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THE

MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD.

GAMBLE THAT IS CALLED AN ELECTION-A NATURAL COALITION-OUR OBLIGATION TO MR BALDWIN-TARIFF REFORM NOT A LOST CAUSE THE DISFRANCHISED-THE PRESS AND THE ELECTION-'A SECOND SCRAP BOOK'-MAURICE BARRÈS.

THE gamble that is called a General Election is over. The coin has been tossed, and come down neither heads nor tails. It has stuck in the mud, with its rim uppermost. The Conservative majority over the two other parties has faded away, and though the Conservatives still hold a comfortable lead in front of either of the other parties, it is obvious that it can neither carry out its own policy nor hold its own for a week against the coalition of Liberalism and Labour. In its character and in its incidents the Election has differed little from its predecessors. While Mr Baldwin has kept the debate on a high level, the Radicals have used the same weapons of scurrility and misrepresentation as heretofore. The chief artist in misrepresentation, Mr M'Curdy, found himself at the bottom of the poll, and he may have reflected, though it is doubtful, that even in an Election truth is not wholly without its uses. In scurrility, of course, Mr Lloyd George, the well-known knockabout artist, carried off the prize. He made many speeches, denuded every one of them of sense and thought,

and if there remained any at the beginning of the Election who thought that he had the elements of leadership in him, they are now surely disabused. A good agent in advance and a brazen face are useful to the hero of the film. They make for notoriety, not for fame, and the most they can do is to put a politician in a place which he cannot fill. Whatever happens to Mr Lloyd George in the future, he will never emerge again as leader of a great political party.

For the rest a good many undesirables will no longer attempt to darken the councils of the nation. Mr Newbold and the Parsee will not again disturb disturb the deliberations of the Commons. Of Mr Lloyd George's more obsequious followers only one or two were successful. Mr Churchill fell at Leicester, the great Sir Alfred Moritz Mond is not the chosen of Swansea, and it seems as though the country looked askance at men of " first-class brains." The failure of Mr Henderson, who once more stands upon the doormat, will give satisfaction to many both within and without his Party. But, in spite of

minor pleasures, the fact remains that the two parties of disruption have a majority of a round hundred over the Conservatives, and we are faced with a situation which has been rare in the past, and which, until another cleavage is made into two parties, will in the future be common enough.

The Conservatives have had enough of Coalitions. They came out of the last battered and confused. Mr Lloyd George had used them cynically to his purpose, and was surprised that they had stood his impertinence so long. The natural Coalition is between Labour and Liberalism. On many subjects they are in close agreement. They both have a rooted dislike of their own country and Empire; they cherish a simple faith that England is always wrong; and they have an equal skill in making friends of enemies and enemies of friends. In foreign policy they both support the Power whose cynicism and greed brought the worst disaster of modern times upon the world. Germany is their ally, not France. They have neither gratitude nor a sense of comradeship. They have already forgotten the men by whose side we fought, and would be in close alliance with those whom we beat, the Germans. Their single ambition, as they say, is to set Germany on its feet again, that they may deal once more as Free Trade middlemen with the goods which Germany will dump upon our

shores. The Conservatives, on the other hand, despite the influence of German and Jewish finance, will in the long-run be loyal to the entente with France, will refuse to countenance the blackguardism of the Bolsheviks, and, firm in love as in hatred, will still prefer the friends of England to her enemies. How, then, should the strongest Party in the country-for the drums and fifes of Labour and Liberalism cannot silence the plain truth that Conservatism still predominates-take hands with either of the factions which misrepresented its ambitions at the General Election, and which are by temperament and desire completely opposed to it?

Meanwhile, Mr Baldwin has nothing to regret. He has set an example of fair dealing which, in spite of his opponents' ridicule, will be remembered always to his credit. Moved by the tragedy of unemployment, he could not sit still and tinker with want and misery if a chance were left of real amelioration. He believed devoutly and simply that a measure of protection was the one thing that might save the workingclasses; he believed also that he could not pass that measure in defiance of the pledge given a year ago by Mr Bonar Law; and he did what only an honand ourable clear thinking statesman could do in those circumstances. And Mr Lloyd George laughs at his honesty. Well may he laugh at it: it

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is a quality which he will never share.

And Mr Baldwin has put us under another obligation. He conducted the campaign in the country with a dignity and a fairness which are very rare in democracies, and which no one of his adversaries could, or dared to, emulate. He sank to no recriminations; he made no ribald jests; he did not confuse the issue by irrelevant personalities. So that, even in failure, he deserves our thanks and our respect. He has set an example which may be followed, though that is doubtful when such men as Mr M'Curdy seek the suffrages of the people. But even if it be not followed, we know now that there is at least one Minister who was ready to sacrifice all for what he thought just and right, who was content to fight not for himself but for a cause.

The Election has proved has proved again how little sense has the democracy. A system of universal suffrage, under which we live or perish, has neither wisdom nor continuity. It cares for nothing save for the filling of its own belly; and since it does not understand how best to fulfil even that duty, its conclusions are, and must ever be, dependent upon the hazard of a die. Such large questions as the future of the Empire, justice to Ireland, a loyal co-operation with our Dominions, do not interest the democracy in the very

slightest degree. Our enfranchised people has witnessed, or might have witnessed, if it had turned its casual eyes in the right direction, the betrayal of the loyalists in Ireland, and has witnessed it without the disapproving tremor of an eyelid. It did not interfere with its breakfasttable. It might have heard, if it had been at the pains to listen, what the representatives of our Dominions, those Dominions which stood by our side in the war, thought and hoped. It did not value them at the price of a pot of beer. It was told that its tinned salmon would cost it more, and, heedless of ptomaine poison, it shivered shivered visibly. Tinned salmon has a double claim upon its regard: it is cheap, and it saves the trouble of cooking, an operation dreaded by the housewives who aspire to govern the country. try. And, thus regardless of its responsibilities, it has cast a vote for unemployment, and must not complain if its future lot is doles, not labour. That profound political philosopher and British knight, Sir Basil Zaharoff, wrote a letter to the

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but the whole system of democracy. For, in truth, there is no question upon which the democracy is invited to vote that it understands. When Home Rule for Ireland was before the country, it aroused so little speculation in the public mind that many who cast their votes for it knew as little what it was as where Ireland was situated. At one meeting, we remember, the candidate was setting forth the evils of Home Rule as he saw them, and he was greeted with the nasty interruption of a zealous Radical, who was pledged to vote straight for Mr Gladstone, and who expressed his zeal in these words: "Go home; we don't want any of your Home Rule." "Foreign policy, too, is at the mercy of the electorate. Does Sir Basil Zaharoff believe that the people is fit to pronounce upon its intricate problems? No;

there is no question, foreign or domestic, upon which the voice of people-the voice of what a god!-is worth listening to; and Sir Basil's sudden irruption into the debate seems to have been wholly irrelevant.

The cause of Tariff Reform, lately supported by both Parties in the State, Liberal and Conservative, has been beaten. Yet it is not a lost cause. Either in the end it will triumph, or England will be ruined. We cannot for ever sink into idleness and live by the labour of others.

What part has the Press played in the Election? The problem is not easy of solution, because the vast majority of the electorate either does not or cannot read. The wise well-thinking newspapers-'The Times' and 'The Morning Post'speak only to the disfranchised, to those who, understanding the problems of government, are by the system of democracy excluded from the right of choosing our governors. So few are they in number, compared with the vast horde into whose hands are committed our destinies, that their knowledge and their reason go for nothing. And the rest of the Press has been so tortuous in its methods of expression, so clearly swayed by a personal consideration beyond our ken, that nobody in the world knows what it wants or doesn't want. The great trust, conducted, we are told, by those two eminent Peers, Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook, has been extraordinarily active throughout the brief campaign. They have, indeed, afforded a comic element, which no Election should be without. What they wanted we do not know. They have been careful not to tell us. Perhaps it was a dukedom apiece, or perhaps it was that Mr Baldwin did not consult them before consulting the country. Whatever the cause, these owners of many papers spoke in them all with the same voice. They suspended for the moment their opinions

and their principles. They protest that they are Imperialists and Tariff Reformers both. One of them, Lord Rothermere, has always been the champion of a close entente with France. Yet for the moment he forgot his French sympathies, for he must have known that if the Conservatives had shown an imperfect love for France, the Radicals would never stint their love and admiration for Germany. He tells us further that he is a Protectionist-a wholly irrelevant statement so long as he keeps his views in a cupboard. And then he pleads, with tears in his eyes and voice, that Free Trade should be given another chance. We should have thought that a run of eighty years was enough to test any system.

Who shall find an answer to this vast and foolish enigma? Maybe the answer would not be worth knowing if it were found. But there is a great encouragement in the mysterious agitation of the Newspaper Trust. The mysterious agitation had no influence whatever. The one party which it attacked openly and without innuendo is the Labour Party, and despite its attacks the Labour Party succeeded beyond the expectations of any body. So that it seems as if the support of the Trust can easily be dispensed with, and we hope that if ever it be offered again to the Conservative Party it will be declined with or without thanks.

Never since the year 1906 have we had any faith in what is pompously called the Power of the Press. In that year all the Press was on one side, and all the voters were on the other. And in the last Election we noted a similar failure of the Newspaper Trust to make itself heard, though it shouted in many places with one voice. Nor will any sensible man regret that the Power of the Press is passing away, that the black art of printing has no longer the same terrors for the simpleminded which once it had. For the Press, as it is embodied in trusts and "combines," has neither responsibility nor safeguard. It is responsive to nothing but a falling circulation. So long as its proprietors choose to pay for its production, it can say what it likes. The one safeguard which of old it had was the editor. Now the editor, as we remember him, was moved by no other consideration than policy in the higher sense. He cherished in his mind and expressed upon paper certain opinions and principles which he refused to relinquish at the bidding of a proprietor. If the principles of the editor clashed with the interests of the proprietor, the editor resigned, and there was an end of it. To-day all is changed. The magnates of the Newspaper Trust disdain editors. They are masters. supreme and unchallenged, in their many and diverse offices.

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