Sne,—In your issue of September /9th you print two letters
in opposition, one from an " Independent Liberal," the other from a " Liberal National."
As a young man, a soldier who likes to believe he knows what he is fighting for, and a Liberal, I deplore this preoccupation with Liberals in the 193os ; I am concerned with Liberals in the 59405. I want to see an England in which there is liberty and a reason- able degree of security. I see no possibility, despite the evangelicals of Sir Richard Acland, of reconciling the Socialist method of economic organisation, in which the ownership of property is vested ruminally in " the people " but actually in the State, with political and civil liberty ; and it is very agreeable to me to see that independent thinkers like Mr. Priestley are moving to this position, while Socialists themselves are beginning to experience uncomfortable qualms on the subject. Nor do the well-intentioned Conservatives of the Eden- Macmillan school stand much chance against the heavy battalions of Big Business which dominate their Party..
I therefore look to the Liberals, not to the old Liberal Party, for that is dead, but to a new Party of Liberals, who may well draw their fighting spirit from the old Liberals, but who face modern problems in their new post-war political and economic setting. I want to see a Liberal Party which will wage war on Nationalism (and. Economic Imperialism of the Ottawa type), Restrictionism and Social Inequality, and not least, which will face the problem of Monopoly in all its forms. I do not believe that the Conservative or Labour Parties will do these things.
Liberals will have a great opportunity to build a political machine to implement Liberal principles, and I shall not care whether it is called Independent Liberal, Liberal National, or plain Liberal.— Yours, &c., Somewhere in England. " PRIVATE."
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