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THE LIBERAL MAGAZINE
THE LIBERAL MONTHLY
THE LIBERAL YEAR BOOK
LEAFLETS & PAMPHLETS

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LIBERAL PUBLICATION DEPARTMENT,

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This is the first number of Volume XXVIII. of the MAGAZINE.

Bound copies of Volume XXVII. will be available very shortly.

New readers of the MAGAZINE are recommended to purchase a
cloth cover for holding the monthly copies. The price is 1s. 3d.
post free-from the Liberal Publication Department.

The LIBERAL YEAR BOOK for 1920 is now being printed. All
subscribers of one guinea to the Liberal Publication Department
will receive a copy in due course-paper binding. If a cloth-
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be sent at once to the Liberal Publication Department.

This number of the MAGAZINE contains the first instalment of what
seems likely to be called the Paisley Programme-the programme
of Liberalism for Liberals which Mr. Asquith has unfolded in a
series of brilliant by-election speeches. Mr. Asquith's election
address is given at page 20. Speeches delivered in February will
be given in the MAGAZINE for March.

THE DIARY OF THE MONTH.

(1) Sir Donald Maclean on the Attack on the House of Commons.

"The House of Commons has been through very rough times in its career. It was attacked by the Smillies of a hundred years ago, and has gone on its way triumphant. It will survive the attack of the shop stewards of to-day. But it is a serious attack. Is the birthright of every generation to be put aside at the dictate of any trade union or man who thinks he can sweep British institutions aside on the crest of a wave of higher wages? The political life of the country is not broken to pieces by speeches. Let me read you the words of Mr. Robert

Williams:

"The active insurgent members of the Brtish Labour movement are preparing to supersede the House of Commons.'

and the following words of Mr. Cramp :

The centre of gravity is passing from the House of Commons to the headquarters of the great trade unions.'

I believe in trade unions, and I say this: If it were not for the great trade unions of this country, sanguinary revolutions would have forced reform. But trade unions, however great, are no substitute for a House of Commons. We don't want this business of running the country at the dictates of shop stewards. That is not the way to maintain the dignity and responsibility of a great commonwealth. Are the only issues to be decided the questions debated in trade unions? Vast, world-wide issues are to be decided, and I welcome working men to come and help us to decide them."

(2) Mr. Asquith on Lord Haldane's Pre-War Policy.

Time, which like the mills of God, grinds slowly, time will certainly, and I believe before very long, assert and vindicate the magnificent and unparalleled services which Lord Haldane has rendered to this country in the greatest crisis in its fate. Where should we have been as a nation and an Empire, as a power in the world, in that fateful moment in the summer of 1914? Where should we have been, how should we have been equipped to play a worthy and decisive part, but for the strenuous, vigilant, far-sighted policy Lord Haldane pursued in building up our Expeditionary Force and behind it our Territorial Army, which enabled us to take the field, and which, in the long run, enabled us also to play a decisive part in the great military drama of the world. No greater service was ever rendered by any man in this country, and I am ashamed, and so should all Englishmen be, that no service has been less recognised, less requited by those on whose behalf it was rendered."

And on the Coalition and the Russian Problem.

Many charges may, and I think justly, be brought against the Peace Conference that has been sitting in Paris. But, in my judgment, the heaviest indictment of them all is that while they were redistributing territories and repainting maps, and imposing here and there and everywhere among our late enemies intolerable and impossible burdens, they made no serious or sustained attempt to secure even foundation and possibilities of peace with Russia. . . If you are to establish a League of Nations you must leave to a vast community with ancient history and traditions and with a stirring vigorous national life like Russia, which, mind you, played a magnificent part in the advance of freedom in the first two years of the war-we must leave to her without foreign or extraneous

...

1920.

THE DIARY OF THE
OF THE MONTH.

Jan. 2. Mr. H. A. L. Fisher at London Day Training College on Public and Secondary Schools.

3. Mr. Churchill at Sunderland on Bolshevism, and on Labour and Government, and on Trade with Germany.

Mr. Ian Macpherson at Inverness on Ireland. 5.-Lord Selborne at Winchester on Labour Government and Land Nationalization.

8. Sir John Simon at Manchester on the Coalition and on Liberalism.

Mr. A. Henderson at Widnes on the Labour Party and Government.

Lord Astor at the Society of Architects on Housing. 9. Lord Lee at Westminster on Agriculture and Control. Mr. H. A. L. Fisher at Southport on Education. PEACE TREATY RATIFIED in Paris.

10.

13. Lord Haldane at Glasgow on Liberalism and Labour. Mr. Chamberlain at the Savoy Hotel on National Finance and Thrift.

15.

(1) Sir Donald Maclean at Ashton-under-Lyne on Liberalism and Labour.

16.-Lord Lee at High Wycombe on Agricultural Prices.
Mr. Macpherson at London Watsonian Club on
Ireland.

Mr. C. A. McCurdy at the Hotel Windsor on
Profiteering.

18. Mr. G. H. Roberts at Grosvenor House on Food
Control.

Lord R. Cecil at Newcastle-on-Tyne on Nationaliza

tion.

20. Sir E. Geddes at Cambridge on Railway Fares and Rates.

21.—Mr. H. A. L. Fisher at Camberwell on the Coalition and Labour.

22.-Mr. Balfour at Merchant Taylors Hall on the

Coalition.

Mr. Chamberlain at Birmingham on National Finance. 23. (2) Mr. Asquith at Cambridge on the Coalition 23.-(2) and on Liberalism and on Labour.

interference-if she decides, right or wrong, well or ill, she will suffer the consequences-we must leave to her the power of self-determination over her form of government. Now, at last, we have done what we ought to have done long ago, a year ago we have relaxed the blockade, and after an infinitude of pusillanimous and misdirected vacillation between intervention upon one side and abstention upon the other, now at last it appears to be, if anything is settled, the settled policy of our Government to refuse any further to interfere. Why was that not done a year ago? Why was it not done six months ago? Could you have a better illustration of the drawbacks of a coalition Government, which is the natural resultant of the forces operating with different degrees of effect at different moments of time? It is this zig-zag, this series of compromises, improvisations, accommodations, insincerities, and inconsistencies which, I do not hesitate to say, has cost thousands of lives, millions of money, and, what is more serious than either, has retarded and put back for months, and possibly for years, the resettlement of the European world."

(1) Mr. Asquith on his Leadership of the Liberal Party.

It was twelve years ago or very nearly twelve years-twelve years and a couple of months-I was elected leader of the Liberal Party. In all the many and arduous struggles which took place in the subsequent years, I had the privilege of occupying the post of command, nobody, no statesman, no leader, no captain of a force, has more reason for gratitude, for a more loyal and affectionate following. On the other hand I will venture to claim for myself that during the whole of that time up to this moment I have never lowered your colours or betrayed your trust."

(2) Sir John Simon on Lord Birkenhead and the Coalition.

"The present Government came into being by the biggest piece of political profiteering ever perpetrated in the country. It called together a mass of men whose principal qualification was that they had tied themselves hand and foot to the Coalition Government. Has anyone a word to say now in defence of the Coalition Government and the Parliament it had created? One has no need to go to outside or unfriendly critics, or even to the indiscretions of minor members of the Government. Go to the House of Lords, go to the Woolsack, and there you will see a spectacle which I should have conceived impossible at any period of our history-the Lord High Chancellor of England busily engaged in kicking the wool out of his own woolsack.”

And on two things Free Liberals must fight for.

"There were two things that any Free Liberal in the House of Commons was bound to fight for with all his strength, and it was the Free Liberals who had fought for them in the past twelve months. One was the reduction of public expenditure. As long as we spent money as fast as we were spending it at present, it would be impossible for money to recover its purchasing power. Only by public thrift and economy could Bradbury notes be brought nearer to the value of sovereigns. The other thing was Free Trade. During the war we had an object lesson which Tariff Reformers ought never to forget, of the result of putting obstacles in the way of the flow of goods into this country. Peace had now been ratified, but the League of Nations, which attracted such high hopes some months ago, and was still the hope of the world, was a mere skeleton. It had to be clothed with human flesh and blood before it became an effective force in civilisation, and that work could not be done unless some of the men who joined in it were filled with the real Liberal spirit."