MR. CHAMBERLAIN, THE CRISIS AND

THE CALL

I do not believe in the setting of the British star, because I do not believe in the folly of the British people.-MR. CHAMBERLAIN.

Finish the work we are in.—ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

To those of us who see in Mr. Chamberlain the strongest political man that the English-speaking races have brought forth since Abraham Lincoln, his position in this crisis seems inexpressibly great. There is nothing in our history quite like its mingling of tragic and triumphant elements. To its moral grandeur there have been few things equal in any history. For the nation and all that therein is; for our naval safety and our entire dominion; for the whole power we have cast about the world; for all that has made us glorious in past time or can keep us from disaster in the nearness of days to come-for all these the result of the coming elections may be as critical as was ever yet the issue of war.

Between empire-makers and nation-breakers no more cleancut conflict could be fought. In this business Mr. Chamberlain's policy and patriotism itself are one. With him and with his cause Britain and hers must stand or fall. That is what it has come to. There is no escape from that assurance. The destinies of a whole people, and not of one country only, but of the unexampled heritage that extends to every quarter of the earth and of the influence that flows round it with the sea, are visibly knitted up with the destiny of one man. And that man, struck as heavily as man may be and yet remain indomitable-who in his strong endurance during the last three years has borne more than is enacted in the brief laying down

of life-masters the very fate removing him from the open battle and sways the combat from which he is withdrawn. If we demand the Shakespearean stuff of things in real life we have it here. If history records anything to surpass the pathos and the splendour of this, we know it not.

Yet of pathos it is better not speak at all. His career has nothing in common with weak words. Through a grim ordeal no one has heard weak words from him. No feeble syllable has been wrung. He has passed through it all with level courage and vision more and more serene, with unquenchable heart, with unbreakable will. It is tragedy indeed-sterner, deeper, stranger than dramatic genius can represent-but tragedy full of the "purifying power " that belongs to the higher spirit of it in literature, and turned by him to such issues as should lift the rest of us above ourselves for the struggle we are in. That is why he would not thank us for weak words even now or for "the whimper of sympathy."

He wants action. He wants action for the causes that in this crisis are the Empire's and the nation's and his. He wants nothing else. Instead of repining because he is not dominating the platform as of old, there is in this situation that appeal to the imagination and the hearts of men which ought to make Mr. Chamberlain's leadership more inspiring to the Unionist Party than any open captainship of the fight even though it were his own. His name is the trumpet-call. His policy is the banner. The example of his whole career is instruction enough. The very instinct of the country tells it how urgent is the need for the utmost effort of every citizen with a spark of patriotic manhood in his soul or with one atom of fighting fibre in his body. And there are women in Britain still who can move votes if they will more powerfully than if they possessed votes themselves, and who can work for a greater ideal than the exaggeration of sex in politics. It is the country that is at hazard. Our mere partisan controversies, so far as they do not bear upon the question of existence, are but a squabbling under a roof that may fall.

The tariff and social reform, the Constitution, the Union, the Fleet, and the military part of national defence are all inseparable elements of one policy. It is the only policy which can preserve

the strength of the State and the happiness of the people, or shield the liberties and nourish the growth of the dominions overseas, or draw the Empire together, or save the very being of this island as an independent Power. The whole matter at issue is whether England, with all that depends upon her Imperial and commercial greatness, shall go forward or go under. The whole question is whether we are to vote effectively for England or to vote in effect for Germany-whether we are to vote down British security, to vote up German triumph in trade and arms and Empire. That is the heart of the controversy, and that is what during the next two weeks we have to make plain to the people. If Mr. Chamberlain's name in all the circumstances of this hour could not nerve us as much as would his very presence in the fight, then we would have become a Party which even his immediate personality could not electrify. But Unionists, on the contrary, feel that he is with them though away. So far from being dispirited by the absence of the great combatant who could have swept the country in three weeks had he been able to tour the constituencies, they are fighting with an energy and enthusiasm unknown for twenty years. If such a measure of success is secured as shall either throw this Ministry out of office or break its power for mischief, that result will be very largely due to the extraordinary paradox of Mr. Chamberlain's present situation.

The want of him on the platform is an immeasurable loss; and yet at the same time the fact that he is still a potent though invisible influence upon operations, like one of the Elder Statesmen of Japan-that he can think and act, will and decide, counsel and inspire-means an inestimable gain. That is the light in which the case ought to be regarded. The important thing is not that Unionist audiences are deprived of Mr. Chamberlain, but that Mr. Chamberlain remains to the Unionist Party. It is more completely identified with him and intensely vitalised by him than at any previous moment of its existence. Throughout the country men feel that Mr. Chamberlain's inspiration rules the fight. Devotion to him is an incentive with great numbers of his countrymen to whom tenacious loyalty is a matter of course, who make no verbal professions about it and do not always fully understand why they are

moved. They do not consciously think in heroic or dramatic terms. But they feel that nothing in national policy was ever bigger or more urgent than Mr. Chamberlain's cause, that the moral climax of no man's career has been nobler than his is now, and they are as determined that he shall not have wrought and sacrificed in vain as that the national power and Imperial heritage whereto we were born shall not pass away by our default.

They work, then, as though Mr. Chamberlain were in the midst of them. They fight as though he were looking on. For he is looking on, not as a passive observer, but as one who follows every turn of fortune, who knows every inch of the ground, who sees at once where a weak manoeuvre is made, who perceives where a position needs strengthening, who knows what every one should do and helps every one to do it, whose military judgment, as it were, is still perfect, who holds steadily to main purposes through those confusions of the moment that tempt ordinary men to turn aside or to adopt disconnected tacticswho, in a word,

Through the heat of conflict keeps the law

In calmness made and sees what he foresaw.

It is certain that to history this will appear the wonderful feature of this crisis. It is a thing more remarkable and animating far to those who have imagination for it than would have been Mr. Chamberlain's ability to deal on the platform in those male accents of his with the falsetto shrieks of Limehouse or the pinchbeck moralities of the younger demagogue who is now affecting with extreme solemnity a sober contrast to his Celtic colleague.

Men whose privilege it is from time to time to speak with Mr. Chamberlain still feel like those who came out of Chatham's room, twice as efficient as when they went into it. From the first moment of the present struggle his mind was made up. He read the purpose of the Budget in a flash. Some of us will always remember the little luncheon party on Empire Day, when he discussed the Budget with his old grim humour and his old readiness of phrase. He summed up a somewhat long and complicated discussion thus: "This Budget tries to knock the Lords

out of the Constitution." It was also, as he went on to explain in other words, an attempt to knock Tariff Reform out of the controversy. Who else in a minute could have reduced the endless confusion and pedantry of the thing to its plainest elements in that way? His mind was never drawn aside for a moment. He regarded the Finance Bill as a supreme effort to shift the issue—as the crowning electioneering effort of the Artful Dodgers of Downing Street.

He saw his way straight through the situation. To him the Finance Bill appeared at once to be what in fact it was—the last desperate alternative to Tariff Reform, the evidence of the bankruptcy of Cobdenism, the surrender to Socialism, the proof that Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Churchill were prepared to overturn the Constitution, to break up the kingdom and cripple the Fleet, to let the whole Empire drift to dissolution rather than confess the imposture and end the practice of Free Imports. And as Mr. Chamberlain thought at the beginning of the controversy so he thought clean through the crisis.

Who will ever forget the new revelation of the lionhearted nature of the man that was his letter to the Bingley Hall meeting? There had been a day in August when the confidence of the Ministerialists after the High Peak election and the Limehouse speech reached the pitch of delusion. The Budget League was self-hypnotised by its own "bluff." Mr. Balfour's real views were unknown to those who had worked up these orgies of optimism. Mr. Chamberlain's position was still more seriously misunderstood by these enthusiasts. They thought they could ignore him at last, even in Birmingham, and then they took the one step that led them too far. It was announced, in the insolence of presumption, that Mr. Asquith would go to Birmingham and deal the death-blow to Tariff Reform by a speech at the Bingley Hall. That was the plan. It was destined to be a classic example of poetic justice in politics. It carried Nemesis within itself. Mr. Asquith went to Birmingham, and his speech and his meeting were a total failure, arousing the deep discontent of the extremists within his Party and marking the eclipse of his career. A few days later Mr. Balfour, at Mr. Chamberlain's invitation, also came to the Bingley Hall, and surpassed himself in the great speech which brought a new life into