13 APRIL 1918, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

TRIFIiiNG WITH THE NATION. THE supreme duty before the House of Commons at the present moment is to see to it that Mr. Lloyd George does not- once again trifle with the country and its dearest interests. That may seem a harsh thing to say. It is certainly one which we should avoid saying, if we could possibly do so without failing to perform what it is the business of honest journalism to perform—to act the part of the watchdog and to warn the country of approaching dangers. " But why say bitter things, even if true, of Mr. Lloyd George at such a time as this, when what we most want is concentration of effort, and when the essential need is to show a united front to the enemy ? Mr. Lloyd George may not be perfect, but after all he is in supreme power. Why then not give him one more chance to do his best by the country and to redeem his old failures ? " The argument for letting bygones be bygones is always a strong one, and we should bow to it, and not assume that the• leopard cannot change his spots, if unhappily Mr. Lloyd George had not trifled with the country before, had not indeed been trifling with it ever since he came into office at the beginning of December, 1916. By this time last year we had begun to feel very great doubts and anxieties as to what he was doing with the precious interests entrusted to his care. We noted, with a daily growing uneasiness, a levity of conduct which ill con- sorted with the gravity of the nation's peril, and above all we observed a tendency to trifle with the nation in matters of the utmost moment.

Unfortunately, and here we cannot but condemn ourselves, we did not—even though it would probably have been useless —make the strong protest that we ought to have made in regard to what Mr. Lloyd George was doing, or rather not doing but only pretending to do. We gave far more weight than we now see we ought to have done to the plea that he must be given a chance, that we must hope for the best, that on the whole it was probable he was doing more good than harm, and that, even if he neglected certain duties, he was putting such tremendous driving-force into others that we must pardon his deficiencies. He must be allowed to work in his own way, choose his own associates however strange and even inexplicable, and always be given the benefit of the doubt when something was done that looked on the surface like a clear dereliction of duty. What has been the result ? As we look back at his administration, we now see that in almost every particular he has again and again trifled with the nation. —We ask pardon of our readers for our iteration.—That being so, and when we see that he is now preparing a scheme of action which is infinitely the worst example of such trifling, how can we do anything but make our protest for what it is worth ? How can we refrain from raising our voice to implore Parlia- ment to guard against this danger of trifling—of pretending not to perceive, instead of honestly and sincerely meeting, the deadly perils with which we are surrounded. Those who have been trifled with for nearly a year and a half dare not admit the plea of " Give him another chance." Just as a dog has a right to.his first bite, a politician may have a right to his first trifle. He has none to his second. He has become "a person accustomed to trifle with mankind." The British people dare not, out of loyalty to a leader, or admiration for Mr. Lloyd George's undoubted talents in many respects, or devotion to his fascinating personality, say with the poet, " Deceive, deceive me once again."

What do we mean when we speak of trifling ? We mean the substitution of shadows for realities, of talk for action. We mean the making of promises that sound sincere and firm to the ear, but which vanish like fairy gifts at the moment when we expect performance. We mean irregular dazzling flashes of sensational rhetoric instead of a steady unquenchable flame. We mean the Mirage with its wide expanse of glisten- ing lakes instead of a clear stream of genuine water. The first, the most serious, the most momentous example of Mr. Lloyd George's trifling with the vital interests of the nation is his handling of the Man-Power problem. Mr. Asquith's Government had not satisfied the nation in this respect. They failed to do what so many of us earnestly prayed and hoped they would do—array the nation as a whole for war, and assign to every man in the country who was not a cripple or an invalid his place in the carrying on of the war. The immediate place of many men, especially in the earlier stages of the war, would of course have been merely to stand ready for the call, and till it came to proceed with their usual. civil avocations. Every man would, however, have been 'warned for service. When Mr. Lloyd George came into power the general tone of his speeches and of his complaints against his former chief and political associates gave the impression that he was going to introduce a very different system in regard to the national effort. He was going to bend his whole mind to this essential problem of Man-Power. Further, he made us believe, even though his words were not very clear or specific, that he regarded the application of Compulsory Service to Ireland as likely to prove the crux of the Man-Power problem, and that in any case it would be dealt with by him sincerely and thoroughly. Yet we now are forced to admit that he did nothing, or rather that he simply trifled with the question. As regards Ireland, he acted the part of a " pattering " conjurer. He threw over that side of the Man-Power problem a trick handkerchief labelled " Irish Convention." As long as the handkerchief was not removed, we were told that wonderful developments were going on underneath, and that these must not be disturbed by undue curiosity. Ultimately something like the conjurer's rabbit, or omelette, or bowl of goldfishes would be evolved. Meanwhile we must keep silence and be content to watch the handkerchief and its pretty green border with a touch of orange in places. We now know that nothing has been going on under the handkerchief, or at any rate nothing that will be of the slightest help to us in the direction of increased Man- Power. All that has passed has been ten months. Not a step was taken in that precious interval to facilitate the application of Compulsory Service to Ireland, which is now universally admitted to be absolutely necessary to the safety of the Empire. In December, 1916, when Germany's power was very nearly at its lowest, when half her armies were occupied in guarding the Russian frontier, and when the Sinn Feiners had not organized themselves half as well as they are organized now, and were not half as closely in touch as they now are with their German allies and paymasters, it would have been a comparatively easy thing to extend conscription to Ireland. Let us put it in another way. The only difficulty then would have been that opposition from the Nationalists in Parliament which has been so curiously, nay, so suspiciously, absent as regards Mr. Lloyd George's Administration. Who can wonder if men are insisting that there was an implied, though of course not an express, bargain with the Nationalist M.P.'s that they would not worry Mr. Lloyd George, but would be content with the sedative inhalations of the Convention, as long as the words " Conscription for Ireland " were banished from the region of practical politics ?

Once again, we say that it was to trifle with the dearest interests of the nation to decide the question of Compulsory Service in Ireland, not by our needs at the front, but by political considerations at Westminster But the trifling with the nation in the matter of Man-Power was not merely confined to the Irish side of the problem. Though Mr. Lloyd George talked a good deal about Man-Power in England, he did not venture to deal drastically with it, or indeed to make any clear proposals in regard to it till a month or so before the German push revealed the terrible need. of increased numbers and the terrible disparity between our preparations in regard to doing the utmost in the way of Man-Power and those of the Germans. Nearly fifteen months were wasted before even the comparatively mild, tentative, we might almost say timid, combing-out Bill of Sir Auckland Geddes was introduced into Parliament at the beginning of this spring. We might give plenty of other examples of trifling with the country and the House, one of the worst being the trifling with the problem of Shipbuilding. Here was an issue almost as vital as that of Man-Power. But though the Government talked a great deal about it, we now find that they made no stern and determined effort to cope with the situation. We cannot deal with that matter on the present occasion,. but we must say a word as to the appalling way in which Mr. Lloyd George (for, after all, he is the Administration) has trifled with North-East Ulster and its representatives. When the Members for North-East Ulster consented to go into the Convention, the Prime Minister renewed the promise that the Act of 1914 should not be put into operation without their consent. This reiteration of the old pledge meant, of course, that the abstract discussions and majority decisions of the Convention should not be used to commit the Ulster delegates to an assent to some scheme of Home Rule founded on the Majority Report of the Convention to which they might most strongly object. In other words, they were to feel assured that they would. never in any possible circumstances be told : " We cannot now go back on the decisions of the Convention. By a majority, and a very large majority, they those this or that line of action, and their decision we must accept as the authentic voice of all Ireland."

Yet now Mr. Lloyd George is introducing a Home Rule Bill to which the representatives of North-East Ulster cannot possibly give their consent. In these circumstances have they not a right to say that they have been trifled with I The only defence that Mr. Lloyd George could raise to such an accusation, as far as we can see, is that he only promised not to put the Act of 1914 into operation without the consent of North-East Ulster, but that the new Bill is something absolutely and totally different, and that therefore his promise does not apply. If that is really to be the line of argument (we may, of course, prove to be unduly suspicious, and most sincerely hope that we are), we can only say that the standard of honour at Westminster must differ entirely from that which is held amongst ordinary Englishmen, whatever their class or condition in civil life.