MR. BONAR LAW'S "EXAMPLE."
[To Tea EINS01 or Ter BexeraToo.."] SIR.—I notice that in the last number of the Spectator you are at pains to dissociate yourselves from the attitude of the editor of the National Ile-clew. Mr. Manse goes on "gibbeting the ante-bellum declarations . . . of Liberal and Radical journalists and politicians, and contrasting them with the warlike spirit which they subsequently developed." You say that the record is a "painful" one of "fatuity and incon- sistency," but you prefer to follow the example set by Mr. Bonar Law and Mr. Austen Chamberlain and co-operate with the poor erring Liberals who have, in substance, acknow- ledged their error.
This is very charming of you, but please permit me to point out that you are singularly mistaken in thinking that Mr. Manse's gibbet is reserved for fatuous and inconsistent Liberals. In that elegant anthology, The Potsdam Diary, for instance, in which every day brings with it something written or said by "the blindest leaders of the blind," Mr. Boner Law is (on April 3rd) gibbeted for his words of 1919 " I hear it also constantly said—there is no use shutting our eyes or ears to obvious facts—that, owing to divergent intorests, war tome day or other between this country and Germany is inevitable. I never believe in these inevitable wars."
These seem very sensible words, but in Mr. Mane's eyes they make Mr. Bonar Law a member of "the British Potsdam Party." Mr. Law is not a sheep who now patriotically co-operates with the wicked Radical goats; he is himself a goat, with a "paint al record of fatuity and inconsistency."
I have no doubt that you will be more anxious than ever to show that the Spectator is not the National Review, and I cannot help thinking you will think just a shade better of " the British Potsdam Party" when you realize that, in addition to "Liberal and Radical journalists and politicians," it includes persons eo little entitled to that description as Mr. Balfour and Mr. Boner Law.-1 am, Sir, &e., A LIBERAL JOURNALIST.
[We thoroughly agree with the Unionist leader that it is a mistake to talk about "inevitable wars." Wars are never inevitable if they are properly prepared against. The real difference between the two parties was that the Unionists desired to make adequate preparation, convinced that by so doing they would be preventing, not precipitating, war. Many Liberals, quite sincerely no doubt, were inclined to think that preparation would precipitate war. They were, of course, hopelessly wrong. In our opinion, however, it is useless, if not indeed injurious, to pursue a correspondence of this description. We shall be more than willing when the war is over to discuss the whole question of the lack of preparation. —En. Spectator.]
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