• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

NOTES OF THE WEEK . MORE LETTERS TO MY NEPHEW. By Anthony Farley CURRENTCANT . LESYA UKRAINKA’S “BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY.” FOREIGNAFFAIRS. By S. Verdad . (Trans. by S. Wolska and C. E. Bechhofer) MILITARY NOTES. By Romney . PROBLEMS OF CONFLICT. By Everard G. Gilbert- TOWARDSNATIONAL GUILDS. By “National Guildsmen" Cooper . VIEWS AND REVIEWS: BACK TO THE VEDAS. By A. E. R. ASPECTS OF THE GUILDIDEA-IV. By Ivor Brown PASTICHE. By J. A. M. A., 1’. V. C., P. Selver, South AFRICAN ECHOES . Ruth Pitter, B. M., Vectis . WAR ANDSOLIDARITY. By Ramiro de Maeztu . LETTERS TO THE EDITOR from A. E. R., Evan IMPRESSIONSOF PARIS. By Alice Morning . Morgan, S. Reeve, A. Stratton, Fred H. READERS AND WRITERS. By R. H. C. Gorle, F. W. O’Connor . NOTES OF THE WEEK. revolutionaryreconstruction of it? It certainly seems to us insufficient, and, what is more, we do not believe that THE worst of having no House of Commons is that a soul in the country will believe it. Even supposing except for the Front Benches and their favoured Press that this quartette of men should be so unpatriotic as to and City men, nobody in the country knows what is continue their personal quarrels at the cost of the lives going on. We are like the crowd on the outermost of thousands of their countrymen-to say nothing of edges of a fight on the issue of which, nevertheless, our the country itself-it is inconceivable that a Cabinet, very lives depend. Now and then a rift in the throng having no worse troubles on its hands, could find no pressing about the combatants reveals us something. means of putting the criminal lunatics into straight. At other times some privileged spectator from the waistcoats without itself committing suicide. It is middle of The ring passes back a piece of news which obvious, we think, that more is being concealed than sounds authentic until it is as confidently denied. But revealed. It is against reason to suppose that between such revelations are really worse than total ignorance, Wednesday on which day Mr. Asquith declared a and help us in no sense either to forecast our fate or to Coalition Government was not in contemplation, and decide the questions of etiquette which are occasionally Thursday when he announced that a Coalition Government referred to us from the inner ring. In the darkness was in process of formation, nothing more serious and in the confusion of tongues we simply do not know than old-standing personal quarrels had been at work. what or whom to believe. All we know is that the There was, in our opinion, something more, and game-whatever it is-appears to be always going somethingworse. And it is plain that Lord Northcliffe and against us. We are always paying and losing, losing the Unionist Party knew what it was. It was certainly and paying. In the present crisis our case is particularly not the “industrial inefficiency” of the Northern workmen tragic. We are at war with the most powerful, involving our Army in a shortage of shells. The the most desperate, and the most ambitious nation in “Times” correspondent who alleges this as an excuse the world. For once the cry of Wolf, Wolf has not is simply a common newspaper reporter. Nor was it, been raised without a cause. As well as the ideals for we think, the inefficiency of the Government as a whole in which England stands in the world, England itself is respect of war legislation, for have not all their measures, in the most deadly peril. And we are naturally much and particularly their no-measures, had the consent and concerned about it. Yet this is the moment chosen by even the initiation of Lord Northcliffe and his Unionist the governors of the ring, not only to conceal more from friends? No, it was some knowledge possessed by us than ever, but to exchange sides, to sink the old these latter which enabled them to hold up the Government distinctions, to break through constitutional customs, to to ransom and by means of which they extorted present a disunited front to the enemy, to swap horses admission to the Cabinet with the double object of crossing a stream; in fact, to do everything we have saving the Government from scandal and holding office always been advised never to permit in a time of crisis. themselves. What it was we once more do not profess e** to know. Time will show, however, whether our What the reasons arc we do not profess to know. surmises of worse reasons than the alleged reasons are But if, as we surmise, the real reasons are more true or unfounded. discreditable to everybody concerned than the reasons *** publicly alleged, they are bad enough to put an end to On the Press that has, for its own reasons, brought England’s primacy in the world. For the alleged about a Coalition in the midst of the war we cannot reasons are personal squabbles between members of the forbear to retort in its own terms. When we urged the Cabinet and leaders of our Army and Navy respectively, necessity of substituting a national industrial organisation between Lord Kitchener and Sir John French and for the chaos of profiteering, on the ground that between Lord Fisher and Mr. Churchill. But is it such a change was not only advisable in itself but conceivablethat affairs such as these should necessitate not immediately expedient, it was said that we ought not to merely a couple of changes in the Cabinet but a demand a revolution in time of war. Who is making a revolution now? In a single week, for reasons on the one side, and of the worst class of profiteer on concealed from the public and without any intelligible the other. We have said from the outbreak of the war excuse in expediency, the whole party system has been (and long before) that men like Lord Northcliffe and swept by the board and a constitutional revolution Mr. Bottomley would ruin the country. The spectacle effected. Nor is it in the least likely to be undone when of such men leading England in a war for culture was the war is over, and the old system restored without pitiable on the face of it. They and their Press are damage. As the Tories and Liberal Unionists, from worse than merely illiterate and stupid ; they have made acting together as one, became in the end one in fact, of ignorance a culture in itself. Yet, tu everybody’s the two Front Benches. now become publicly united, amazement, one or other had only to open his mouth are married for life. There is a revolution to bring and bray to bring the Cabinet to its knees. Is the about in a time of crisis ! And the curious thing is conclusionnot forced on us that they held political or other that for years the self-same people, responsible for the secrets with which they blackmailed the Ministry into change, have done nothing but resist it. When Mr. the surrender of a Minister’s head a week? In the Belloc and others advocated the abolition of the Party- earliest days of the war, Lord Haldane was dismissed system and the open co-operation instead of the secret by them with every mark of contumely for his despatch collusion of the two Front Benches, we were told that of the Expeditionary Force. Nearly every Minister in the maintenance of the Party-system was essential to turn, for reasons best known to themselves, they daily- England’s greatness, arid that, above all, England does mailed and bull-baited until it would not have been not love Coalitions. Now, however, it appears that the surprising if the Cabinet had resigned. They ruined abolition and not the maintenance of the Party-system the Government’s drink legislation, and made impossible is essential to England’s preservation ; and that Coalitions any whole sal c transformation of the existing wasteful are the form of government England loves. system of industry. Finally, they hounded the Government *** on to a Herods’ campaign upon innocent women and children, the wives and daughters of quiet aliens. Without speculatingfurther on these unrpofitable To whatever knowledge they owed their power over the matters, let us enumerate some of the more obvious Cabinet, it was not only not in the national interest, implications of the Coalition. In the first place it but it was contrary to the national desire that it should cannot be pretended that there was any popular demand be continued. When the nation wishes to be governed for it or that the public is anything but bewildered by by Lord Northcliffe and Mr. Bottomley the nation will its appearance. Its very neccssity. is completely obscure, know where to find and how to appoint them. But to and so far from expecting or welcoming it, public have elected Mr. Asquith and to find ourselves ruled by opinion heard the first news with incredulity, and the Lord Bottomley was a translation the nation could not report. of the fact with consternation. It may be long endure. concluded from this whether the new Camera Obscura is *** likely to be more representative of national opinion than the old Cabinet of all the Wits’ end. Except ostensibly, On the other side, arid perhaps for the same the new Camera, we venture to say, will prove to be undivulged reason, the Government was no less easily. more out of touch with the nation than even its influenced by profiteers than by the squalid Press.

Load more

  24

Copy Link