A FRENCH OBSERVER ON ENGLISH RADICALISM.* M. BARDOUX knows contemporary
England as few foreign observers know it, and, let us add, as no English writer we can think of knows France. His student days at Oxford and his friendship with younger politicians of both parties give him the opportunity of judging those unseen currents of opinion which are not revealed by the newspapers. He is an Anglophil in the best sense, but he is also a conscientious and acute publicist, and his verdict upon our politics is well worthy of attention. He has been assiduous in his study of Blue-books and English journalism, and he seems to have met and talked with every type of politician. The psychologist bulks largely in his attitude, and he associates with each movement some personality which he analyzes with the subtlety of a French novelist. Mistakes of fact scarcely exist beyond a few wrong initials, the use of the word " disgracions " for "disgraceful," "Great Old Man "for "Mr. Gladstone," and "Lord Reid" for the late Lord Chancellor. He is perhaps too much inclined to take the Radical Nonconformists at their own valuation as the spiritual successors of the Puritans. No public man of our time has less Puritan affinities than Mr. Lloyd George. But with his main judgments there will be substantial agreement, and he puts into them a freshness and originality all too rare in our own journalism.
He tells in great detail the political history of England from the election of 1906 onward, and he manages to make a most dramatic tale of it. Nothing could be better than his treatment of the Budget of 1909-10, and the two general elections which followed. A little too dramatic, perhaps, for he finds significance in incidents the relevance of which we should be inclined to doubt. He has no bias towards either side, but examines the successive movements in the game with a cool impartiality which now and then, as in the case of the Insurance Act, becomes faintly tinged with irony. His pre- possessions, we should judge, are towards the older school of Liberal Imperialists, and he is enthusiastic about Sir Edward Grey. Imperial policy bulks largely in his interests, he enters fully into Indian and defence questions, and the only suspicion of contempt which he shows is in his account of the "blind idealists" who prate of peace when there is no peace. What are the main features which this well-equipped writer finds in our political situation ? The year 1906 is in
• L'Anuleteri-e RaclimZe Essai do Psychologia Sociaie (1900-13). Par Jacques Dardous. Paris: Alcan. [10 francs.]
his opinion as significant as 1832; it marks the opening of a new era. The old Manchester Liberalism is dead, and in its place has arisen a Radicalism which has stolen the clothes of
the former Tory democracy, and is at once Socialist and Imperialist.
"En face des n6cessit6s du temps pr6sent, il est impossible de conserver intacts, sans exception anomie, tous les dogmas de Ls Bible liberale : desarmoment progressif et affranchissement militaire, splendide isolement et decentralisation colonial°. Ii faut attenuer, elaguer, couper. Erne revision s'impose. La doctrine craque."
The Conservative Party, too, have been influenced by the great movement of 1906. They are in many ways more
democratic than their opponents, and M. Bardoux is really
pained at Lord Lansdowne's land policy, which he fears may ruin what he loves, the antique rural life of England. He sees that the first force of the wave of 1906 is spent, and that the second wave of 1910 is now very much in the nature of a
backwash. He does not prophesy, but he is obviously doubtful of the ability of the Conservatives to compete for long with the Radicals in bidding for the suffrages of the new democracy. England, as he implies by his title, has become definitely Radical. Across the general movement of parties, however, there has fallen the Home Rule question, which is not in pan i materia with the others. Home Rule evidently perplexes M. Hardens, as it must perplex any foreign observer. He has difficulty in understanding both the arguments for it and the arguments against it ; be is content to try to state them, without hazarding either a criticism or a forecast.
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