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The Review of Reviews. 



UNIONIST PLANS AND POLICIES ! 



For downright assurance " Curio " may 

 be recommended for " honourable mention " in 

 his article on " The Crisis and a Retrospect " 

 appearing in the Fortnightly. The article is not 

 strong in argument and starts with the lame 

 legend : — 



Once again the possibility of a sudden fall of the 

 Government, and of a new Unionist administration, has 

 entered into the sphere of practical reality. The Govern- 

 ment has been badly shaken, and has itself admitted 

 oiBcially, to terrorise its supporters into an unwilling 

 punctuality, that one more such shaking would prove 

 fatal to the patient. 



This is probably very grateful and comforting 

 to gossipy clubland, but as a forecast it is poor 

 stuff, and is more perverse than .plausible. 

 "Curio" tells us that this "result" is the 

 work of three men : — 



The moral decline is due to the lack of popular zeal 

 in the country for the causes of Liberalism as shown by 

 by-election after by-election, for which Ministers are 

 largely indebted to the oratorical brilliancy and un- 

 tiring energy of Mr. F. E. Smith, who goes from elec- 

 tion to election as the perpetual harbinger of victory. 

 We have a leader, we have a Chief Whip, we have a 

 great popular orator. Hence the Ministerial crisis and 

 the imminence of a Ministerial dibdde. 



Then follows a most discursive analysis of the 

 great Imperialist campaign of Mr. Chamberlain, 

 with sundfy reflections on the sinfulness of 



Little Englanders," but it is all rather cheap, 

 for " Curio " is by no means as inexperienced 

 as he pretends, and, while he has no use for 

 Radicals, he unblushingly steals the Socialists' 

 thunder when he naively admits that : — 



We do not think to-day in the terms in which we 

 thought twelve years ago. We have realised that the 

 social and economic conditions of the people of the 

 United Kingdom take precedence of any other political 

 problem, not so much because they are more important 

 than any other problem, as because no other problem 

 can be solved in a successful manner without the consent 

 of -the industrial masses, who demand, and rightly de- 

 mand, that an empire should not be founded on the 

 social degradation of the majority of its citizens. 



If Unionists intend to reduce this admission 

 to terms of effective legislation they will have 

 many supporters, but — there is always a but — 

 when are they going to formulate the much- 

 delayed scheme for Tariff Reform and other 

 letails of their much-advertised programme? 

 One cannot help sympathising with " Curio," 

 for he seems to be in real deadly earnest : — 



These miserable men who call themselves Ministers 

 >re hardly worth triumphing over. What is worth having 

 is tlie new idea of conjoint Imperi.al democracies com- 

 bining to develop their resources to the utmost possible 

 degree. If the next Unionist Administration can com- 

 pass such an arrangement one would gladly exchange 

 for such a settlement one's dreams of twelve years ago, 

 when Lord Rtisebery piped to us and very few would 

 hear. Rut first of all comes Social Reform, for without 

 that reform there will be no Empire. 



IS IT SO BAD? 



The House of Commons is trounced vigor- 

 ously by Mr. Hilaire Belloc in the Oxford and 

 Cambridge Review in his last paper on 

 " Reform." All will shortly be up with the 

 House of Commons, he evidently thinks. He 

 says : — 



With very rare exceptions a man is returned to the 

 House of Commons as the nominee of the Machine, not 

 of his constituents; he votes in the House of Commons 

 as the servant of an Executive (existent or prospective) 

 which has in its gift salaries, contracts, jobs, "honours," 

 and professional promotion. He is " kept." 



To the question " Is the personnel of the House 

 likely to provide a way of escape from the 

 steady decadence of the Commons? " the writer 

 answers : — 



The squires are not enough, the lawyers abound, the 

 proiessional gentry are disgusted, the money lenders and 

 company promoters are the most vigorous, the mere 

 registering voter the commonest at Westminster. And 

 all this movement is growing, not failing. The House 

 of Commons may exhibit a rally or two as dying things 

 will, but dying it is, aird that plainly. 



Men may look to permanent officials or great 

 employers for an escape. The second means 

 plutocracy and the servile state. The Civil Ser- 

 vice has been not swamped, but gravely " con- 

 fused by the sudden addition of a vast body of 

 nominated men, all the chief of them the 

 creatures of the professional politicians or their 

 wealthy advisers. '"* There is, however, one way 

 of escape : — 



Monarchy is still an institution among us. The in- 

 crease in the personal power of the monarch is the one 

 real alternative present before the English State to-day 

 to the conduct of affairs by organised wealth. 



To the end of increasing the personal power of the 

 King should be directed the eiTorts of those who fear 

 most what may be called, in one aspect, plutocracy, in 

 another aspect, servitude. 



The writer admits that " the suggestion is 

 violent, and any use of it is in the last degree 

 improbable." He does not state what use is to 

 be made of the Crown. 



MR. REDMOND'S LOST CHANCE. 



.'\ VERY useful survey, in the Round Table, of 

 the course of the Irish problem, including the 

 abortive constitutional conference, says that 

 when the issue of the conference was known to 

 be trembling in the balance there was no response 

 to the Unionist attitude from Mr. Redmond : — 



Had he- spoken then and there, it is not easy to see 

 how he could have failed to meet with such a response 

 from the section of the Unionist Parly and from the 

 greater part of the Unionist Press, as would have given 

 him possibly immediate victory, but in any event the 

 key of the Opposition. As it is, the writer declares, 

 " it is becoming more probable every day that before the 

 Bill becomes an Act the country will have an oppor- 

 tunity given it of pronouncing an opinion on its merits." 



