But the Prime Minister's " message " is, we fear,
what Matthew Arnold called a " Thyestean banquet of claptrap." For example :-
"What does a new world mean ? What was the old world like ? It was a world where toil for-myriads of honest workers, men and women, purchased nothing better than squalor, penury, anxiety, and wretchedness. A world scarred by slums and disgraced by sweating, where unemployment through the vicissitudes of industry brought despair to multitudes of humble homes. A world where, side by side with want, there was waste of the inexhaustible riches of the earth, partly through ignorance and want of forethought, partly through entrenched selfishness. If we renew the lease of that world we shall betray the heroic dead. We shall be guilty of the basest perfidy that ever black- ened a people's fame. Nay, we shall store up retribution for ourselves and for our children. The old world must and will come to an end. No effort can shore it up much longer.'
Of course. these sentiments are admirable in themselves and every decent person wants such things to come true. The trouble is that Mr. Lloyd George has said this kind of thing over and over again, and then turned away to some new subject when he was asked for a precise scheme. Several months ago the rhetoric of the Future would have produced its responsive echoes. The time for that is past. The odd. thing is that Mr. Lloyd George should now have failed to judge the popular temper.
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