The fissiparous tendency of the Liberal party increases. Mr. Asquith's
speech at Louth on Thursday was an energetic, almost a fierce, attack upon Mr. Morley. He denied his friend's statements as to the spread of Jingoism among the Liberal chiefs, justified Lord Rosebery's action in the Fashoda crisis, and emphatically approved the policy pursued in the Soudan. It was "a stupendous success" which had restored the great waterway of Egypt to civilisation, and ought therefore to be approved by every Liberal. He believed in the expansion of England so far "as it carried with it advantages not out of pro- portion to its obligations,"—a delicious sentence, which has this advantage, that every man in Great Britain can endorse it. It would justify the conquest of China, or the refusal to take even Chusan. The only foreign policy, Mr Asquith added, to which Liberals objected, was the policy which one day blustered about isolation, and the next went about whistling for alliances. He prefers appa- rently the silent grabbing of good things, and good things only. Mr. Asquith has, in fact, declared for Lord Rosebery as against Sir William Harcourt, and makes of expansion the dividing line. That is the winning side till the reaction comes, but then it may be the losing one.
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