24 JANUARY 1941, Page 5

Tht Prime Minister's reference on Wednesday to his hope of

maintaining national unity, meaning a National Govern- ment, for three years after the wat is very interesting. Mr. Churchill, who, if I remember rightly, was one of the Ministers who contemplated a coalition " centre " party in 1910, is, with his absence of strong party affiliations, the ideal man to build such an administration round. One of the disasters of the peacemaking period in 1919 was the fact that political opinion in this country was hopelessly divided, as the result first of the splitting of the Liberal Party by the Maurice debate in 1917 and then by the khaki election in 1918, immediately after the Armistice. If we cannot learn by that kind of mistake we can learn nothing.

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