P.'s timorously voted for the
second reading of the Conciliation Bill in order to stand well with
their Constituencies, yet looked to the Premier to trip it up by
some adroit use of Parliamentary jiu-jitsu. They were not
disappointed in their ideal politician. The Bill after it had passed
its second reading by a large majority was referred to a Committee
of the whole House, which seemingly is fatal to any measure that
seeks to become law.
So the stale summer of 1910 wore itself away in recriminations,
hopings against probability that the newer types of Liberal
statesmen were honest men, keepers of promises, not merely--as
Vivie said in one of the many speeches that got her into
trouble--"Bridge-players, first and foremost, golf-players when they
couldn't play bridge, or speculators on the Stock Exchange,
champagne drinkers; and prone to eat at their Lucullus banquets,
public and private, till they sometimes fainted with indigestion."
My! But she was bitter in her Hyde Park speeches and at her Albert
Hall meetings against this band of mock-liberals who had seized the
impulse of the country towards reform which had grown up under the
Chamberlain era to instal themselves in power with the financial
backing of great Americo-German-Jewish internationalists, who in
those early years of the Twentieth century were ready to stake their
dollars on the Free Trade British Empire if they might guide its
policy.
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