Speaking at Aberdeen on Monday, Mr. Balfour made an extraordinarily
destructive analysis of the Home Rule Bill. He was astonished at the slowness of Scotsmen and Englishmen to recognize the appalling gravity of the prospect in Ulster. Those who thought they were "watching an ordinary political fight" knew nothing whatever about the situation. Even as an experiment in Federalism the Bill was "
unexampled, and preposterous." Those who thought it would bring leisure to the Imperial Parliament were the greatest of dupes. As for bringing peace to Ireland, the plan of putting the North and South in a room together, locking the door, and letting them fight it out, was the cruellest, most wicked, and most idiotic scheme of constitutional change that ever was contemplated. In seeking a solution he agreed with what Mr. Bonar Law had said at Wallsend. But though this expression of approval, of course, covered the possibility of the avoidance of civil war through the exclusion of North-East Ulster, Mr. Balfour laid special stress on the desirability of a general election or a Referendum. It was absolutely incumbent on the Government to consult the people, because we were "living under an interim Constitution." But if the Government would not consent to an election, why should they refuse a Referendum? A Referendum would not endanger the Government; no Radical member, whatever the result, would lose his seat ; the Government would retain their majority unaltered ; and the attention of the country would be concentrated on a single issue.
We need hardly say how delighted we are that Mr. Balfour should thus have announced himself so plainly as a supporter of the use of the Referendum. But while we welcome Mr. Balfour's adhesion to the principle of a veto over legislation by means of a poll of the people, we cannot help regretting that his aid and that of those whom he describes as his friends in the matter was not given earlier. In our opinion the Unionist leaders committed a most serious error when they neglected to support the excellent measure for carrying out the Referendum introduced by Lord Balfour of Burleigh into the House of Lords. If the Unionist peers had sent the Bill to a Committee containing the best constitutional lawyers in the House, they might have given Lord Balfour's Bill a position which would have been of the very greatest value.
They could not have passed it into law without the assent of the House of Commons, and there was, of course, not the slightest hope of that assent being obtained; but if the Bill had been passed by the Lords after careful consideration by a Select Committee, as we suggested at the time, the machinery for a Referendum would have been, as it were, put on record and ready for use. It would then have been possible at any moment to meet the objection which is now so often made by Liberals who want an excuse for opposing the Referendum— that nobody has ever been able to devise any method for applying it in England, and so forth and so on. Better late than never, however. We suggest that Mr. Balfour should now definitely ask the Unionist leaders in the Lords to revive Lord Balfour's Bill, and to refer it to a Select Committee and then send it down to the Commons. If it is thought that such a course would be more polite to the Government, it might be fitted with a preamble setting forth that the object of the Bill is to provide the machinery for applying the Referendum if Parliament in its wisdom should decide at any time to refer a Bill to the electors.
We have referred in our leading columns to the very striking meeting of protest by Ulster business men against being placed under a Dublin Parliament, which took place in Belfast on Tuesday last. The meeting had to be held in two buildings, Ulster Hall and the Assembly Hall, but though each building held some four thousand men, it is calculated that there were very nearly five hundred who could not obtain admission to either building. According to the trustworthy calculation made by the promoters of the meeting, the capital represented was about 2145,000,000. The first resolution, moved by Mr. Stirling, solemnly pledged those who voted for it "to hold back payment of all taxes which we can control so long as any attempt to put into operation the provisions of the Home Rule Bill for Ireland is persevered in." As we have pointed out elsewhere, Mr. Stirling made it quite clear that though the people of Ulster would fight rather than go under a Dublin Parliament, they made no abstract claim to prevent the establishment of a Dublin Parliament, provided always that they were not forced to go under it. That is most important as showing that exclusion would, as we have always said it would, prevent civil war. Another resolution expressed cordial sympathy "with the measures taken for the defence of our liberties, including the organisation of the volunteer force." It is hardly necessary to add that the resolutions were passed with great enthusiasm.
The deadlock in Dublin still continues, the dispute over the " deportation " of the strikers' children and the imprisonment of Mr. Larkin having inflamed the antagonism between the local Labour leaders and the Nationalist politicians. The threat of Mr. Connolly, Mr. Larkin's lieutenant, to make his chief's imprisonment an issue at all by-elections in England has greatly exasperated the Freeman's Journal. The working men of Dublin, it declares, must choose between Syndicalism and Nationalism, and it denounces Mr. Connolly's proposal as "abominable treason to the Irish nation" and as an encouragement to tyrannous employers to hold out for the humiliating surrender of the men. To add to the irritation of the Freeman's Journal, Mr. Stephen Gwynn, the Nationalist member for Galway, writes to dissociate himself entirely from the official organ's attack on Mr. Bernard Shaw and Mr. George Russell, who have vehemently protested against the intervention of the clergy in the matter of the children. At the same time Mr. Gwynn ingeniously defends the absolute inaction of the Irish members during the labour troubles in Dublin, on the ground of the extraordinary difficulty in which they stand "while such a matter, so intimately Irish, has to be dealt with by an alien Government, which we cannot afford to weaken."
Lord Winterton, chairman of the Radical Plutocracy Inquiry Committee, has written to Mr. Lloyd George to ask him a number of questions about Mr. Lewis Harcourt's estate. He points out that Mr. Harcourt, a colleague of Mr. Lloyd George in the Cabinet, is himself an enthusiastic land reformer. Lord Winterton asks whether it is a fact that on the 6,597 acres owned or controlled by Mr. Harcourt only one smallholding had been created up to March, 1913 (consisting of one acre at a yearly rent of 27 shillings) on Mr. Harcourt's own land, and eleven small-holdings (256 acres) on land rented from the county council and re-let to the small-holders. It is suggested that the local demand for small-holdings is proved and satisfied on the neighbouring estate of Sir John Willoughby. Lord Winterton asks whether the number of 120 farm labourers employed on Mr. Harcourt's 6,597 acres is consistent with the ideals of a land reformer; whether the labourers receive more than 12s. or 13s. a week with the rent of the cottage (1s. 6d.) in many cases deducted; whether the public are ever admitted to Mr. Harcourt's immense park ; and whether the gamekeepers are paid as much as 21 a week with free cottages and fuel ? Such questions as these are quite natural and proper. For all we know, Mr. Harcourt may have a very good answer to all of them. Of course, if he had not, the public would soon learn to think and to say that members of a Cabinet who approve of the manner in which Mr. Lloyd George denounces the selfishness of the landowners and holds their devotion to sport up to public odium, and yet themselves practise the methods he condemns,are guilty of a very unpleasant kind of humbug. On Saturday last Mr. Asquith, while unveiling a bronze statue of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman at Stirling, declared
that though his predecessor's record of public service was long, varied, and distinguished, he was not an original genius or an ambitious man. He had, indeed, a streak of national lethargy, and he had many other interests outside politics —artistic and literary. He was so well read in the classics that he could hold his own in Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet, and on one occasion proved right in his reading of a line of Juvenal when all the other big classical guns—including Mr. Asquith—were wrong. Coming to the qualities which brought him to the front in politics, Mr. Asquith laid special stress on the strength and tenacity of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.'s convictions, the directness and simplicity of his purpose, his shrewd and penetrating judgment of men, and his constant and unswerving courage. He never allowed difference of opinion to affect his personal relations with his colleagues, and though he had an adequate fund of healthy cynicism, it was void of all contempt for his fellowcreatures. "Men might approve or disapprove of the cause he took up, the policies he fought for, and the creed in which he lived and died, but all recognized that we had in him what the country most needs in its service—a man true as steel, simple in heart and life, a devoted and unselfish servant of the State."
The National Council of Public Morals held a conference at the Guildhall on Monday last, the subject being "The Control of Reports and Literature of Demoralizing Tendency." It appears that a Bill has been drafted on the lines of the report of the Joint Select Committee of both Houses, and it was stated that an effort would be made to lay the measure before Parliament next session. During the discussion Mr. Spender said that it was not in the interest of humanity at large that the classics should be suppressed. "What they should aim at was the suppression of the purveyor of indecency for profit.' Here we are wholly with Mr. Spender. We greatly dislike the idea of any State censorship or any attempt to put literature into a strait-waistcoat. Great literature, even when it may appear to be open to the same class of objections that are raised to really indecent literature, does not in fact demoralize.
In dealing with the subject of poisonous literature and the best method of prevention we must never allow our minds to be sophisticated by the ridiculous outcry about censorship and suppression which has followed the very proper action of the libraries in refusing to soil their hands with dirt. What they do is not to censor or suppress books, but merely to refuse to trade in books which they consider are demoralizing. Those whose profits are interfered with by such action try to create prejudice by pretending that the libraries are suppressing free speech and free literature. In reality what is happening is that the purveyors of poisonous literature are setting up the preposterous claim that they have the right to force people to circulate and trade in particular goods to which for some reason or other the people in question object. We do not choose to publish betting advertisements or betting tips in the Spectator. Surely it would be preposterous if those who think there is no demoralization caused by betting were to declare that we were suppressing free speech, and were to insist that we must give our readers the benefit of "Captain Coe's " finals and allow "poor honest men" in Switzerland, Belgium, and Holland to inform our readers where they could put "a bit on." Everybody would think this was unreasonable, but why any more should we be forced to give publicity to books which, rightly or wrongly, we think are demoralizing ? If we are asked what right we have to make a distinction in favour of the classics or the great examples of English literature which happen to be free-spoken, our answer is that we, as honest tradesmen, have a right to decide for ourselves what is demoralizing and what is not. Let us say once again what we have said before in these columns, that we do not take the extreme Puritan view of literature. Probably our views upon individual books would greatly shock many of the excellent people who are doing such good work on the National Council of Public Morals. What we do claim is the liberty not to help to sell or circulate books which, in our opinion, are doing harm. That, too, is really the case of the libraries and of the publishers and bookse lers who are acting with them. They deserve, in our opinion,
the support of all true lovers of their country, and we congratulate. them most heartily upon the splendid stand they have made in a very difficult matter, and one where they were liable to misrepresentation of a particularly odious kind. The National Council of Public Morals, whose president is Bishop Boyd-Carpenter, whose secretary is the Rev. James Marchant, and whose headquarters are at Holborn Hall, have done, and are doing, admirable work in this matter of poisonous literature. There is a great deal of money in poisonous "knowing" and suggestive literature. That is the essential fact at the back of all the fine talk about "liberty," "the classics," "censorship," and the rest.
Wednesday's papers announced that Sir Robert LucasTooth had given £50,000 to open and serve as the nucleus for a Training Fund for Boys. The main aim of the project is to extend the existing organisations for the physical and moral training of boys, to inspire them with patriotism and loyalty, and to encourage them to fit themselves for the service of their country in time of need. Sir Robert LucasTooth wisely disclaims any intention to rival or supplement the various existing organisations, his object being rather to support those which are in need of funds and to enable them to extend their sphere of influence. The acceptance by Prince Alexander of Teck—a zealous worker as well as a keen soldier—of the presidency and chairmanship of the Executive Committee is of good augury for the success of the enterprise, and we have little doubt that his appeal to other patriotic citizens to follow Sir Robert Lucas-Tooth's generous example will meet with a liberal response.
We note that the Board of Admiralty have decided to reduce from 275 to 240 a year the fees payable at the Royal Naval Colleges, Osborne and Dartmouth, in respect of not more than twenty-five per cent. of the naval cadets entered from to-day. The reduced scale now introduced will only be allowed in cases where the pecuniary circumstances of the parents are in the opinion of the Board, such as to justify it. This salutary but long-deferred change, urged from the outset in these columns, is the logical result of the closing down of ICeyham and the consequent limiting of the area of selection on a sumptuary basis. Our only regret is that it should have been introduced in a partial form.
The Cavendish Association, which has been formed to enrol public school and University men in the cause of social service, to be undertaken in their spare time, held a number of most successful and enthusiastic meetings on Wednesday. It was a really remarkable occasion that brought together the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury on the same platform at the Queen's Hall, and Sir Edward Grey and Lord Hugh Cecil on the same platform at Manchester. Lord Sel borne spoke at Norwich and the Archbishop of York at York. Mr. Asquith used an excellent phrase about a voluntary tax to be placed upon "what we must admit is in a large measure the unearned increment of social advantage." We are certain that there is a huge reservoir of ready help waiting to be tapped. It is the task of the Cavendish Association to act as a clearing house and assign definite work to men who at present are quite at a loss to know what to do. We heartily wish the Cavendish Association a most prosperous and useful career.
On Tuesday, at University College, Lord Haldane spoke of the possible enlargement of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to hear appeals not only from the Dominions but from the Courts of the United Kingdom. If the House of Lords were reformed, a new supreme Court of Appeal for the United Kingdom would have to be found. He suggested, therefore—but was careful to point out that he spoke only for himself—that the Judicial Committee might sit in more than one division, and might go to the Dominions to hear appeals as an Imperial Assize. He thought such a solution of an old problem might be a very powerful unifying force in the Empire. We think so too. For nearly thirty years, as we are proud to remember, the Spectator has urged that we have in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council one of the most genuine and obvious bonds of Empire.
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