is essentially democratic and not reactionary in its nature and principles. It must proclaim its entire willingness to bow to the Will of the Majority. It must refuse to allow interested persons to plaster the untrue and unmeaning label of " reactionary " upon its back. It is the party organizations which are tainted with the new Jacobinism of the Labour Party or the Bolshevism of the Communists that are the reactionaries. It is they who deny the right of the people to govern themselves, who try to impose on them the new aristocracy of organized labour, who want to arm that oligarchic party with the weapon of physical force who want to found supreme power in the State on what they term "direct action" instead of on the votes of the people fairly and justly given at the polling booths. It is therefore of importance, if we are to have a new name, that the new party should be pledged by its name to true democracy. Except that it would perhaps be thought by some to have an unfortunate previous history in Europe, the name "Constitutional Democratic Party" would be good. It represents the fact that we are democrats as well as con- stitutionalists. This is a claim which cannot be made truthfully by any other party in the State.

A constitutional party will, we are confident, soon insist that the right of popular veto, the necessary corrective to the possibility of non-democratic legislation, shall be established as one of our public institutions, and so shall give our political life a stability which is badly needed. The trouble with us is not that we have too much but too little Democracy. That, however, is a side issue. What we have to consider now is the reformation of the Coalition into a homogeneous party with a leader pledged, not, of course, to mere servility to his party, but to common political ideals.

"Who rules o'er freemen must himself be free."

But our leader must not always be looking over his shoulder at other political groups and wondering whether he would not do better by including so-and-so and his group.

If this putting of Mr. Lloyd George to his election in regard to his source of power is coming, and, as we are perfectly sure, it is coming quickly, the best minds in the party should clearly be directed to providing for the possibility that Mr. Lloyd George may be overcome with fright or shyness when told that he must "range himself" politically. We must be prepared with a plan of action should Mr. Lloyd George make a sudden bid for a renewal of that independence and that extra-party position which, we must in fairness admit, is a very attractive one to a Prime Minister. We do not want his colleagues to do anything which may seem to humiliate him, or to forget his past services, or to coerce him in any way. To make the pressure which they must exercise effective, they must, however, know what steps they can take, and be ready to take them in the case of a complete refusal to adopt their policy. In other words, they must make certain of acceptance by having an alternative ready.

If they do not do this—that is, if they do not take the initiative in the matter of ending the Coalition—they run the very great risk of Mr. Lloyd George himself taking it—i.e., of his suddenly demanding a General Election. The result of a General Election at the present moment would almost certainly be the formation of a quantity of groups. Out of these Mr. Lloyd George might well think he could pick up a new and even more personal Coalition. Such a result would be most injurious to the Unionist Party, and therefore, we believe, to the country as a whole. It would probably shatter what is still the greatest force for good in our politics, the Unionist Party, and leave the ship of State wanting in the only machinery yet found efficient for carrying on the representative system. The Spectator, when its history is remembered, will not be accused of being a slavish or even a passive party organ anxious to exalt party above patriotism. It is common knowledge, indeed, that the Spectator is loathed by the Whips of four parties. Yet we have no hesitation in saying that a strong Unionist Party is essential at this moment in order to prevent the nation falling into the hands of some weak and temporary set of Ministers who may be tempted to adopt policies and courses of action such as we know so well from the pages of history are the precursors of Revolution.

LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT.

There is no danger whatever of revolution from the popular will. There is further no danger of it coming from distress, misery, and even economic ruin, such as we may be doomed to endure if the Government continue to rack the country by mad taxation and delirious administration. It is one of the most pathetic of social and political facts that misery, even starvation, does not produce revolution. People instinctively realize that civil commotion will only make their sufferings worse. Revolution comes only from the paralysis and breakdown of the Government. Once get those conditions and it may come with lightning suddenness and force. The revolutionaries themselves, who think out these matters a great deal more than their opponents, have fully realized this. Anyone who reads the famous Marxian manifesto of 1847 and who studies the other pre- liminaries of the Revolution of 1848, or, again, those of the Russian revolution, will see how the revolutionaries always aim at the undermining and destruction of the fabric of government. "Get the Government down and under and incapable, no matter how ! " is always their watchword. "Get the rider out of the saddle and then jump into his place yourself, and you may ride the horse of State to Hell or anywhere else you like."

The discrediting of government in every possible way, and the unsettlement of the public mind—the production of what may be called political panic—is the short way to the victory of the Red Flag. What, therefore, the citizen who does not mean to have revolution and all its agonies and depravities fastened upon this country must look to first is the maintenance of sound government. But the maintenance of sound government can be secured in a representative system only by the formation of a sound Party System. Therefore what we have got to work for is a homogeneous party and a homogeneous set of leaders. This we can have and we must have ; but when we have got it we have no desire that it should hold a monopoly of power. That, indeed, would be its ultimate ruin. The next step, and one that will follow automatically, will be that another party will arise in the State which will have learnt the lesson we have been urging. It will realize that it can get its share of power only by being homogeneous and by relying upon sound measures and sound men and not upon wild personal ambitions. An excellent corrective to an over-strong constitutional democratic party would be a homogeneous and reasonable Labour Party. This we hope and believe we shall get if we first show that party a good model. If, instead, we teach others the dire lessons of the group system and of personal saviours of society like Napoleon III.—Mr. Lloyd George in certain moods apparently hankers after the personal saviour idea—we shall bring ourselves to ruin.

We have no desire to throw Mr. Lloyd George over, or to be unfair to him in any way, but he has got to be told that the time has come when he must keep within, not outside, the traces. He can no longer be allowed to flourish about by the side of the team or act as a fifth horse to our four-in-hand. No doubt he did good service as fifth horse on Bellona's Hill, but we are over that now and want the drag and a good hold back, not a spirited example to the wheelers and leaders to put their backs