Attack Churchill's Federation Plan.

New York Times 100 years ago today, September 15, 1912:
Almost All the London Papers Declare That It Would Be a Step Backward.
DUE TO THE SUFFRAGISTS?
Suggestion That It Has Been Hit On as a Way of Satisfying Them by Giving Them Local Votes.
Special Cable to The New York Times.
    LONDON, Sept. 14.— Winston S. Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, prognosticated a policy of federation for Great Britain in a speech at Dundee this week, which, to say the least, has drawn attention from the Liberal defeat at Midlothian.
    "It is amusing," says The Saturday Review, "to note the way in which Mr. Churchill is turned on, or turns himself on, to make a noise when his party has lost the day."
    Mr. Churchill's, idea is not new, but he has carried it further than any of the Liberal leaders had done before. He pointed out- that he was speaking for himself alone — not as a representative of the Government. According to Mr. Churchill's plan, not only Scotland and Wales should receive Home Rule, after Ireland, but England should be parcelled out into provinces, each with a separate Legislature and Executive — one Parliament for Lancashire, another for Yorkshire, one for the Midlands, one for Greater London, and so on.
    The United Kingdom would become known as a collection of locally autonomous States under the supreme authority of a central Parliament, which, eventually would deserve the title of imperial by including representatives of the self-governing colonies.
    The scheme has met with almost universal condemnation, although The Daily Mail admits that there is "a good deal attractive in the federalist idea, and if it be taken up seriously by the young statesman, who has at least political imagination and breadth of view, it will require to be considered on its merits."
    Other papers are not so polite. The Daily Telegraph says that Mr. Churchill has "occasional inexplicable lapses of common sense. If his inspiration be not always of a quality which belongs to the highest statesmanship, his intelligence, as a rule, is of that practical quality which avoids gratuitous errors and retains a sense of proportion and a measure of sanity." The Outlook declares that Mr. Churchill "is once more the irresponsible windbag of the Cabinet. He was never easy under the cloak of dignity he assumed on taking over the Admiralty."
    A recent, speech by ex-Premier Balfour on the Government's idea of federation following Irish Home Rule will be recalled. He declared that federation would be the means of introducing diversity into unity, and reading the lessons of history backward. It instances Canada, the Cape Colony, and the German Federation, saying:
    "In every one of the cases mentioned you start with separate communities and then you set yourselves to work to build up out of them some loftier and more splendid building, to introduce architecture, where there was only before an unformed heap of atoms, and, in doing so, you have necessarily got to consider the feelings of those separate communities which you wish to bring together into an ordered whole; and the best way to do that is by a Federal system, which leaves traces, and sometimes more than traces, of their original independence, but which passes over it to a higher community, which is created and brought into being."
    The United States, which Mr. Churchill cited, is declared by practically all his commentators, not to be an analogous case.
    Another suggestion, as ingenious as The Saturday Review's as to the reasons in the:back of Mr. Churchill's mind for the promulgating of federation proposals,: is -that he is considering the ultimate development of the woman suffrage question. The Daily Telegraph, which ventilates this supposition, declares that Mr. Churchill sees a means by which the Government is to get out of its difficulties over the feminine demand for votes.
    "There is one thing," it says, "on which the whole body of independent women are agreed, whether they belong to the Suffragist Party or follow Mrs. Humphrey-Ward: It is that women should be allowed a large scope for their political and social activities in local parliaments and municipal governments. Nothing could satisfy the conditions of the problem better than the formation of the local parliaments Mr. Churchill has in mind.
    "Women might be permitted to have the vote for these subordinate assemblies. Thus the fury of Suffragettes would be abated, and the Liberal Ministers, who have been hitherto marked out for attack by the militant feminists, would be free from anxiety.
    "That seems, to us one of the explanations of Mr. Churchill's latest scheme to bring back the Heptarchy."
    Assuming The Telegraph's supposition to be correct, the British federation would be an unlooked-for development of the women's suffrage agitation.
    Judging by the reception Mr. Churchill's proposals met with on all sides, however, there is little likelihood of the realization of what one critic calls Mr. Churchill's "mad, impracticable, insane, reckless, unworthy, and ludicrous idea of England, seeing her ancient Parliament split up into an agglomeration of glorified county councils."