British Commonwealth of Nations: Schism Among Shadows

Two plump and snowy-haired Liberals of international fame aired publicly last week the great party schism which has slowly widened between them since the Boer War. Even at that period Mr. Lloyd George—an irrepressible pro-Boer “was attempting to lead the Liberal party leftward, while the present Earl of Oxford and Asquith* strove—then as now—to curb what he deemed the too great liberality of Liberals. For a time the Asquithians saw their leader supreme, within the party and the Government, as Prime Minister (1908-16). Then Lloyd George wrested the Premiership for himself (1916-22), and the Liberal feud began in earnest. Latterly this once great party has declined to political insignificance. Last week Asquithians and Georgians vociferated over an issue of molehill stature which they erected into a Liberal mountain.

This exalted spat between two once omnipotent statesmen burst forth when the Earl of Oxford and Asquith, official leader of the Liberal party, set out to give to Lloyd George, Liberal leader by popular consent, a reprimand and dressing down for his pro-Laborite attitude during the great “general strike” (TIME, May 10 to May 24). In a letter released to the press last week the Earl loftily informed Mr. George that he “regretted” the Welshman’s conduct in denouncing the Baldwin Government’s handling of the strike. More especially the Earl stigmatized Mr. George’s refusal to attend a strike-time meeting of the Liberal “shadow cabinet” as “impossible to reconcile with my conception of the obligations of political comradeship.”

Numerous British newspapers declared this letter “the most severe public rebuke ever administered by the leader of a British political party to its chief adherent.” The fact that Lord Oxford and Asquith alleged as the cause of this extraordinary rebuff only a trifling party insubordination and an attack upon the Government (Conservative) party toward which the Earl has leaned so long, while Mr. George, tugged in the opposite direction, revealed the true origin of the Earl’s spleen—exposed anew the gaping Liberal rift.

Mr. George who strategically controls the Liberal war chest—the Asquithians being relatively without campaign funds—countered at once last week by releasing a letter to Lord Oxford and Asquith in which he referred to the latter’s “provocative” communication to himself, defended his own strike-time conduct as “for what I considered the good of my countrymen,” and concluded by demanding: “If there has to be another schism in the Liberal party, one would like to know what it is about.”

Britons wondered whether a Liberal showdown impended at last. To correspondents Mr. George vigorously declared: “I don’t intend to fall! I mean to go forward to complete the great tasks that lie before liberalism.”

*This cumbersome title represents a neat straddle. Mr. Asquith would have been honored out of all proportion to his services to the Crown had he received the earldom of Oxford, originally conferred by the Empress Matilda on Aubrey de Vere in 1142 and accordingly weighted with hoary honors beyond expression. By adding “and Asquith,” the powers-that-be adroitly earmarked as of recent bestowal a title held in its day by what Macaulay described as “the most illustrious line of nobles that England has seen.”