To sum up.  There is a problem of the Mines.  No sensible person should be deceived by the quiescence of the last twelve abnormal months.  Without using extravagant language, the coal-mining industry is a volcano liable at any moment to erupt and involve the whole community in loss and suffering.  Therefore, as a body of citizens, we are under a duty to seek a solution which can be effected between the occurrence of the recurring crises.  As a body of Liberal citizens we shall naturally seek a Liberal solution, and the foregoing suggestions (for which no originality is claimed) are inspired by the Liberal point of view.  They apply to the industrial sphere principles which have been tried and proved in the political sphere, both in the central and the local government.  Apart from State acquisition of the minerals, about which there can surely be no question, these suggestions merely develop tendencies and organisations already existing within the industry.  They involve no leap in the dark, such as has been attributed by some to nationalisation of the whole industry, and they provide for great flexibility and experimentation.  The fact that the official spokesmen of neither miners nor colliery-owners may like them need not deter us.  They have had numerous opportunities of settling the problem amongst themselves, but the “die-hards” in both camps have always prevented it.  It is time that the general public outside the industry took the matter in hand and propounded a solution likely to be acceptable to the vast body of sensible and central feeling within the industry.

THE LAND QUESTION

BY A.S.  COMYNS CARR

Member of Acquisition of Land Committee, 1918.

Mr. Comyns Carr said:—­The Land Question I believe to be the most important subject in purely domestic politics to-day, as it was in 1914.  At that date we were embarking, under the especial leadership of one who has now deserted us, upon a comprehensive campaign dealing with that question in all its aspects.  The present Government has filled a large portion of the Statute Book with legislation bearing on the land; it is not the quantity we have to complain of, but the quality.  In 1914 we had already achieved one signal victory in carrying against the House of Lords the Land Clauses of the Budget of 1909-10, and although many of us were never satisfied with the form which those clauses took, they were valuable both as a step in the direction of land taxation and for the machinery of valuation which they established.  Mr. Lloyd George in his present alliance with the Tories has sunk so low as not only to repeal those clauses, but actually to refund to the landlords every penny which they have paid in taxation under them.