Mr. Keir Hardie addressed a Labour demonstration at Darnel, Ayrshire,
on Saturday last, and made a remarkable speech. After vindicating the existence of the Labour Party as the only satisfactory means for enabling working people to look after their own affairs, Mr. Keir Hardie turned to the Rectorial addresses of Mr. Haldane and Mr. Asquith, who both "belonged to that section which came near wrecking Liberalism and making its return to power for ever impossible in the country." Of the three prominent Liberal Imperialists in Scotland, two were of the Birmingham type, and had supported the war. "Two of that company were members of the inner tabernacle : the third, Lord Rosebery, the beat man of the three, was the scapegoat, because he was wandering in the wilderness solitary and alone, bearing the sins of his party upon him." Mr. Hal- dane's national ideals were drawn from Japan and Germany, and his highest type was a form of military organisation which crushed out all individualism on the part of the rank-and-file. Mr. Asquith's reference to ancient Rome furnished Mr. Keir Hardie with a pessimistic parallel. Great Britain, in his view, was following stop by step the very pathway that led Rome to her ruin,—holding down India by the sword, oppressing native races; and exalting landlordism. In Germany, on the other band, the Labour and Socialist Party, which was fight- ing its great fight, was going to come through in triumph. Mr. Keir Hardie's left-handed testimonial to Lord Rosebery is sufficiently surprising, and it is strange to find him, a Socialist, protesting against the crushing out of individualism. As regards the analogy of Germany, the triumph of Socialism is discounted by the declarations of the Social Democratic leaders as to the maintenance of the nation in arms.
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