TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE UNIONIST PARTY. DURING the past month a curious little comedy has been played in the Press. Not only the organs which habitually attack the Government without sup- porting either the Liberal or the Labour opposition, but also a certain number of the regular Coalition journals have been talking about divisions among the Unionists, the intentions of the Prime Minister or of some other Ministers, and the prospects of a General Election, and have been hinting that rearrangements are to be made both in the Ministry and in the Unionist Party. Mr. Blank, we were told, was going to do this, Lord Dash was going to do that, and altogether there were going to be catastrophic times in Parliament and out of it. Now, however, the word has been passed round in some mysterious way that not only is the crisis in the Unionist Party off, but that there never was one, and that nobody ever wanted any change in the best of Ministries supported by the best possible of Parliaments. For example, the Daily Express, which, though one of the Prime Minister's special papers, has often shown a kind of Puck-like desire to prod the Government, came out on the last day of January with an article in the middle of the front page in large and leaded type declaring under seven heads that " The crisis resembles an empty box—there is nothing in it." There is to be no General Election. Sir George Younger has had no quarrel with Mr. Bonar Law. Lord Derby en- dorses the policy of the Unionist Party in uncompromising terms, and has no intention of causing a split, and so forth. Thus apparently ends a comedy which, some would say, was never really begun. " That may be all very well for the Cabinet and the Houses of Parliament, and the Press, and the caucus, but where do I come in ? " will, we believe, be the comment of the ordinary member of the Unionist Party, the man who, even under our present system of finance, has still one untaxed possession—his vote. Though one would hardly judge it from the action of certain of the Unionist Members of Parliament and Unionist Cabinet Ministers, we believe that there is still in the rank and file of the party a very strong belief in Unionist principles, and a very strong desire that the party should be kept together as a great political instrument for good. It is an instrument which will be greatly missed if it is wantonly thrown away or blunted by the Group System, when we, as is quite possible, pass into a national condition even more troubled than that of to-day. If carefully preserved, the Unionist Party may prove of untold advantage to the nation.
We are entirely in agreement with the man in the ranks of the Unionist Party whose opinions we have just expressed, and we regard with the greatest anxiety the tendency to let Unionism gradually degenerate into a kind of sloppy Coalitionism. Coalitions may be, and we believe often are, very useful when a nation is attacked from the outside. In normal times, or at any rate those which are not times of external peril, we believe that representative institutions are much better worked under a more closely organized political system. Coalition politics do not get rid of the evils of party, but give us those evils in an intensified form, and without any of the advantages of that disciplined co-operation which is the chief asset of the Party System. If, then, there is not a Party crisis in the sense that a considerable number of men in the Cabinet wish to resign their offices, or that the Government are insisting upon some policy which the country is not going to tolerate, there is, we believe, a very real sense of unrest amongst Unionists generally as to their political future. We believe, further, that this unrest will soon come to a head, and that Mr. Bonar Law and the other chiefs of the Unionist Party will be asked, not in any hostile spirit yet firmly and plainly, for an account of their stewardship. After all, it was the Unionist Party which won the last General Election, and it is the Unionist Party which has a majority of the House of Commons. Therefore Unionists have the right to ask their special leaders whether there is any truth on the side of those who ask in the words of the Emperor, ,`,Varus, Yarns, what have you done with our legions ? " There are thousands of men who passionately desire to maintain in all its strength the Unionist barrier against the disruption of the nation, of the Empire, and of civil society. They insist that our system of government shall be based upon the Will of the Majority and not upon that of a Minority which pretends to monopolize political virtue and therefore asserts its mord right to endow us with those social and political benefits now enjoyed by the people of Russia. This is not a mere policy of negation, or again a policy of devotion to an individual statesman, however distinguished, but some- thing much bigger. It is a policy as zealously entertained and as stoutly affirmative as Socialism or Communism, or the Caesarism of the Proletariat.
Such is the Unionist creed, but it must not be supposed that those who hold it are necessarily hostile to Mr. Lloyd George or to Mr. Bonar Law. On the contrary, the party has shown, and still shows, as is the way of Englishmen, a real sense of loyalty to the Prime Minister and also to Mr. Bonar Law. In spite, however, of this loyalty, Unionists feel that the time has come when the position must be regularized, and when they must know definitely whether Mr. Lloyd George means to go back to the Liberal Party accompanied by his special followers, or whether he intends to stay with the Unionist Party and to become, as no doubt he could be, its leader. The Unionists cannot afford any longer to have a chief who at any moment may not only kick over the traces but kick himself free from all his harness and canter off to seek a new team. Before they can have that absolute confidence in their head. which is the life-breath of a political organization they must feel secure as to the future. Moreover, the followers must feel that the leader is as convinced about certain political principles as they are themselves. If Mr. Lloyd George will out of his heart and without any reservation become our leader, well and good. Though the Spectator has had its special quarrels with him, if he should be chosen as leader by the Unionists and if he . accepted that leadership, we should not attempt to combat the choice, but would loyally accept the verdict of the party. On the other hand, if Mr. Lloyd George found he could not become a Unionist, we should all of us have to accept the result, and must then begin upon the work of party reconstruction which has been too long delayed. And here let us say that though we are fully alive to Mr. Lloyd George s extraordinary powers of leadership, we cannot admit for a moment the notion that he is absolutely necessary to the party and that it would be impossible to find any leader to take his place. We are convinced that the need would provide the man. Remember all the misgivings of the Liberals in 1906. Yet when Sir Henry Campbell- Bannerman, by no means a heroic figure at that epoch, and indeed a very unsuccessful leader of the Opposition, came into power, people were in six months speaking of him as a great political asset. We are not going to name anyone to lead the Unionist Party if Mr. Lloyd George were to go, but we are certain that one could and would be found if the necessity arose, as of course it must arise in the fullness of time, for Mr. Lloyd George, though young and, we are glad to say, very strong, is not immortal. However, it is more than likely that this difficulty would be quickly settled, if once the Unionist Party made up its mind, by Mr. Lloyd George's willingness to become the leader of the Unionist Party, and also by the willingness of the majority of the Lloyd Georgeite Liberals, who, by the way, hold so large a share in the Government, to follow him. " But," it may be asked, " if that is all that is going to happen, why are you so anxious to have a change ? Why not go on just as we are ? What is the use of merely putting a large ticket marked ' Unionist ' on the backs of Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Montagu, Lord Reading, Sir Alfred Mond, Mr. Winston Churchill, and the rest " Our answer is that as long as Mr. Lloyd George is not a Unionist, but stands outside the Unionist Party, not merely will there be divided allegiance, which is bad in itself, but the Unionist Party will go on suffering from what afflicts it so painfully just now—the want of a clear and fixed policy. The party has been sterilized by the Coalition. That was inevitable, nay necessary. At a moment of great peril we all had to sink our differences in order to unite in preserving the State. But sinking differences means inaction and sterility. Now what is wanted is that the Unionist Party should get out of the sterile condition and become active. We want Unionist policy to be put before the nation without fear of being told that this or that point must not be pressed because it might hurt the feelings of one portion of the Coalition, or that this or that stupid or wrong thing must be done because our Liberal allies require it, or, worst of all, that this or that man must be placed in the Ministry and kept there because, though he may seem to the Unionist a political undesirable, he has special claims upon the Prime Minister or upon some of his Liberal colleagues. The Unionist Party will die if it is not endowed with a clear policy. But the Unionist Party must not die. There- fore the work of creating a homogeneous party with a true and permanent and not a borrowed and temporary leader must be taken in hand at once. We can best enforce this by noting once more the policy which the Unionist Party does in theory stand for, and ought to stand for in practice. 1. The first item is Majority rule—the exercising of the Will of the People legally and constitutionally expressed. This affirmation means, of course, the taking of strong action against any attempts to set up minority rule and against illegal and unconstitutional moves such as that threatened by the Council of Action or taken by the minority in Ireland. Above all, the Unionist Party is an anti-revolutionary party. 2. The best method for making sure of Majority rule is to introduce that great safeguard against revolution by a minority which is provided by lodging a veto power over the legislative work of the People's representatives in the hands of the People themselves—i.e., the Poll of the People or Referendum. The Government, it appears, are at this moment making elaborate proposals in regard to the House of Lords and the erection of a new Second Chamber. That is a dream. The Commons will never allow any Second Chamber to be erected which will deprive them of any real part of their powers. They are too jealous for that. If the Government make a new Second Chamber the Chamber will be a sham. The only true check on the House of Commons is the Poll of the People. It is, furthermore, the only true way of preventing the House of Commons, as the monopolist of power, from becoming hateful. If the House of Commons becomes hateful we are courting revolution. What we ought to do is to let the House of Lords remain as a most efficient revising and debating Chamber, and also a body most useful as the people's remembrancer. The Referendum is a far stronger and better barrier against revolution than any Chamber of Notables. Such bodies can always be blackmailed or terrorized or bribed or hoodwinked by party diplomacy. 3. The conservation of the national resources by the restriction of taxation to its lowest possible limits, by the freeing of all forms of commerce from the wire entangle- ments of bureaucracy, and by the destruction of monopoly, whether in the hands of ambitious capitalists or some privileged and selfish section of the manual workers.
4. The maintenance of a sane Imperialism. By this we mean a policy exactly opposite to that into which we have unfortunately drifted of late. Our present policy is to throw away or imperil those portions of the Empire in which our success has been greatest—India and Egypt —in order to take on great and new burdens, probably beyond our strength, in such places as Mesopotamia, Persia, and Palestine.
5. Maintenance of the highest standard in all admin- istrative work, and the punishment not only of actual corruption but of anything which derogates from the highest standard in regard to government and the instru- ments of government. This policy of constitutional, commercial, and political integrity is an ideal worth having and one for which we believe the country as a whole is yearning ; but to make it good the Unionist Party must support it and urge it in season and out of season, and with all its strength. At Present it does nothing except vote with its eyes shut for the Coalition, with the result that as a party it is daily sinking lower and lower in public estimation. In Heaven's name, let us save it before the last drop of blood is sucked out by the Vampires. That, we believe, is what is being bit, if not.actually said,- by the vast majority of Unionists.
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