The Washington times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1902-1939, 1914-07-22
THE KINGS CONFERENCE

I'LL NllNo ~ WIN INIlN WI
King Georges conference of party
! leaders looks, at this distance, like
an effort to substitute the preroga-
tive of the throne for the veto power
of the house of lords. That is the
way the more outspoken liberal
papers in the United Kingdom char
acterize it.
The Irish home, rule bill has pass
ed the commons three times, and is
entitled to the royal assent and to
become law. But the bitter opposi-
ton on a part of Ulster, backed by
the rule-or-ruin tories of Great
Britain, led the government to in
tro6uce an amending measure, modi-
flying the original one which has
been forced to passage under the
parliamentary reform act which
eliminated the veto of the lords as
against an act three times passed by
the commons.
The present problem is to get this
amendatory act in such form that it
can pass and measurably compose
the differences, permitting the two
laws to take effect together with
reasonable assurance that there will
not be a civil war in Ireland, for
which both sides are prepared.
The King, who under the British
constitution mas no business inter-
fering in such affairs, has assumed
to interfere. Under the advice of
some of the extreme tory leaders,
who seem to exercise the only NOV
ing influence with him and to be
even more persuasive with Queen
Mary, he proposed the conference
in which liberals, unionists, nation
alists and Obstetrics are meeting,
trying to agree on form for the,
Amending" bill. y
The anomalies of this situation
are indicated by the fact that, 81
though Premier Asquith was not
friendly to the conference idea, yet
as premier he was under the neces-
sity of writing the Kings speech, de-
livered in calling the conference to
orderi Americans have difficulty in
grasping the import of such per-
formance. The British monarchy
has been regarded as little more
than a tradition. The present King,
going back for a precedent to his
namesakes of the early nineteenth
and the eighteenth centuries, has IN
dertaken to rehabilitate the kingly
power and make it little more than
shadow and a superstition. The
lords being now powerless to defeat
the purpose of the commons, he I'M
dertakes to revive his personal au-
thority and use it to force amend
ments that the lords could not COM
pei.
1t is commonly believed among
the British politicians that if the
conference agrees on anything, and
the premier undertakes to get it
passed, the commons will revolt and
defeat it. The Irish nationalists will
leave him, and, it is understood,
some thirty insurgent liberals will
join them.
That situation would force a gen.
eral election; and the unionists are
so confident of this outcome that
they are reported already preparing
for it. But it would do worse than
this. 1t would establish a precedent
under which the Kings interference
might at any time be permitted to
undo the work of the party in
power-in short, to abrogate the
will of the country. To Englishmen
that is nowadays quite unthinkable.
Therefore, if Mr.. Asquith permits
the conference to force him into pre-
senting a bill, and that bill fails,
and parliament is sent away for
general election, the issue will be
sharply drawn between the King and
the commons. On that issue the
commons would seem certain to win,
which would mean the return If the
liberals to power.
But it is not so certain that they
would come back under the leader
ship of Mr. Asquith. Some more
militant person, some leader who
had protested against the 'compro-
mise, would very likely be indicated
as the new premier. 1t is not in
conceivable indeed that Mr.. AS
quith might have opened the way
for such result, by permitting the
King his own way, even though the
process might make Mr.. Churchill
or Mr.. Lloyd-George the next pre-
mier. The liberal elements have
been sticking loyalty together
throughout the crisis of recent
months. The unionists strongly sus-
pect that they have been outgener-