LIBERALS AND LEADERSHIP
[To the Editor of TIIE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—The paragraph headed "The Plight of the Liberals" in your "News of the Week" of last Friday affected at least one reader with the same sensations as would be caused by the cocking of a sudden snook on the part of a usually well- mannered friend.
Sitting on the Liberal bench at Westminster and then reading your columns at the end of the week I have rarely been conscious of any transition. The atmosphere has been essen- tially the same & Your Left Centre position is generally expressed by Liberals and very seldom by anyone else. Yet now you want to dismiss us to Limbo with a sneer.
Why is the Liberal Party, -upon whose pre-War legislation the whole nation has leaned for support in these difficult years, now to be regarded as superfluous?
Is it because Conservatives have become so near-Liberal that the genuine article can be • dispensed with ? Head the speeches at their party conference and be wise. Or is it because Sir John Simon and Mr. Runeiman will do all that is required ?
You can hardly think that, for it is the Wee-Free spirit that you particularly object to, and they were the leading elders of that kirk. Your words must have caused them much pain.
You admit that the re-embodiment of British Liberalism might in certain circumstances be an excellent thing. But you will follow the modem fashion. You will wait till the country is divided into contending factions of the Right and the Left, literally at daggers drawn, and then, when it is too late, you will try and improvise the Liberalism that might have saved you. No, Mr. Editor ; take your pen, sit down quickly and write us a cheque, if only in the spirit of the old lady who always bowed at the name of the Devil—" because you never know, you know."—Yours, &c.,
F. KINGSLEY GRIFFITH.
The Liberal Institute, 14 Southfield Road, Middlesbrough.
P.S.—I believe that what really offends you is that we arc only asking for 150,000. I admit that it is a beggarly sum. Five million would have been High Finance. Fifty thousand is mere street mendicancy. But there are such people as the deserving poor !
[It may be conceded to Mr. Kingsley Griffith that the paragraph to which he refers was perhaps unnecessarily rigorous. That the Liberal Party suffers from a deficiency of outstanding leaders is not to be denied, but it may be agreed that it is not unique among the political parties of this country in that. If the success of its appeal has the effect of bringing into political life young men with the stuff of leadership in them the country will be the better for it.—ED. The .S'pectator.1
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