The introduction after the First War by Lloyd George's Government of a national system of unemployment relief, however circumscribed by various rules… - Harold Macmillan

I have long realised that the great figures in my old party have long ago given up Toryism and have adopted Manchester Liberalism of about 1860.

British opinion was sadly confused. Throughout all these years, until just before the catastrophe, British people refused even to consider the possibility of another war. The last war had been so terrible in its devastations that it was "unthinkable" that this degrading and humiliating internecine strife between civilised countries could be repeated. War was not only intolerable, it was incredible. After all, the German people, whom our occupying troops had found to be decent and respectable folk, had not really wanted war. It was just the Kaiser and the militarists. We forgot, alas, how easily the Germans have succumbed to such leadership throughout history, and how readily they have applauded wars, so long as they were—as under Bismarck's guidance—short and successful.

What I do not see is the argument...that we ought somehow to go on a quite different issue, a purely economic issue, to this new extreme which seems, greatly to my regret, to have inspired part of my party. There are no longer the principles of Lord Shaftesbury, Mr. Disraeli or Mr. Churchill. We are reverting to a form of neo-Cobdenism based upon the worst elements of the Manchester school, supported by aphorisms that would have done honour to that popular writer, Dr. Samuel Smiles. The paternalist elements and traditions of the Tory Party that come from its very roots are now unpopular. We are making a great error. It is because the people as a whole trusted those whom they regarded as their natural leaders to help them, support them and protect them that we have had the great authority in the past in our country.