The Washington times., 1911-11-09
THE RETIREMENT OF MR..
BALFOUR.

Arthur James Balfour, leader of the
Unionist opposition in the British par.
Lament, has announced his retirement
and on Monday next his party's mem.
bership will caucus to select success,
sor. Much surprise is expressed at the
veteran parliamentarian's withdrawal
at this time. Had Mr.. Asquith laid
down the reins of Liberal leadership il
would have occasioned less wonder.
ment, for there has been insistent re.
port for some time that he designed
this move.
How sadly shaken is the sturdy old
Unionist party is made more apparent
than ever in the discussion of the prob.
able succession to the leadership. The
Unionists, by common consent, have
no man strong enough to take Bal
four's place; and Balfour himself has
not of late been strong enough to hold
it. He was unable to hold the extreme
Tory element of his party in line on
the big issue of accepting the lords
veto measure. His moderate course,
of insisting that the bill be accepted by
the lords without forcing the Liberal
government to create new peers and
pack the upper chamber in favor of the
bill, was altogether sane and sensible.
The Unionist party came off with vast
ly more credit and less injury in the
popular mind than would have been its
portion if the lords had remained OBJ.
durate and forced a wholesale crea
tion of new peers. But the extremists
were disaffected with Balfour's re-
fusal to die in the last ditch.
Beyond this the Chamberlain element
has been less and less pleased with
Balfour because he has refused to make
the tariff reform issue the dominating
tenet of Conservative faith. Balfour
was never a real Chamberlain tariff re,
former, and when the protection issue
was forced upon the Conservatives he
took up with it in poor grace and
with doubtful enthusiasm.
These things indeed demonstrated
the capacity of Balfour as leader; but
neither he nor any other man could
keep the Unionists in firm array at a
time when Britain is determined not
to travel their way. That is the whole
statement of the case. Britain has
gone progressive-ultra progressive. 1t
is looking to the time when Asquith
will give up the Liberal leadership and
Lloyd-George will come to the top. The
sorry plight of the Unionists in COM
parison to the Liberals is excellently
shown at this point. There is no man
strong enough to succeed Balfour, but
there is Lloyd George to take the reins
from Asquith. Lloyd George is the
great, popular, dominating figure in the
Liberal party. He is the true inter-
prefer of the present-day British mind.
He is a great democrat, and Britain
has started on a career of real democ-
racy, whose end no man may safely
guess. The Lloyd-George program is
to keep the socialists down by max
ing concessions to them. His economic
program makes the landowners and
the privileged classes tremble, but the
masses of plain folk seem more and
more for it as they learn its results
from experience.
There may come reverses, reactions,
and delays. The home rule issue is
still to be finally disposed of, and it
may not impossibly be once more the
rock on which the Liberal craft will go
down. But Lloyd-George is young, en-.
ergetic, resourceful, self confident, and
a proved master in the art of under
standing how to bring the masses to
his way of thinking. The retirement of
Balfour seems likely to strengthen the
hands of the Welsh commoner and to
hasten the day of his titular as well
as actual leadership of the United
Kingdom.