192 



The Review of Reviews. 



MR. HAROLD COX AS EDITOR. 



The Edinburgh Review, or Crilical Journal for July 

 is tlie first number issued under the editorship o( 

 Mr. Harold Cox. The ehanges introduced are noticed 

 elsewhere. But in the concluding article, on con- 

 temporary politics, Mr. Harold Cox vindicates his 

 position as independent critic in a way that will 

 bring alarm to some politicians. 



INSINCERITY OF POLITICIANS. 



He says that Parliament has rarely been occupied 

 with questions of greater public importance, and yet 

 its proceedings are viewed with the utmost public 

 indifference. "This is attributed by Mr. Cox to the 

 profound disbelief of the public in the sincerity of 

 politicians. The Unionists have destroyed faith in 

 their sincerity by their readiness two years ago to 

 advocate some form of federal Home Rule. The 

 sincerity of the Liberals is doubted because they have 

 not based their Home Rule Bill on a federal principle 

 which could be applied all round. Touching on the 

 franchise, Mr. Cox advocates a small universal tax, 

 preferably a house tax, which every head of a separate 

 household would be required to pay as a condition of 

 registration as a voter, and the raising of the age to 

 twenty-tive ; the introduction' of some system of 

 proportional representation. The Labour Party is 

 taken by Mr. Cox to be a proof that the old conception 

 of politics as a fight between two Parties is breaking 

 down. The Socialist movement he pronounces to be 

 an idealistic movement, and that is why Socialism goes 

 ahead while Liberalism and Unionism stand still. 



WHY NOT DROP TARIFF REFORM ? 



Mr. Cox urges that Mr. Chamljerlain only put forward 

 . the proposal for Colonial preference after he had 

 repeatedly failed to persuade the Colonies to take 

 their fair share of the burden of Imperial defence. 

 Now that the Dominions are prepared to co-operate 

 in Imperial defence, Mr. Chamlicrlain's end is being 

 secured, and " in view of this triumph it might have 

 been thought that the English advocates of tariff 

 reform would now be proudly proclaiming on the 

 house-tops that their work is done," and renouncing 

 the policy of tariff reform. 



Mr. Cox declares that the Labour Party is very 

 largely recruited from men who were previously 

 stalwart Tories. He laments that there is a complete 

 absence of any political organism to give e.xpression 

 to the conservatism which is cliaracteristic of English 

 people. Hence there is no organ effectively to resist 

 the succession of ill-devised legislative projects for 

 interfering with the organisation of industry and the 

 whole structure of society. 



UNIONISM BANKRUPT OF IDKAS. 



The Unionist Party is simply c(;mpeting with the 

 Liberals in the process of transferring wealth from the 

 rich to the poor. Mr. Cox trenchantly sulimits : — 



If anylhinR were required to prove the bankruptcy of ideas in 

 Ihc prc-enl Conservative Tarty, it is sliown in the fact that after 

 tile House of Lords has failed to iliscliarge its constitutional 



duty by suspending the operation of the Insurance Act, 

 Conservative candidates up and down the country are now 

 denouncing the Liljcral Party for rushing that Act into 

 operation. 



The simple truth is that tlic present Unionist Parlj; is in a 

 hopeless position because it has abandoned its own principles. 

 It shifts its policy day by day, almost .hour by hour, to every 

 point in the compass. Its principal journalistic adviser, who 

 has led it from blunder to blunder, in each case with an equal 

 profusion of dogmatic rhetoric, has now nothing to propose 

 but that a party which is presumed to be mainly conipos^.-d of 

 English gentlemen should slop business in the House of 

 Commons by maintaining a continuous shout of " Dissolve, 

 dissolve, dissolve." .Such a suggestion for the degradation of 

 conduct is the natural outcome of the degradation of ideals. 



Yet for the true Conservative there is now a magni- 

 ficent opportunity, the true Conservative being 

 apparently the man who sincerely believes " that 

 the progress of human society mainly depends on 

 individual exertions, and that the part which Parlia- 

 ment can play in improving the lot of the citizen is 

 only incidental and intermittent." This invitation of 

 Mr. Cox's to Unionists to become Individualists is 

 scarcely likely to prevail in this social era. 



WHAT ERSE HAS TO DO FOR 

 ERIN. 



In the Irisii Educational Revieiv for Juh', Miss Agnes 

 O'Ryan declares " there is work for Irishmen to do " 

 in respect of their language, which, she declares, is " the 

 most important item in the constitution of a nation." 

 " If we are to be a free nation,, we must revive our 

 language and all it involves " : — 



Through the language alone Ireland can be saved, and 

 judging by the facility with which Irish people .adopted once a 

 foreign tongue surely it is no exaggeration to hope that they 

 willfind its" reviving no herculean t.ask. The language must 

 be respected, ami if for no other reason, then for this ; that we 

 want it to brand us a separate nation, to cement us who are 

 Irish — not Knglish— into one, and to bring us back by its voice 

 to the customs and ways of our forefathers wdien all was song 

 and grandeur, when all went merry as the marriage liells. The 

 Irish language will protect us against the oncoming tide on 

 whose crest no God or spirituality is writ. The very act of 

 reviving it will shield us from the sordid, self-satisfied material- 

 ism of the present day, and will give Irish men and women a 

 footing whence they may once again face the world with a 

 new life. 



What would happen to the English-speaking world il 

 all the oratory and poetry and humour of Ireland were 

 henceforth to be buried in an unknown tongue ? 



MoRR Thrkats. — "'fhe Oovernrnciil have chal- 

 lenged the Protestants of the north of Ireland to make 

 it clear that their resolution to take no part in the 

 Home Rule Parliament is fitial. That challenge will 

 be ttccepted in the autumn, and before the resumption 

 of our Parliamentary debates, in a manner which will 

 leave no doubt in the mind of the most incorrigible 

 optimist upon the Treasury Bench. .\n imm<'diatc 

 decision will then become imperatively necessary- 

 cither that Ulster shall lie included, or that Ulster 

 shall be excluded. Either decision may well wreck 

 the Government."— Mr. F. E. Smith, in the Ox/i>rd 

 and Cambridge Ra'iCiV. 



