Page:Liberalism (1919).djvu/215

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and come out on the other side. Respectable platitudes, you go maundering on about Cobden and Gladstone, and the liberty of the individual, and the rights of nationality, and government by the people. What you say is not precisely untrue, but it is unreal and uninteresting.” So far in chorus. “It is not up to date,” finished the Imperialist, and the Socialist bureaucrat. “It is not bread and butter,” finished the Social democrat. Opposed in everything else, these two parties agreed in one thing. They were to divide the future between them. Unfortunately, however, for their agreement, the division was soon seen to be no equal one. Whatever might be the ultimate recuperative power of Social Democracy, for the time being, in the paralysis of Liberalism, the Imperial reaction had things all to itself. The governing classes of England were to assert themselves. They were to consolidate the Empire, incidentally passing the steam roller over two obstructive republics. They were to “teach the law” to the “sullen new-caught peoples” abroad. They were to re-establish the Church at home by the endowment of doctrinal education. At the same time they were to establish