DEAR MR. PUNCH,--I know you take no sides in party politics, but I
still think you would like to hear why it is that I have gone over to
the Independent Liberals. No, it has nothing to do with Mr. ASQUITH'S
triumphal procession and still less with the NORTHCLIFFE Press. The
fact is that till quite recently I belonged to the true blue Tory
school--was indeed probably the last survivor of the Old Guard--and
I found myself out of touch with the progressive tendencies of modern
Toryism, its deplorable way of moving with the times, its hopeless
habit of discarding what it would call the old shibboleths when it
wrongly imagined them to be outworn. My decision to leave a party that
has long ceased to deserve its honoured name was immediately due to a
Liberal Paper which editorially ridiculed the Liberty League, formed
for the defeat of Bolshevist propaganda, and pooh-poohed the idea of
the existence of dangerous Bolshevist elements in the country. This
attitude attracted me enormously; for I recalled the standpoint of the
same paper in the days before the War--how it ridiculed the alleged
German menace and pooh-poohed the idea of the existence of hostile
German elements in our midst. Here, I said, is the party for me; here
is your authentic Bourbon spirit--the type that learns nothing
and forgets nothing; that in the midst of a changing world remains
immovable as a rock. Yes, Sir, for a Tory of the old school there is
no place to-day except in the ranks of Liberalism.
Yours faithfully,
SEMPER EADEM.
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[Illustration: MODERN DRAMA BELOW STAIRS.