THE PRIME MINISTER'S SURVEY. T HE Prime Minister's speech in the
House of Commons on Wednesday was an admirable survey of the situation, full of cheering facts, and framed in the right spirit. If we find certain points to criticize, our criticism is not intended to detract from our general sense that the speech as a whole was what a British Prime Minister's utterance ought to be at such a moment. To begin with, Mr. Lloyd George displayed a just and wise feeling in placing in its right perspective the work of the Navy. When British people try to estimate the value of the Naval Service they always labour under the double disadvantage that the work of the Navy is almost entirely hidden from them, and that it is notoriously difficult to persuade Continental nations to recognize the full value of the naval function. This being so, the obligation upon our public men is all the greater never to allow the indispensable services rendered by the Navy to be forgotten. Without the Navy we should have lost the war long ago ; and without the maintenance of our naval strength the war even now could not be won. Mr. Lloyd George also did extremely well not to allow any false affectation to prevent him from placing its full value upon the glorious and unparalleled effort of the whole British nation. Our habit of self-depreciation has long stood in the way of our earning just credit. Even our Allies do not yet know the exact extent of our effort, and every one who has had the opportunity of meeting in England distinguished visitors from Allied countries must have had the experience of noting their astonishment at all that has been done and is being done. Such an experience affects one partly with gratification, but also with some remorse that we should ever have allowed ourselves to be misunderstood. The truth is that we have a great deal of self-confidence in action, but when it Comes to estimating our own efforts in words we laugh at ourselves as fools. It has always been so. After the great feats of our troops in the Crimean War—troops who were indifferently organized and infamously served in all the departments of supply—we allowed the impression to go abroad that the British Army's part in that war had been that of a-kind of discredited reserve. In the same way after the Franco-German War we dropped the French ideas which we had gladly borrowed from our Allies in the Crimea, and rushed into the opposite extreme of humbly imitating the Germans, even in respect of minor matters of equipment that had no relevant 'bearing upon the essential art of war. Mr. Lloyd George's words were an excellent corrective to all such tendencies as these.
The Prime Minister showed insight in examining the bearing of the huge German offensive on the Western Front upon the naval disappointment of Germany. The decision to try a gambler's throw in France was in itself, as Mr. Lloyd George pointed out, an admission that the 'U '-boat campaign had failed. It was also an admission that Germany could not afford to delay any longer. She knew that if she could not get a decision this year she could never get it. In this con- nexion we recall the words of a British officer on the Western Front, who when he was told that Germany had launched the terrific offensive of March 21st exclaimed : "Then Germany is beaten. She must know it or she would not do this." That officer had yet to learn the terrible anxiety which the offensive would bring to us. Nevertheless his exclamation was a precise appreciation of the situation. As regards the output of British merchant vessels, Mr. Lloyd George had the painful duty of confirming the fact that while the rest of the Allies are more than keeping pace with the destruction of merchant vessels by German submarines, Great Britain sees the number of her merchant vessels diminishing day by day. If this process continues without a check, the British Mercantile Marine will disappear. The instrument which has given to Great Britain all her power and wealth will have fallen from her hands. The whole subject demands the most careful thought. We do not know in what terms the Government may have discussed the matter with our Allies, but it seems to us that they would be greatly to blame if they had not tried to enter into such arrangements with our Allies as any trader would enter into in the course of his business. If we are still devoting most of the labour of our shipyards to building ships of war rather than merchant vessels, because we have much more experience in that kind of construction and much more apparatus for the purpose than any other nation, it stands to reason that we need not necessarily be made to suffer. To punish us for our merits in building ships of war is a thing, we are perfectly sure, that would not appeal to any of our trusted Allies as a reasonable proposition.
The unsatisfactory things in Mr. Lloyd George's speech
were the manner in which he dealt with Man-Power and his rather cloudy words about the possibility of peace with Germany. It was a flippant argument in which he pointed with pride to the relatively large numbers of British troops that were rushed over to France in April, and in which with mock gravity he thanked his critics in the Press for having said that our Army had been let down, and consequently deceived Germany into thinking that our reserves. were exhausted. The fact is that the demands of our military leaders at the front for more drafts had not been, met. Sir Douglas Haig in his despatches complained of this more than once. It is well known that on an average our divisions at the front had their strength reduced by a quarter. The crisis was met by pushing into the line men who had had insufficient training, and, we are sorry to say, by sending boys of eighteen and a half years old who had had only about five months' training. As regards the possibilities of peace, Mr. Lloyd George, whether he intended it or not, did not convey the impression of determination which was certainly produced by his admirable message to the nation on Monday. He talked about Herr von Kuhlmann and his fellows having gone to Brest-Litovsk with the intention of making a reasonable peace with Russia, and then having been forced from their intention by the German War Lords. That, we are sure, is a misunderstanding of the truth. No German agent ever goes to his appointed task without the deepest conviction that he must toe the line drawn upon the ground by his superiors. Of course we all want peace. It is ridiculous for Pacificists to pretend that there are hearts so callous in this country that they are indifferent to the appalling spectacle of slaughter and of sorrow. But even from the point of view of the most earnest lovers of peace, among whom we count ourselves, how can there be any comparison between the peace-bearing properties of a patched-up peace and those of a war fought to a decision ? The German mind is open to one argument—the argument drawn from military failure—and to no other. If Germany is allowed to ain anything out of this war, she will want to go to war again. We must beat her, since there is no other way, into the frame of mind which was spontaneously characteristic of Great Britain, France, Italy, the United States, and the rest of the Allies before the war. Hardly one of these nations could be induced to go to war because they all completely shrank from the idea of it. Such a frame of mind as that will be the real safeguard of the world, not a League of Nations or any other political framework within the compass of which an evil-minded nation could work havoc. Our task should be to punish Germany without compunction and without reserve for her hideous crimes, for the simple reason that in an imperfect and illogical world no better method of holding criminals in check has been discovered than that of punishment. By our action we should in effect say to Germany : "You asked for war and you shall have it. You shall have it till you are so exhausted that you are no longer physically able to wage war. You shall have it till you are so sick of the name of war that you will never want to hear it mentioned again."
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