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Art. 13.-THE LEGACY OF LIBERALISM.

WHEN things go wrong in this world of ours, it is always the habit of mortal men to throw back the responsibility for present misfortunes on to the generation that preceded their own. 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge,' said the Princes of Judah, thereby earning the reprobation of the prophet Ezekiel. And in a more recent age Victor Hugo very rightly satirised the murmurings of French Conservatives on the permanent after-effects of the Revolution in the absurd song which he puts in the mouth of Gavroche:

'On est laid à Nanterre :

-C'est la faute à Voltaire :
Et bête à Palaiseau

-C'est la faute à Rousseau.'

Remembering this common human tendency, we must be careful when we take in hand the distribution of responsibilities for any unpleasant modern problem. When the world is out of joint it is futile to grumble, with Hamlet, on the cursed spite that we-much to our disgust-are born to set it right. It is no use to abuse our fathers-or wicked uncles-for leaving us the difficulties of to-day.

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But if any mental attitude is more useless for practical ends than that of the censurer of past generations, it is that of the political or social critic who shirks the distribution of responsibilities altogether, who would have us believe that things happen awry because mankind are mostly fools, and will continue to be so to the end. There's nothing new, and there's nothing true, and it doesn't much matter,' is the conclusion of the decadent, not of the philosopher. Unfortunately, there are a good many things that are new-and some that are true-and they do matter a great deal. Wherefore let us avoid hasty generalisations, such as that of Mr Lloyd George when he spoke of the nations of Europe blundering into the war of 1914'-as if general human folly, and not certain deliberate intentions in certain quarters beyond the German Ocean, had caused the catastrophe.

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Judgments, in short, both moral and intellectual, must be made in political as in social history. And just as we must avoid loading all responsibilities on to the shoulders of our predecessors-as did the followers of Rousseau, who thought that kings and priests brought all trouble into the world-so we must avoid also the tendency to shuffle off all blame from individuals on to common human frailty. Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner' is one of the most pernicious generalisations ever made. On the contrary, investigation into antecedents and surrounding circumstances more often leads to the comment which the French diplomatist made when he found that the man who had jostled him was Count Herbert Bismarck, 'ça explique-mais ça n'excuse pas.'

This fact, that intellectual judgments have to be drawn up from time to time, is our justification for making some endeavour to ascertain where responsibility lies to-day for the existing condition of British politics. The obvious course is to explain our present discontents by the war and the war alone. Such a cataclysm was undoubtedly sufficient in itself to shake mankind, morally no less than physically. Old standards of right and wrong were upset; the modern decencies of international law were proved to be conventions, not things real in themselves: the usages of war went back to the style of the 17th century, By 1918 we had got to the stage of learning with satisfaction of the success of our poison-gas, and of exulting in the bombing exploits of our airmen over towns that could certainly not be described as fortresses. No doubt, we did not commence such practices-and, no doubt, we were forced to retaliate, when they were used against us, under pain of seeing ourselves beaten by a more unscrupulous enemy. Nevertheless, such things leave their mark on the moral sense.

We have supped so freely on horrors that we cannot easily readjust our sympathies and sentiments to the standard of 1914. We discuss without a shudder topics and propositions which would not have been considered to come within the purview of civilised humanity ten years ago. It takes a great deal to shock us now, and the moral world-like Japan-seems to be a shivering sod.

Nevertheless, the Great War and its effects on human mentality do not explain everything, when we try to take stock of our present position. They may have precipitated certain movements and tendencies, without being their originating cause. We cannot ascribe to the War the problems of the Irish Question, or the Indian Question, or Unemployment, or Protection, or 'sympathy strikes,' or lop-sided taxation, or of ever-growing and over-expensive Bureaucracy. All these were in the field before 1914, and had bulked large enough on occasion before ever the Emperor William gave a new turn to our thoughts. Some of them we managed to forget for a time during the war; others were always with us as a distraction: the Easter insurrection in Dublin, and the Clydeside strikes, for example, were not without their importance in the military situation. The one showed that it was necessary to set aside a larger garrison for Ireland, i.e. kept men from the Front where every bayonet was needed. The other hampered the smooth working of the home industrial machine, which was keeping the war alive. As to the growth of Bureaucracy, against which wise men were protesting ever since the 20th century began, the war accelerated its progress with a monstrous increase of speed-for when the State takes over the charge of every sphere of national activity, bureaucrats multiply perforce. It could not be prevented-indeed it was necessary, and no protests were made at the time; though now, looking back, we see that our hastily improvised system was over-expensive — -with all its bonuses and increments-and not too well organised-with all its duplications of departments, offices, and committees, whose work overlapped. But no one can say that the War started the curse of Bureaucracy, though it multiplied its powers and its evils

tenfold.

When the Armistice had been signed, and the longprotracted negotiations at Versailles had produced a string of treaties of varying righteousness and expediency, we turned at last to the task of reconstruction, and hoped for a few short months that the Millennium had arrived, with President Wilson as its herald-angel. That was the time when our sanguine Prime Minister assured us that Britain was to be made 'a land for

heroes to live in.' The illusion lasted for a very short space, and we soon discovered that under the budgets of 1919-20 Britain would soon be a land for bankrupts to live in. It was gradually borne in upon us that the aftermath of war was almost as terrible as war itself, and that we had to experience a repetition of all the woes that our grandfathers went through in the troublous years 1815-20, when similar causes produced similar effects.

It is now two years since we turned away from the path of megalomaniac extravagance, and one year since the former prophets of extravagance retired from the Treasury Bench, with the consoling prospect before them that they would soon be able to impute all the effects of their own policy to their unlucky successors. We note that Mr Lloyd George has already begun this simple game, in his book, 'Is it Peace?'-published while this article was in the press. For politicians are well aware that it is only for a very few months that new ministers are allowed to refer the existence of their present troubles to the doings of their forerunners in office. There would be an end to the theory of ministerial responsibility if the men of to-day were permitted to plead that they cannot cope with the matters turned over to their charge by the men of yesterday.

Nevertheless, it is certain that when a Conservative Cabinet-the word Unionist is now dead for all practical purposes-comes into power, after seventeen continuous years of the rule of non-Conservative Prime Ministers, we must take stock of the problems that are placed before it.

On the whole we are inclined to call these problems en bloc 'the Legacy of Liberalism'—the title that is prefixed to this article. For the guidance of Liberalism continued right down to the fall of Mr Lloyd Georgethe Coalition Ministry of 1916-22 was his creation, and those members of it who were not Liberals may have occasionally checked, but never succeeded in directing, his activities. How much this was the case was indicated by the fact that when he resigned office most of the nominally Conservative members of his Cabinet resigned with him, and did not appear in Mr Bonar Law's new Government.

We are far from asserting that Liberalism is now

dead, and that we can conduct a post-mortem on its remains. Despite of its poor show in the new House of Commons, the party and its creed survive, and may yet continue to play a prominent rôle in the politics of this generation. But it would be a bold Liberal who would deny that his party is now past its prime, and who would assert that he has any confidence in its ability to secure a majority in the next (or any other) Parliament. A rough calculation of the number not only of Conservative but of Labour seats that it would have to win at a general election, in order to place itself in power, is sufficient to daunt even the most optimistic Liberal statistician. Suppose the two Liberal wings completely reunited, and their chiefs working together in brotherly affection. How many seats would Labour permit them to win from the present Conservative occupants? Obviously in Labour's present temper very few: for Mr Ramsay MacDonald's machine deliberately puts up candidates to contest any seat where it thinks that its own party has any considerable number of votes. On the other hand, how many Labour seats are there that Liberalism could hope to win without very active Conservative help? And is that help likely to be given in the present temper of the Conservative party?

·

It looks, therefore, as if the time had come when we might analyse Liberalism and its policy as things which can be surveyed at leisure, without any immediate fear of their assuming sudden changes of aspect, or developing new and startling activities. For the obvious policy of back to Limehouse'-of cutting out the Labour party in proposals of extravagant State interference and expenditure-is impossible in practice. The Labour party will always 'go one better,' since they have openly declared themselves 'Socialists, while all the leading members of the Liberal party as openly declared themselves individualists, in the rather academic debate on Mr Snowden's motion which took place last July. It was indeed an amendment phrased and brought in by Liberals which defeated the original motion that the Labour party introduced. So long as the Liberal party continues to exist at all, its essential creed must be opposed to that of His Majesty's present Opposition.

What, then, is the Liberal creed? Several ex-Cabinet

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