LIBERALISM AND SOCIALISM

ST. ANDREW'S HALL, GLASGOW, _October 11, 1906_

(From _The Dundee Advertiser_, by permission.)


The first indispensable condition of democratic progress must be the
maintenance of European peace. War is fatal to Liberalism. Liberalism
is the world-wide antagonist of war. We have every reason to
congratulate ourselves upon the general aspect of the European
situation. The friendship which has grown up between Great Britain and
France is a source of profound satisfaction to every serious and
thinking man. The first duty of a nation is to make friends with its
nearest neighbour. Six years ago France was agitated in the throes of
the Dreyfus case, and Great Britain was plunged in the worst and most
painful period of the South African war; and both nations--conscious
as we are of one another's infirmities--were inclined to express their
opinion about the conduct of the other in unmeasured terms, and keen
antagonism resulted. What a contrast to-day! Ever since the King,
whose services in the cause of international peace are regarded with
affection in every quarter of his dominions, ever since by an act of
prescience and of courage his Majesty went to Paris, the relations
between Great Britain and France have steadily and progressively
improved, and to-day we witness the inspiring spectacle of these two
great peoples, the two most genuinely Liberal nations in the whole
world, locked together in a league of friendship under standards of
dispassionate justice and international goodwill. But it is absurd to
suppose that the friendship which we have established with France