Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 12 (April 1, 1930)

Balfour as Torpedoer!

Balfour as Torpedoer!

Of a quality different from the dictatorship in Italy, the Spanish regime of De Rivera came to an end by wear and tear. De Rivera's early death softened the acrimony that surrounded the passing of his rule, and the funeral tribute in Madrid seems to have taken the sting out of the party charges of maladministration. Death has also removed another great political leader in Lord Balfour, formerly Conservative Prime Minister of Britain. The Salisbury-Balfour Governments comprise the longest Conservative Administration the present generation remembers. Its tariff leanings paved the way for the longest Liberal Administration of this century, beginning in 1906, carrying on into the war, and fading into a war coalition. Under the shadow of the Liberal regime the Labour Party developed, and Mr. Philip Guedalla has described these changes as “the British substitute for a revolution.” There was in Britain no Spanish dictatorship, nor any thought of such. The fallen Prime Minister resigned even the leadership of his own party, yet remained in politics to carry out some of the greatest constructive work of his career, embodied in the Balfour Note (international debts), the Balfour Declaration (Zionism), and the Washington Conference, where, in 1922, Lord Balfour (according page 11 to the unimpeachable W. R. Hearst) sank the American Navy!

* * *