Nothing is more remarkable at the present moment than the
way in which the anti-Unionist newspapers are quarrelling with each other. This is how the New Statesman, which we may remind our readers is the organ of Mr. and Mrs. Webb— certainly not Unionists or Conservatives—speaks of the Westminster Gazette :— "It is not surprising, under all the circumstances, that the Ministerial press should be devoting itself with renewed energy to the task of singing the praises of Mr. Lloyd George's Act; but the forms which some of these panegyrics take are rather start- ling. The Westminster Gazette, for example, published the other day a 'Special' which amounted in effect to a mere advertise- ment of the Prudential Company and dealt solely with the wonderful demand created by the Act for more or less unskilled clerical labour. We should have thought that the thousands, or rather tens of thousands, of clerks for whom it has made work would have been the very last feature of the Act upon which its admirers would desire to dwell."
There is certainly no love lost between the various shades of Socialists and Radicals. The matter chiefly interests us, however, as a symptom. Such internecine quarrels always precede the break-up of a Government or a party debacle.
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