TOPICS OF THE DAY
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE VERSAILLES COUNCIL. NOTHING is more necessary at this hour than absolute accord between the Government and their military advisers. It is essential. The whole course of the war may depend upon it. Germany is apparently massing a larger army in the West than she ever had at her disposal before, and is bringing up an unparalleled amount of artillery. The total abandonment of the war by the Bolsheviks, the separate peace with the Ukraine, and the almost impossibly difficult situation of Rumania have made it practicable for the Germans to contemplate the delivery of what they hope will be a decisive blow in the West. For our part, we cannot regard this prospect, from the strictly military point of view, with any misgiving. The temper of our troops was never higher or their training better ; and if our soldiers were asked what kind of fighting would be most to their liking, few of them, we imagine, would deny that they would wish to see " Fritz " trying to pass through their lines. Germany is in an extremely uncomfortable state economically, and it is possible that her state is even desperate. If she is to get a decision, there- fore, she cannot delay the attempt, and everything from the military point of view helps to reassure us that the Allies will be able to prevent her achieving that decision. If the attempt can be turned into a disaster, or a costly failure amounting to disaster, as is possible, the war may well be ended this year. But to come back to the point with which we began, the military prospect is fair only on the condition that there is perfect accord between the Government and the Higher Command. A relationship of half-loyalty and sus- picion is bound, especially in a democracy like ours, to perco- late downwards from the top to the men in the ranks. The suspicions--the word is only a synonym for want of confi- dence or loss of motel---of the men in the ranks react in turn upon the industrial workers at home, upon whom the success of the Army ultimately depends. Now to-day, instead of the perfect unity and mutual trust which are the sure marks of a winning nation, we find unhappily an atmosphere of doubt, of bewilderment, caused by the relations of the Government and the Higher _Command. That this atmosphere can be dispelled we are perfectly sure. We definitely believe, further, that it will be dispelled, for it is much too bad a thing to assume that the War Cabinet will enter upon the spring campaign without the nation being satisfied that our efforts are being made under the best conditions of public confidence.
The situation is much too serious for any man of elementary decency or patriotism to concern himself for a moment about gratifying any minor political foibles, much less personal animosities. At the risk of appearing to dwell overmuch on matters personal to ourselves, let us repeat as briefly as we can the motives which have guided us ever since the delivery of Mr. Lloyd George's Paris speech. Letters we have received from some correspondents alike show us that the critical character of the present situation is not appreciated, and that an explanation of the emphasis with which we have thought it right to express ourselves is sought in just that kind of political pedantry or personal animosity which we have deprecated. When we condemned the Paris speech in the severest terms we could command, we did so because we were alarmed lest, if Mr. Lloyd George continued to talk in that strain, confidence in Sir William Robertson and Sir Douglas Haig would be completely undermined. We saw a danger of the war being lost, not through want of military preparation, but through a loss of faith in British brain-power to think out winning moves. We said that a Prime Minister who used such language as Mr. Lloyd George used in Paris was unfitted to hold the highest position in the British Empire during the crisis of a war. Shortly afterwards Mr. Lloyd George, in the House of Commons, unsaid the greater part of his Paris speech. He explained that he had wished to make " a disagreeable speech " merely in order to startle people into a state of alert attention, importance of wiltdhtoyemosumlongo House ofCommons Pthne Allies. The mThillaseHtmou accepted that explanation, and it was evident that the greater part of the nation also accepted it. That being so, we wrote that the governing fact of the situation was that Mr. Lloyd George still ruled with the sanction of the great majority, and that we, for our part, could not think it right to continue to criticize the Prime Minister in such a way as to weaken the support which he still plainly . We said, indeed, tahnadt we should du possessed such a situation as -would seem to put us in the wrong. If any justification of our strong condemnation ever came, we said, it must come through events and the lapse of time, and not through ourown efforts to procure such a justification. We have not, in fine, changed our minds, but we have felt it necessary to act upon what we should think must be the guiding principle of any man who wishes to serve his country honestly—the principle that it is necessary to adapt oneself to the facts in order to extract the best results from the circumstances.
Since Mr. Lloyd George's House of COBIM01113 speech there has been, as all the world knows, a furious and most dis- creditable attack in several of Lord Northcliffe's newspapers on Sir William Robertson and Sir Douglas Haig. This attack so obviously drew much of its verbal inspiration from the Prime Minister's Paris speech that it was not to be wondered at that the country was immediately flooded with rumours that the Prime Minister had himself incited this Press cam- aign. We ourselves never had the least that the Prime mater had done anything of the sort. Indeed, we said that such a thing was much too bad for us to believe. Very likely the mere coincidence of the arguments was the origin of the rumours ; but that does not alter the fact that the would-be assassins based themselves on the Paris speech. It seemed to us in all the circumstances highly necessary that the Prime Minister should declare himself one way or the other. The mere fact that there was this coincidence of argument, and that there were all tliese damaging rumours, proved that Mr. Lloyd George must back up the Higher Command with the most loyal and generous words he could think of if there was not to be a general loss of confidence and a lowering of moral. Of course, a possible alternative for Mr. Lloyd George would have been to say frankly that he no longercould feel that Sir William Robertson and Sir Douglas Haig were capable of winning the war, and that he must find other military advisers. If he had done this, the nation would undoubtedly have -been greatly grieved and astonished, but it certainly would not have thought badly of. Mr. Lloyd George. It would have known that he was a man of courage and honesty, and 'was not afraid of even the severest surgical operation when he felt it to be necessary for the safety of the realm. The-only utterly wrong course, as it seemed to us, for the Prime Minister to take, was neither to support nor to dismiss his military advisers. When we wrote last week Mr. Lloyd George still remained in what miight be called his neutral position. Several of his colleagues had used generous words about Sir William Robertson and Sir Douglas Haig, but the Prime Minister himself had not spoken. Such, in brief, are the origins of the present unrest.
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