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TIDE TABLE FOR THE NORTH WALES…

A FIGHT FOR LIBERTY.

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A FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. THE COMMON PEOPLE" of this country, this boasted land of freedom and fair-play, have received a challenge to fight, and the stakes put up are nothing less than their political liberty. If we, the said "common people," are the liberty-loving nation we pretend to be, and really mean it when we sing that we never, never, never shall be slaves," what are we to do in the face of such a challenge? There is only one course open to us. We must pick up the gauntlet and fight, fight with all our strength and energy, fight with a determination to win, and to win in a manner so decisive that never again shall any usurper dare to wrench from us our hard-earned rights and privileges. And that is just the mood the great majority of the nation are in to-day. They are ready for the fray, and are con- fident of success, for thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just." But observe the result of their united and determined attitude. Their challengers, who com- menced by being insolent, are now turning tail and running away from the consequences of their own actions. We never chal- lenged you," say the Lords and their backers in effect, and don't wish to fight you. Why, then, should you desire to fight us? In other words, having dared to perform an action which made an early ap- peal to the country inevitable, they are turning round and declaring that there is really no reason why the Government should dissolve and put the country to the trouble and expense of an election! Such talk is the veriest nonsense, as even Mr. Balfour has admitted, and those guilty of it received right and proper treatment at the hands of Mr. Asquith at the National Liberal Club on Saturday and of Mr. Lloyd George at Mile End on Monday night. Any- one who reads those two speeches dispas- sionately cannot fail to realise that the Government are taking the right and proper course, that there is no other way by which the lordly usurpers can be made to feel the consequences of their rash and ill-advised action in rejecting the People's Budget and the people enabled to govern themselves in accordance with the spirit of our Constitu- tion. That is the position to-day, and the Tories, with all their bluff and chicanery, have not the courage to face it. They are trying to get away from their own chal- lenge by resorting to misrepresentation and gross distortion of facts. Were the matter not so serious, were the issues not of such vital importance, it would really be laugh- able to watch the Tory leaders and tthe Tory Press indulging in such ingenious con- tortions in their hasty and panic-stricken efforts to escape from the mesh of their own making in which they are entangled. But such antics are too obvious to deceive any- bodv except, of course, those who wish to be deceived. The people of this country are for the most part educated and their eyes are opened, and they have developed an inconvenient faculty for seeing things as thev really are, and not as their would-be tyrants seek to exhibit them. In this crisis, more than ever before, their habit of judging for themselves is proving very unpalatable to those lordly tyrants who would like to fasten the feudal yoke about their necks. And so, as the Lords have at last realised, this election can end in only one way. Through the medium of the ballot-box the people will strike a final blow for the establishment of their precious liberties. Henceforward their will must prevail. They have long enough submitted to the thwarting and flouting of their desires by a non-elected and non-re- presentative body whose only concern is for their own vested interests, and now that the opportunity has been afforded them they will utilise it in a way which was never anticipated by those who during all these years have defied their wishes and mocked at their most sacred aspirations. As Mr. Lloyd George so convincingly showed on Monday evening, Wales has a special and long-standing grievance against the Lords, and we firmly believe that Wales will unite with the other constituent nations of this great Kingdom in settling that old account in a decisive manner. Nobody in Wales, at any rate, can be misled by the death-bed repentance of the House of Lords and its professed' desire to reform itself. It is too late now to talk of reform. They have laughed to scorn all the suggestions of reform made to them by one of their own number during the long period of thirty years, and now they must put up with the consequence of their own delay. Reform must and will come. But the question now before the country is how to settle the question of the Veto, and that can only be decided satisfactorily by the adoption of the wise plan formulated by the Liberal Government. Once the Veto question is settled, and the relations of the two Houses placed on a proper basis, there will be ample leisure for dealing with the reform of the constitution of the Second Chamber. Attempts are being made, and will con- tinue to be made, to divert the attention of the electorate from this cardinal issue to other matters of really minor importance. Hut they will not be misled. They are only too well aware that whether the House of Lords remains as it is, or is reformed in accordance with the suggestions of Lord Rosebery or Lord Lansdowne, it will con- tinue to oppose the will of the people and to obstruct the path of progress and social reform. Not until the Veto question is finally settled can that obstacle be effectively removed. That it will be so removed is the one certain result of the approaching election, and the Lords know that only too well. Our nation is determined to win back its liberties.

PERSONAL AND SOCIAl

SYAINGS OF THE JVEEK.

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WEEK BY WEEK.

JOTTINGS FROJf NATURE.

Abergele Sparks.

Llandudno Field Club. r T

! Educational Handwork.

Colwyn Bay Liberal Association.

Poultry.

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