The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-01-24
IS PARTY DEAD IN BRITAIN?
By JOHN $. STEELE

We have already seen how Austen Cham
 berlain, the high priest of a protective
 tariff and of Tory finance generally, went to the treasury as the volunteer assistant of his great rival. Lloyd George, and
 shared with him not only the work of l safeguarding EnglaDd's finances and in- | ereasing her income, but also took on
 himself full share of the responsibility. By his announcement in Parliament he barred himself forever from critieislng the principles of finance on which the new
 budget is based. The same thing has been
 going on in every department of state.
 Sir Edward Grey at the foreign office had the daily advice and assistance of Lord | Lansdowne, the great Tory foreign min ister, until his recent illness. which am l told, was largely brought on by the hard
 work which he had put in. He used to
 spend as much time at the foreign office | as Sir Edward Grey did. At the war | office Lord Kitchener, who Is a real non-
 party minister. has had the assistance not only of Lord Haldane, the liberal l war minister who reorganized the British
 army and established the territorial force, but he has also had the help of A. J. Bal l four, the tory ex-premier. who has sat for
 years on the committee of imperial de- l fense and is one of the greatest non-pro- | fessionel military authorities in England.
 At the admiralty Winston Churchill has
 been aided by Arthur Lee, M. F., who
 would probably be the first lord in q tory | administration and he has also had the
 whole-hearted assistance of Lord Charles | Beresford. and the officials of the Navy league, who were the bitterest critics of
 the liberal policy in regard to the fleet. In the judicial department there has
 been the same cooperation. The war has
 raised all sorts of knotty legal problems 1 for solution and Lord Haldane. lord 1, chancellor, would have had to deal with a number of them. He has, however. been
 enabled to devote most of his time to the
 military side, by the patriotic work of
 his predecessor and formerly his sternest critics, Lord Halsbury, and by the lord | chief justice, who has almost deserted the law courts for Whitehall where he has placed his rare combination of great legal knowledge and great commercial exper- fence at the service of the government
 Even the few men in Parliament who
 dsapproved of the war. or rather who though that England might have avoided l it, working their hardest for the nation. The most conspicuous of these,
 of course is John Burns, the ex-labor leader, who resigned a post in the cabi- net worth $25O00 year because he was
 not in sympathy with the governments
 policy. He has been working harder than
 he ever did for his s25,0o0. although he
 now receives no pay in organizing l
 distress due to the war. In that he has
 had the help of the Cecil brothers and other members of the tory social re- I form group.
 1 The question that is now being asked l is What will happen after the war;" l No one believes that the men who have been working so Loyalty together in a
 real emergency can return to the old l game of slanging each other over things 1 that really do not matter No one in l Great Britain will really be any the
 worse off if Ulster goes in with the rest l of Ireland or If she stays out, or if l the church in Wales is dsestablished or l is not. Nobody really cares very much l if government puts super tax on the dukes except, perhaps, some of the dukes themselves, and there are so few | of them that they do not matter Ev- l eryone is agreed now that British trade l should be protected in some way against unfair German and other foreign com petition, and no one cares very much I whether it is done by the imposition of
 a tariff or by some other device. Every II body is agreed that there is a lot of pow erty and misery in England that must
 be done away with, and now that the
 party lines have been wiped out 1t is
 quite likely that the men of good will in
 all parties will be able to get together
 and agree on a plan for doing it.
 A good many people think that when the time comes for things to settle down
 again the present party divisions will , disappear. and that their place will be
 taken by two parties working for the same end and differing only in the meth cd and speed of getting there. That
 tendency has been developing for some , years in the British Parliament. In the
 liberal party there have been two dis tinct clements. if. the old whigs, whose numbers are insignificant are left out. !,
 working for sane and more or less grad
 ual social reform on socialist. or at least coliectivist lines, and a less nu-
 merous but much more vocal group of
 extreme radicals. who were ready to go
 even farther than the avowed socialists. The same division existed in the labor party, while in the tory party there were the old high tories, who were gradually dying out, and hardly more influential . than the whigs in the liberal party. while the great mass of the younger
 men were pursuing exactly the same
 ideals as the moderate liberals. As a matter of fact, the nominal division be- tween the liberals and tories on the question of a protective tariff was most unreal. Half the tories who were voting from party loyalty for tariff were , convinced free traders. while half the liberals, who voted from similar motives
 to maintain free trade, were and are l pIOleCtlOLlStS.
 : The division that seems likely to take place then under the new regime Is that between the moderates and the radicals. It seems entirely likely that the younger men of both parties will come together
 and there is no reason why F. E. Smith. , the most promising of the young tory leaders. should not enter a government ! in which his bosom friend. Winston i. Churchill. is a shining light. or why Aus ten Chamberlain and Lloyd George who [ are both ardent social reformers, should not continue to cooperate after the war
 as they have done since its beginning. If Carson and Redmond can talk over meas , ures for the good of Ireland at Westmin- ster without using their shilelaghs. there is surely no good reason why they can-
 not continue their conversations in Du- l blin.
 . There has been q good deal of talk of
 this kind going on in political circles in London recently. and it seems to be gen. orally agreed that the first question to be 7 tackled is that of labors relation to the state. England has had one or two bad frights in the last year or two One was
 the miners strike and the other was the , railway strike. Most of the young men
 in politics are agreed now on the principle of labor's right to a living wage and of the states duty to see that it ~afa tt