Premier. The Labour leader himself took the opportunity of laying down the principles by which he would be guided in the exercise of power. He described his following as a party of idealists who had built their final habitations far away on the horizon, but who were going to walk there, not jump there, taking only one step at a time. Their first great duty would be to establish peace, and he believed that a Labour Government occupying Downing Street was the one thing required to give strength to the morally courageous and power to the peace forces of all sections of Europe. In home affairs also he expressed his intention of relying chiefly on the moral appeal, and of seeking to mobilise all men and women of good will and sound judgment for a united effort. He believed that every decent-minded man and woman in the country was unhappy about the question of unemployment, and would welcome a Government which would find a solution for it. He thought it not impossible to make the wealthy residents in the neighbourhood of the Albert Hall feel as they of the Labour Party felt about the conditions under which masses of their countrymen were housed, so that they would join loyally in the effort to improve them. He used these concrete cases as illustrations of the spirit in which Labour would go to work, and he insisted that his object would be the well-being not of a party but of the nation.

It was remarked by critics of the Labour movement that the proceedings at this meeting commenced with the singing of the "Marseillaise" and ended with that of the "Red Flag." The tone of the meeting was, however, set by Mr. MacDonald, and there was scarcely a remark made during the evening which could be construed even by a hostile observer as an appeal to class prejudice and antipathies. Mr. MacDonald's own speech was hailed a few days later as "pure Liberalism" by Mr. E. D. Simon, one of the new Liberal members for Manchester, who at the same time declared himself ready to support the Labour leader so long as he kept clear of Socialism. Similar sentiments were expressed about the same time by other representative Liberals, and Mr. Asquith, on being asked by certain business men of Paisley, his constituency, to concert with the Unionists measures for combating the Socialistic menace, replied with an unqualified negative. Thus Mr. MacDonald's path to office was kept clear of all the obstacles with which the anti-Socialists sought to encumber it.

Before Parliament met, the British and French Foreign Offices had a passage at arms in which the former again more than held its own. With the support of the French Governor, General de Metz, a band of adventurers had set up a "Separatist Government in the Palatinate, and the decrees of this egregious body had, at French instigation, been registered by the Rhineland High Commission. Before, however, they could come into operation, the British Government, on January 8, sent a strongly-worded remonstrance to the French Government,

[JAN. insisting that they should first be submitted for consideration to the Legal Advisory Committee of the Commission. M. Poincaré at first demurred, but eventually gave way. At the same time the British Government directed Mr. Clive, its representative in Munich, to visit the Palatinate and report on the Separatist movement. The French again made objections, but were unable to prevent the visit. Mr. Clive found that the allegations of Separatist terrorism exercised with French support were fully justified, but his report did not produce any change in the conduct of General de Metz.

Parliament met on January 8, and after electing Mr. Whitley Speaker, spent a week in the swearing-in of members, so that it did not get to business till January 15. Its immediate task, as every one knew, was to turn the Government out, but owing to the intricacies of its procedure and the peculiar balance of parties this operation required another full week for its performance. Mr. MacDonald at the outset took a step which might have led to still further delay. On Mr. Baldwin proposing, on January 15, that Mr. James Hope should be reelected Chairman of Ways and Means, and Captain Fitzroy Deputy Chairman, the Labour leader warned him that these appointments being partisan would not be allowed to pass without a division, and he advised him to leave the matter over, Mr. Baldwin complied, with the consequence that the House reverted for a time to the practice of thirty years previously, when it had been customary to allow a break in the proceedings -familiarly known as the "Speaker's chop hour"-to give the presiding officer of the House an opportunity for rest and refreshment. Fortunately, the daily loss of an hour to an hour and a half for a few days produced no untoward effect.

The King's Speech, which was read on January 15, bore no sign of being the work of an expiring Cabinet. On the contrary, it was longer than the average, and outlined a legislative programme of unusual fullness. In the field of foreign policy it was able to record "definite progress" in the solution of a number of important questions during the interval which had elapsed since the dissolution. The Reparations Commission had set up its two Committees, England and France had reached an agreement on the status of the Tangier zone, an agreement had virtually been concluded by Great Britain with the United States on the right of search for illicit liquor, and the Ameer of Afghanistan had taken steps to bring to justice the murderers of British subjects who had taken refuge in his territory. In the field of home policy the speech foreshawdowed the introduction of no fewer than seventeen bills dealing with various social needs, such as unemployment, housing, pensions, and agricultural improvement. It made no mention of Protection, but expressed the hope that the promises of Preference to the Colonies given at the Imperial Conferences would be honoured by Parliament.

The programme of social legislation outlined in the speech. went far beyond anything to which a Conservative Government had ever yet committed itself, and even, as Opposition speakers were not slow to point out, contained proposals which the Government itself had opposed when made by Labour members in the previous year. On this account it became the subject of much scoffing and sarcastic comment in the debate; Mr. MacDonald asserted that most of its items had been, if not stolen, at any rate borrowed, and Mr. Lloyd George, who followed, characterised it as a rehash of the Liberal election manifesto, or the Labour programme without the seasoning. Mr. MacDonald at once made it clear that this belated repentance was not going to save the Government from its fate. He made a vigorous onslaught on the Government's conduct of affairs, closing with the announcement that in due course Mr. Clynes would move an amendment to the Address in these terms: "It is, however, our duty respectfully to submit to your Majesty that your Majesty's present advisers have not the confidence of this House. Mr. Baldwin, who followed Mr. Lloyd George, admitted that he had no expectation of retaining office, and said that he had in fact aimed at drafting a King's Speech on which all parties could more or less agree. Whatever happened, the King's Government must be carried on, and he promised that, should his party find itself in Opposition, it would indeed criticise, but not in any factious or fractious spirit, and would unite with the others to help in such causes as unemployment or the relief of agriculture.

In the House of Lords Marquis Curzon as spokesman for the Government adopted a somewhat more defiant tone. He characterised as "most unwise" the speech in which Mr. Asquith had announced his intention of letting the Government meet its fate. He also warmly controverted a statement of Mr. Asquith, made some little time previously, that the record of the Government in foreign affairs had been one of unbroken impotence and humiliation, and that England had been reduced to a cipher in the councils of the world. This latter charge was in fact withdrawn by implication by Mr. MacDonald in the course of his speech attacking the Government in the House of Commons; but the reason he advanced was the reverse of flattering to Lord Curzon. The result of the election, he said, and the prospect of a change of Government had once more made Continental statesmen look upon England as a factor to be considered. In the House of Lords, however, there was no one to gainsay Lord Curzon's estimate of his own performances, since Lord Grey, the Liberal leader, had as usual dealt very gently with the Government, and sympathised with its difficulties rather than criticised its shortcomings.

Mr. Clynes moved the Labour amendment on January 17. Both the Labour and Unionist parties were willing that the axe should be allowed to fall with the utmost despatch on the

devoted head of the Government, but the Liberals insisted that there should be a full-dress debate spread over three days. Thus Labour was kept yet a little longer waiting on the threshold of office. Nor was the delay without its justification. There was after all something repugnant to the spirit of the British Constitution in the larger party handing over the reins of office to the smaller, and though there were imperative reasons why the step should be taken, it was fitting that any appearance of precipitation should be avoided.

The feature of the debate was the speech of Mr. Asquith, who immediately followed Mr. Clynes. Circumstances had placed the Liberal leader in the position of "king-maker," and until he had declared himself there was an element of uncertainty as to the issue of the debate. The party which acknowledged him as leader was far from unanimous in its attitude towards the motion; while the majority felt themselves more nearly akin to the Labour party than to the Unionists, there were a considerable number whose sympathies ran in the opposite direction, and who only waited for a word from Mr. Asquith to vote against the amendment. But they waited in vain; the Liberal leader, now as on December 17, identified himself whether from policy or conviction-with the forward section of the party, and made himself exclusively their spokes

man.

Mr. Asquith began by dissipating any notions that might have been entertained that he had in some way weakened in his attitude in face of the strong pressure which had been exercised on him during the preceding few weeks. "I propose," he said in his second sentence, "to vote, and to advise all my friends to vote for the amendment." Having with these words sealed the fate of the Government, he proceeded, in one of the most successful oratorical efforts of his career, to define the standpoint of Liberalism at that juncture, dissociating it from Unionism, and making it the ally-on terms-of Labour. After writing the epitaph of the Conservative Government as one that would be remembered for confusion, vacillation, and impotence at home and abroad, he pointed out that the so-called two-party system had never been really watertight in England, citing the Peelite and Liberal-Unionist groups as instances, so that government by a minority was not so abnormal as some people imagined. But transference of power to the Labour Party would mean the installation for the first time in England of a Socialist Government; and for this perhaps the mentality of the people was not yet fully prepared. "Few people," went on Mr. Asquith, in sentences punctuated with the applause and laughter of the House," who have not had the melancholy privilege of reading my postbag during the month, will realise what this prospect means to a large and by no means negligible mass of our fellowsubjects. I have never, in my large experience of postal correspondence, come across more virulent manifestations of an

epidemic of political hysteria. Notwithstanding my own compromising past-I am supposed to have been the associate of rebels and worse than rebels in days gone by-I have during these weeks been cajoled, wheedled, almost caressed, taunted, threatened, browbeaten and all but blackmailed to step in as the saviour of society." By "saving society," Mr. Asquith said, these people meant putting up some kind of combination between Liberals and Conservatives to keep Labour out. He was going to be no party to such a manoeuvre, if only for the reason that it would secure for Labour tens and hundreds of thousands of votes in the country. He reminded the House of the answer given by Adam Smith to a gentleman who had remarked that the surrender at Saratoga in the American War of Independence meant the ruin of Great Britain: "Sir, there is a great deal of ruin in the nation," and he poured ridicule on the idea that the advent of a Labour Government would mean any great national calamity, pointing out that such a Government would be strictly limited by the conditions which the election had created, and that it was idle to talk of the dangers of a Socialist régime in a House of Commons constituted as that one was. Under existing conditions the Labour Party was called upon to carry on the King's Government, and it was the duty of every patriotic man and woman to facilitate their task, so far as this could be done without sacrifice of principle or honour. In the important spheres of social legislation where progressive thought had grasped the same ideals and was ready to proceed to their attainment to a great length on common lines, he saw no reason why there should not be co-operation between the Liberal and Labour parties, and in fact large numbers from all parties, and to this the time and energies of the present Parliament might fruitfully be given.

Mr. Asquith's speech contained nothing for which his hearers had not been fully prepared, yet it made a painful impression on those members who still hankered after some form of coalition between Unionists and Liberals, and he was upbraided by Mr. Austen Chamberlain, more in sorrow than in anger, with neglecting a golden opportunity to place his party on the right path. Mr. Baldwin, however, in making his defence of the Government, boldly asserted that Disraeli had been the pioneer of social reform at a time when Liberals were shackled with the doctrine of laissez-faire, and prophesied that the future would lie between Conservatism and Labour, to the exclusion of Liberalism. Mr. MacDonald accepted Mr. Baldwin's estimate of Disraeli, and taunted Conservatives with using the word "Socialism" as a bogy, without trying to understand what it really meant. It was in fact the stock argument of Conservative speakers in the debate that Liberal members had been elected to oppose Socialism no less than Protection. This was admitted by the Liberals, to many of whom the placing of a Socialist Government in power seemed a strange beginning to such a