Yet this is how we find the notion of taking
over the National
Liberal Club for an urgent public need received by Mr. Massingham,- -the editor of our Radical weekly omitemporary, the Nation:— "Really the seizure of the National Liberal Club, and its conversion into a recruiting office (under conscription !), strikes one as something of an outrage. If a new recruiting centre is wanted, the neighbourhood of Northumberland Avenue is still amply stocked with huge hotels, and one •or two of these might surely 'have served Mr. Lloyd George's turn. The appropriation of the Constitutional gives an appearance of fairness as between the two parties, but it is delusive. The Con- stitutional is rather more social than political, and certainly it cannot compare with the National Liberal as an active centre of political thought and energy. The latter is the only headquarters that Liberal- ism now possesses , it b3 a great focus of jumaslism, and oyart fromthe merely -informal interchange of ideas and information .which. goes on there, it is always the scene of lectures and debates covering the whole field of progressive politics. As it happens, a series of lectures on the Paris Conference is just pending. Now all this intellectual and spiritual service to the nation is ruthlessly cut away to serve a passing military convenience. It is not surprising that anger should be loud and deep."
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