Gladstone's unrivalled
personality. Now they were defeated, as they had not been for
three-quarters of a century, by a party none of whose leaders possessed
an outstanding personality, and by a programme which contained no item
with any popular appeal. Everybody was thinking and talking politics;
every political conversation began or ended with that unknown factor,
the new Labour Party; every discussion of the Labour Party involved a
discussion of Socialism.
Perhaps Mr. Wells with the intuition of genius in fact foresaw what was
about to happen: perhaps it was only chance. Anyway his proposal for an
enlarged and invigorated society came at the precise moment, when the
realisation of his project was in fact possible; and, of course, his own
vigorous and interesting personality attracted many to us who might have
moved in other directions, or indeed never have moved at all.
The inner history of the Wells Committee has never been revealed, but
the composition of the Committee indicates the probable truth of the
rumours that the meetings were anything but dull, though in the end the
Committee arrived at an unanimous report. Sydney Olivier was one of the
"old gang," though at that time a vigorous supporter of all sorts of
changes. Mr. Headlam has always stood at the extreme right of the
movement, and in party politics has never abated his loyalty to
Liberalism.
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