A few weeks ago I predicted that the comparative calm which has prevailed in the political seas of Britain during the past few years was coming to an end. Recent parliamentary scenes leave no doubt that the prolonged political depression is to be followed by a period of storms—it may be hurricanes.  
No amount of organisation or propaganda can excite real feeling in an electorate over trivial and unreal issues. Why did the coalition of 1915 fall? And why did the Liberal party split in 1916? Who was responsible? Should the general election have taken place in 1918 or 1919? Ought open and declared opponents of the government of the day to have then received government support or at least government neutrality? These are questions which agitate a few who are personally interested, but they leave the nation cold.
 
The war was real enough. But the war was [Pg 292]supported by men of all parties, and, therefore, provoked no political controversy. The minority which opposed it was negligible, and challenged no parliamentary discussion on the question. The treaty of peace was, on the whole, accepted by all parties when it was first submitted to Parliament. The leaders of the opposition parties in the Lords and Commons at the time of its presentation offered no serious criticism of its provisions.
 
The legislation proposed by the Coalition, although in ordinary seasons much of it would have aroused angry passions, coming as it did after the war had exhausted emotion, passed with no more than a feeble murmur of protest. Take, for instance, such controversial topics as adult suffrage, the enfranchisement of women, the wholesale reductions in hours of labour, representative government in India, and notably the conferring upon Ireland of a measure of Home Rule more complete than any proposed by Gladstone.
 
Any one of these measures proposed before the war would have led to heated discussion throughout the land. The case of Ireland is perhaps the most significant of the changed temper of the nation immediately after the great war. The conflict[Pg 293] over Irish Home Rule has now culminated in a treaty accepted by the nation as a whole and acquiesced in by the most violent amongst its opponents.
 
But fiercer political passions were stirred up by the struggle between parties over Ireland than by any political question of modern times. The causes underlying the conflict dealt with two of the most powerful motives which make the human heart throb—race and religion. There was the old feud between Saxon and Gael extending over at least seven centuries. It drenched the moors of Ireland with the blood of both races before a keener edge was given to its hatreds by the introduction of an acute religious quarrel.
 
After the Reformation the religious differences which rent Europe with fratricidal wars added fresh fury to the racial enmities which made poor Ireland a cauldron of perpetual strife. When Mr. Gladstone proposed to settle this raging tumult by wresting supremacy from a race which had been dominant in that island for 700 years and a faith which had been supreme there for 400 years and transferring it to the race and religion which all that time had been in a condition of servitude, and[Pg 294] when in order to attain his ends he had to secure the adhesion of men of the ruling blood and creed to his proposals, the passions raised were deeper and angrier than any witnessed in British politics for many a day. It led for the first time in the history of parliament to scenes of physical violence on the floor of the House. It shows what we may expect when there are genuine divisions of opinion which profoundly move masses of men and women in a democracy. Those who recall the tropical heat of parliamentary debates in 1893 naturally regard their voyage through the frigid proceedings of the last parliament as they would a sail through Arctic seas. That voyage is now over, and there are signs that the waters will soon be lashed into fury.
 
For years political controversy between parties has been suspended in the presence of a common danger. Reaction was inevitable, and the greater the suppression the more violent the rebound. That does not, however, altogether account for the visible omens of a coming struggle unprecedented in its gravity. Fundamental issues have been raised of such moment to millions that they cannot be settled without a struggle that will rock society.
 
The scene enacted in the Commons a few days[Pg 295] ago was by no means as exciting as that which some of us witnessed in 1893. But it gave me an uneasy feeling that the period of calm is definitely over, and that Parliament henceforth must expect gusts and gales—and worse. Emotions are once more welling up, and there are signs of a great stir coming in British politics.
 
The cause is easily explained. The sense of exhaustion is passing away, and issues containing a serious challenge to the privileges and rights of powerful classes in the community and vital to the interests of all classes have been raised by one of the great political parties that divide Britain. The momentous character of that challenge may be gathered from the terms of the motion submitted by Mr. Philip Snowden to the judgment of the House of Commons:—
 
"That in view of the failure of the capitalist system to adequately utilise and organise natural resources and productive power, or to provide the necessary standard of life for vast numbers of the population, and believing that the cause of this failure lies in the private ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, this[Pg 296] House declares that legislative effort should be di............