and glorious career?  Is it wonderful that we should refuse to turn our eyes away from that?  No; I say that the desire and the aim of making a national settlement with Ireland on lines which would enable the people of that country to manage their own purely local affairs, is not an aim that can be separated from the general march of the Liberal army.  If I come forward on your platform here at Dundee it is on the clear understanding that I do not preclude myself from trying to reconcile Ireland to England on a basis of freedom and justice.

I said just now that this was an important election.  Yes, the effect upon his Majesty’s Government and upon the Liberal Party for good or ill from this election cannot fail to be far-reaching.  There are strong forces against us.  Do not underrate the growing strength of the Tory reaction now in progress in many of the constituencies in England.  I say it earnestly to those who are members of the Labour Party here to-day—­do not underrate the storm which is gathering over your heads as well as ours.  I am not afraid of the forces which are against us.  With your support we shall overwhelm them—­with your support we shall bear them down.  Ah, but we must have that support.

It is not the enemy in front that I fear, but the division which too often makes itself manifest in progressive ranks—­it is that division, that dispersion of forces, that internecine struggle in the moments of great emergency, in the moments when the issue hangs in the balance—­it is that which, I fear, may weaken our efforts and may perhaps deprive us of success otherwise within our grasp.

There are cross-currents in this election.  You cannot be unconscious of that.  They flow this way and that way, and they disturb the clear issue which we should like to establish between the general body of those whose desire it is to move forward, and those who wish to revert to the old and barbarous prejudices and contentions of the past—­to the fiscal systems and to the methods of government and administration, and to the Jingo foreign policies across the seas, from which we hoped we had shaken ourselves clear.

I want to-night to speak about these cross-currents; and let me first say a word about Socialism.  There are a great many Socialists whose characters and whose views I have much respect for—­men some of whom I know well, and whose friendship I enjoy.  A good many of those gentlemen who have delightful, rosy views of a noble and brilliant future for the world, are so remote from hard facts of daily life and of ordinary politics that I am not very sure that they will bring any useful or effective influence to bear upon the immediate course of events.  To the revolutionary Socialist, whether dreamer or politician, I do not appeal as the Liberal candidate for Dundee.  I recognise that they are perfectly right in voting against me and voting against the Liberals, because Liberalism is not Socialism, and never will be.  There is a great gulf fixed.  It is not only a gulf of method, it is a gulf of principle.  There are many steps we have to take which our Socialist opponents or friends, whichever they like to call themselves, will have to take with us; but there are immense differences of principle and of political philosophy between our views and their views.