FOOTNOTE:
[10] See the Times, March 14, 1923.
XXV POLITICAL REALITIES
A few weeks ago I predicted that the comparative calm which has prevailed in the political seas of Britain during the past few years was coming to an end. Recent parliamentary scenes leave no doubt that the prolonged political depression is to be followed by a period of storms—it may be hurricanes.
No amount of organisation or propaganda can excite real feeling in an electorate over trivial and unreal issues. Why did the coalition of 1915 fall? And why did the Liberal party split in 1916? Who was responsible? Should the general election have taken place in 1918 or 1919? Ought open and declared opponents of the government of the day to have then received government support or at least government neutrality? These are questions which agitate a few who are personally interested, but they leave the nation cold.
The war was real enough. But the war was supported by men of all parties, and, therefore, provoked no political controversy. The minority which opposed it was negligible, and challenged no parliamentary discussion on the question. The treaty of peace was, on the whole, accepted by all parties when it was first submitted to Parliament. The leaders of the opposition parties in the Lords and Commons at the time of its presentation offered no serious criticism of its provisions.
The legislation proposed by the Coalition, although in ordinary seasons much of it would have aroused angry passions, coming as it did after the war had exhausted emotion, passed with no more than a feeble murmur of protest. Take, for instance, such controversial topics as adult suffrage, the enfranchisement of women, the wholesale reductions in hours of labour, representative government in India, and notably the conferring upon Ireland of a measure of Home Rule more complete than any proposed by Gladstone.
Any one of these measures proposed before the war would have led to heated discussion throughout the land. The case of Ireland is perhaps the most significant of the changed temper of the nation immediately after the great war. The conflict over Irish Home Rule has now culminated in a treaty accepted by the nation as a whole and acquiesced in by the most violent amongst its opponents.