victories on this issue. Manchester Liberals objected almost equally to the McKenna tariffs and the Paris resolutions and the Safeguarding of Industries Act; Mr. Lloyd George was very shrewdly advised when he lumped them all together. The Manchester Liberals were eager for Liberal reunion, first and foremost in order to secure Free Trade, felt to be certainly unsafe under a Conservative Government, and quite possibly unsafe under a Labour Government. Their second strategical reason was the desire to see arising a powerful party pledged to social, and especially industrial, reform, and free from the suspicion of Socialism. Anyone who is surprised at the eagerness of Manchester Liberals in this cause can never have seen Manchester, and certainly never have seen Salford. This again is a bread and butter question; and Manchester had made it its own in the industrial programme for which the Manchester Liberal group had with some difficulty secured official recognition.

But if the strategical reasons for reunion were strong, the tactical reasons were stronger. Nowhere had the Coalition been so utterly disastrous to Liberalism as at Manchester. In 1906 Manchester returned none but Liberals and Labour members; to-day Manchester is represented at Westminster by none but Conservatives and Labour members. Not a single Liberal was returned for Manchester at the last election; nor, so long as the Coalition endured, was there any prospect of a change. The mild remonstrance of the Manchester Coalition Liberals on this state of things was received with the polite indifference with which the complaints of the entirely impotent are wont to be heard by the all-powerful. There was no hope for Liberalism at Manchester in any alliance with the Right.

But the Left was equally adamant. Some time before the General Election an attempt was made by the Independents to approach Labour with a view to an allocation of seats, or at least the avoidance of unnecessary contests. Labour, by the voice of the amiable and moderate Mr. Clynes (afterwards himself returned, ironically enough, largely by Liberal votes), refused to hear of any such thing. Mr. Clynes's answer was a mere paraphrase of the old nursery rhyme 'Not a shaving, not a straw, though your bones come through your skin.' Thus, caught between the Tory hammer and the Labour anvil, mere self-preservation forced Manchester Liberals to work for reunion; for without it they were in a hopeless case.

It was in this atmosphere that Mr. Lloyd George, accepting an invitation to speak in the Free Trade Hall from the Lancashire and Cheshire Young Liberals, found himself on April 29. There was a private meeting the day before the speech. In it Mr. Lloyd George gave certain private explanations and certain

definite assurances. The assurances, with a slightly different emphasis, he repeated in his public speech. It was very warmly received. He spoke courteously, and even cordially, of Mr. Asquith, and Manchester cheered. He preached social reform with almost his old vigour and persuasiveness, and Manchester cheered again. He declared himself an out-and-out Free Trader in favour of the complete repeal of the Safeguarding of Industries Act, and Manchester cheered louder than ever. The speech was undoubtedly a great success. Never had the invitation to the reunion waltz rung out more boldly; never had the film drama seemed sharper or more definite.

And then gradually it all faded away again into a grosser darkness than ever. There were various reasons for this. The Manchester Liberals lost heart. The result of a deputation to London somewhat modified their views. The reunion resolution which they proposed to move at the National Liberal Federation meeting at Buxton in May was coldly received and so much altered in redrafting that its promoters lost all interest in it. Further, they became suspicious that they were being used merely as catspaws. The Manchester Coalitionists were lavish in benedictions on all efforts for reunion, but they either would not or could not do anything at all with their own leaders for the cause. So it came about that, when the reunion battle was joined at Buxton, the regiments who had fought most valiantly for reunion on the Independent side simply looked on, and took hardly any part in the fray at all.

At the same time Mr. Lloyd George's lieutenants, with the solitary exception of Sir Alfred Mond, who made no mistakes, committed blunder after blunder. Mr. Churchill raised publicly the speckled banner of the Centre Party. This did not matter very much, for Mr. Churchill was rapidly ceasing to be regarded as any kind of Liberal and Sir Alfred Mond threw him over at Buxton with gruff downrightness. But the solid vote of the 'National' Liberals on the Indemnity Bill with the Conservative Government and against the united forces of the Independents and of Labour was a capital error, if they really desired reunion. Commander Hilton Young and others have striven to justify this vote on the merits of the question. Whatever the merits, it was tactically disastrous. Machiavelli himself could not defend a policy which leads its advocates to vote solidly against a party on Monday and then demand admission to its ranks as loyal supporters on Wednesday. Then Mr. Fisher wrote a letter in which he repeated the merely silly fable that Mr. Asquith was only deterred from flinging himself on Mr. Lloyd George's neck by the coercive influence of Sir John Simon, Mr. Runciman, Sir Donald Maclean and Mr. Vivian Phillips. There may be occasions, as

Dean Swift has observed, when a political lie is useful; but a fantasy which nobody can believe if he tries is of no real use to anybody.

The final blow to any hope that remained was given by a bitter jest perpetrated by the angry gods on a respectable middle-class politician. They persuaded Mr. J. M. Hogge to regard himself as a born peacemaker. The stormy petrel was taught to fancy itself a dove. Mr. Hogge has qualities often valuable in a politician. He has done his party good service on various occasions. He is generally a prominent figure in every political Donnybrook Fair. But as a peacemaker he was a grotesque imagination. In the hands of so truculent an emissary the most flowery olive branch was certain to turn miraculously into a fiery cross. It did. Mr. Hogge at Buxton fell at once to political fisticuffs with his brother Arcadian, Mr. Pringle. His resolution in favour of 'consultation' was overwhelmingly defeated. The watered down Manchester resolution was carried with contemptuous unanimity. Mr. Asquith pronounced the benediction with his usual dignity of phrase and declared once more that Liberal reunion was coming. No date was mentioned.

And now-'What will be now?' as the children say. It is possible that the Independents may be right and that the 'National' organisation, having no roots, will simply in the course of the next year or two wither away and vanish from the political scene. It is possible, though not, one hopes, probable, that the gloomy prophecies of the 'National' Liberals and their friends may be verified in the event, and that Liberalism itself, disorganised by its internal feuds, may disappear as an active political force, crushed to death between organised Conservatism and organised Labour. There is another possibility almost worse than this. For the credit of British politics it is to be hoped that it will be averted; but it is possible. It is possible that the paramount drama will drag on almost indefinitely before the eyes of a halflaughing, half-angry and wholly bored and contemptuous audience; at its best, The Marionettes; at its worst, The Insect Play.

STUART HODGSON.

'THEY SAY-WHAT SAY THEY? LET THEM SAY'

It is almost exactly thirty years ago since it was announced that Lord Aberdeen had been appointed Governor-General of Canada. He and I happened to be at Chicago at the time, superintending to the best of our ability the operations of the Irish village at the World's Fair, our splendid manager, Mr. Peter White, having died unexpectedly, and his gallant little widow having to settle up affairs in Ireland before she could take over his task, which she eventually did, with such signal success. Although we almost immediately left for home, in order to make preparation for settling in Canada during the autumn, yet the fact of our being in America at the time attracted a good deal of special attention to the new appointment, and during that summer and autumn we had occasion to read a good many interesting and amusing descriptions of ourselves and of our manner of life. But one such description stands out in our remembrance very vividly, for to it we trace the origin of a crop of stories which appear to have a perennial life.

The article in question occupied three or four long columns in a Boston Sunday newspaper, and went into great detail regarding our supposed antecedents, our family, and our home, and provided us with much novel information. The people of Canada were warned that they would have to put up with a lady at Government House who had a bee in her bonnet with regard to the servant question, one who would never allow her servants to wear caps, and who was in the habit of playing hide-and-seek and other such games with the housemaids and footmen at all sorts of odd hours of the day, and that therefore visitors might come and ring at the door fruitlessly, and, when ultimately admitted, might catch a glimpse of blind man's buff being engaged in by the butler and housekeeper and various members of the family. Moreover, it was stated as a fact that Lord Aberdeen and I dined habitually in the servants' hall on certain days of the week.

We showed this paper to Dr. de Witt Talmage, the well-known American preacher, who happened to be visiting us at Haddo House at the time, and asked his advice as to publishing a contra

diction of these wild inventions. He said: 'Well, there are two ways of dealing with this: you can either smite it, by publishing a contradiction, or you may indicate your estimate of the value of the article by ignoring it altogether.' There was a pause, and then Lord Aberdeen said: 'And you consider that the second course would be the best?' 'Yes,' he replied, 'I do.'

We followed this advice, but we have often regretted that we did not take energetic action at the time, because we and our servants have been continually annoyed by these stories cropping up perpetually in various forms.

So persistent did they become that some years later Queen Victoria requested Lord Rosebery, who was then Prime Minister, to ascertain whether it was a fact that, whilst occupying the position of Governor-General, Lord Aberdeen, together with myself and members of our family and staff, dined in the servants' hall once a week. Of course, we gave our good friend Lord Rosebery the necessary information as to the strictly orthodox character of our household arrangements, whereby he was enabled to reassure Her Majesty on the subject.

But, as illustrating the persistence of the fabrication, it may be added that, soon after King Edward had ascended the throne, it was evidently repeated to His Majesty, for he too made inquiries on the subject, through a near relative who then held a Court appointment.

A story which had great vogue related how on one occasion, when we were dining with one of the great magnates of Canada at Montreal, I turned to the table-maid who was serving me, and said: 'Take off that cap, that badge of servitude; I cannot abide the sight of it.' And it was only the other day that an intimate friend of ours, who was staying at an Alpine resort, was solemnly told by another guest at the hotel that when visitors came to the Viceregal Lodge they were liable to be handed in to dinner with the butler and housekeeper. Our friend, who had often been our guest in Ireland, had the greatest difficulty in persuading her companion that during her many visits to us in Ireland she had always seen all dinners and parties carried on in the most correct manner according to procedure, and under the Chamberlain's rigid directions.

Now what was the origin of these stories?

In the original article referred to there were traces of confusion between three movements: (1) the Onward and Upward Association, originally started for the benefit of farm servant-girls on Lord Aberdeen's estates; (2) a Household Club for our own immediate employees; and (3) a ' Servants' Union' which was being formed or attempted to be formed in England about the same period, but with which we and our household had never the slightest connection.