IV

POLITICS

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Conservative Free-Traders, to lend it moral andintellectual respectability. On the other side,Labour is also well-defined—with a Left ofCatastrophists, to give it strength and passion,and a Right of what one may call “the besttype” of educated, humane, Socialistic Re-formers, to lend it moral and intellectual respect-ability. Is there room for anything between?Should not each of us here decide whetherwe consider ourselves to be “the best type”of Conservative Free-Traders or “the besttype” of Socialistic Reformers, and have donewith it?

Perhaps that is how we shall end. But Istill think that there is room for a party whichshall be disinterested as between classes, andwhich shall be free in building the future bothfrom the influences of Die-Hardism and fromthose of Catastrophism, which will spoil theconstructions of each of the others. Let mesketch out in the briefest terms what I conceiveto be the Philosophy and Practice of such aparty.

To begin with, it must emancipate itselffrom the dead-wood of the past. In myopinion there is now no place, except in the LeftWing of the Conservative Party , for those whosehearts are set on old-fashioned individualismand laissez-faire in all their rigour—greatlythough these contributed to the success of thenineteenth century. I say this, not becauseI think that these doctrines were wrong in theconditions which gave birth to them (I hope