London, Oct. 14.
Unless the very unexpected happens there will not be an election before two years have elapsed. The unexpected can only be some outburst of direct action which might throw the entire economic system of this country into the melting pot. This assertion I am able to make on official authority. Mr. Lloyd George intends to hold on until he has carried out all his election promises which can hardly be before that date.
It is marvellous how the Prime Minister manages to impose his personality on the public. Thousands of people denounce the! Coalition especially in the ranks of the Torics, but they always turn up to vote for its candidate. Ilford is a type. The Government nominee simply smothered all, opposition and the "Daily News' on the following day was reduced to silence, the more so as the Free Liberals had a very strong candidate in the person of the brother of the dead Unionist M.P. Why then if the Coalition has ite critics do they never show their hand openly?" For the very good reason that there is no alternative. "They will never kill _me'—saic King Charles to his brother James—"to make you King."
If you read Col. Repington's book you will find in it one long diatribe against Mr. Lloyd George. He can say nothing good about him and he says everything bad. In fact he overdoes it. Yet all of us really like the Premier. We daresay he is mercurial; that he will switch off one policy to another; that he will sacrifice an; departmental head, but isn't what they's there for; that he is an opportunist. But he is a strong man—that he showed in the war, and though he can conciliate he will, if he thinks it well, take a strong line and fight a matter out all costs.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.