On his return from Italy to Paris, Mr. Lloyd George
was enter- tained at lunch on Monday by M. Painleve. He took the oppor- tunity to deliver the mischievous speech to which we have already referred. He said that the strategic unity proclaimed aa the result of successive Allied Conferences had been " pure make- believe." The Generals of each Ally had produced plans for their own front, end had been too sensitive to criticize the other Allies' plans. The assembled Generals " metaphorically took thread and needle, sewed these plans together, and produced them to a subsequent civilian Conference as one great strategic piece." But " stitching ie not strategy." When the plane were subjected to the teat of war, " the stitches name out and disintegration was complete." The war was a siege of nations. We were blockading two huge Empires, and we had failed, in Mr. Lloyd George's view, to remember either that every part of the Allied line must be strong enough to resist pressure from the besieged, or that the besiegers should be ready to strike at the weakest part of the enemy. " While we were hammering with the whole of our might at the impene trable barrier in the West," we had loft Serbia, the gateway to the East, to be overrun. That was " an inconceivable blunder."
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