TOPICS OF THE DAY.
CONCENTRATE.
THE essential need of the Government is to concentrate their attention on the war, and sternly and consistently to refuse all distractions. If Mr. Lloyd George will try to do this, he can feel assured of the approval and goodwill of the nation. A sharp lesson ought to have been learned from the Mesopotamian affair. If it really has been learned, all may yet go well. No serious person wants to pull down the Govern- ment in these critical days in order to try to place a better Government in their place. It might conceivably be done, but the attempt would be a gamble and a further eipenditure of valuable time. Just as the business of a strategist in war is to concentrate on the main point of attack when he has decided where that point ought to be, so the Government must never again, if they are to retain the confidence of the nation, allow themselves to be diverted to side-issues. This seems a very obvious truth, and yet it must be admitted that both generals and statesmen continually lose sight of it. Take Mr. Lloyd George's speech, for instance, in the debate of Friday week. In the exordium of that speech he demanded that a fresh inquiry should be piled on the top of the Mesopotamian Inquiry in spite of all the crushing criticism that had already been directed against the proposal ; and in the peroration of the speech he vehemently appealed to the House to fix its attention on the war. We heartily agree with the peroration, but it is impossible to reconcile it with the exordium. Imagine what would have happened if the proposed Court of Inquiry had been set up to investigate the actions of civilians as well as of soldiers. Most of the members of the War Cabinet—for they are involved in the immures of the Mesopotamian Com- mission—would have been running in and out of the Court for months giving evidence, trying to defend their political repu- tations (which is a very engrossing occupation in itself), and finding themselves compelled to discuss Cabinet secrets and write interminable memoranda. What a way of " getting on with the war " !
The Government doubtless have been further shaken in their position and authority by their handling of the Mesopo- tamian affair ; but Mr. Lloyd George can quite well recover any lost ground if he will now call for a rally with a single purpose. We can imagine him saying, and we earnestly hope that he will say in effect : Concentrate, concentrate, and again concentrate ! That is the only course of wisdom and safety. We see now that we were. all wrono' with our Com- missions and investigations and penal Courts. These things are an entire mistake during a war. The penalizing and public discrediting of officials should wait till after the war. We mean, then, to have no more diversions. Whatever the second part of the Dardanelles Report may reveal, we will not be betrayed into a neglect of our primary duty. As for the Irish Convention, it is no doubt in the nature of a distraction, but it has been appointed, and therefore it must go on. But it need not be allowed to become too much of a distraction. Let the Convention have three months in which to produce their scheme. If they cannot do it in three months, the proof will be plain that the Irish are unable to agree among themselves. Moreover, it must be understood that it is a matter solely for the Irish. We ardently hope that they will come to an agree- ment, but in no event must those charged with conducting the war be called away from their proper task."
It is easy enough to see why the Government wanted a second inquiry. They were awed by the violence of the Press and decided that they must take some striking action, and yet they felt that they were not themselves in a position to deliver judgment. They were themselves in the dock, as we have said several times. Most of the present War Cabinet were them- selves inculpated by the Mesopotamian Report. What they ought to have seen was that if in all the circumstances they were unable to act, nothing could really be done in the way of punishing officials. The idea of adding inquiry to inquiry, and thus of shifting the responsibility of judgment on to somebody else, was a hopeless idea. They might have remembered what happened in the Crimean War—the recriminations of Com- against Commission, the waste of time and the general inconclusiveness' of the proceedings. We have set forth else- where a narrative of those proceedings, as they are well worth remembering. If an inquiry led to nothing in those days, it is madness to enter upon such adventures during a war of to-day, when the energy of-the nation is engaged and preoccupied from top to bottom. But as we have said, the Government were frightened by the outcry in the Press. There was anger of course throughout the country, and most justly so, at the dis- closures of the shocking negligence, pig-headedness, and blind arrogance in the management of the Medical Service in Meso- potamia ; there was intense indignation at the cruel and un- necessary sufferings of the troops ; but so far as we could discover there was no desire on the part of the public to confuse errors of political judgment with professional neglect of duty. 'That supreme and wholesale confusion was reserved for the Press. Nearly every prominent statesman was named in turn in one place or another as the origin of all evil. Impeachments were demanded, and are probably still being demanded. If the Government had gone as far as many newspapers demanded —though they went too far as it was—they would have left 'themselves no time at all to wage war. It seems hardly credible, and yet it is a fact, that some of the newspapers which indulged in these orgies of political bate and invited the Government to play the game of Germany were the same papers that have long talked of the " Hidden Hand "—that mysterious power which is somehow working secretly on the aide of Germany in the interior of the Government and pre- venting them from making war with their whole heart. But this Press movement of the last fortnight has surely been the truest touch of the " Hidden Hand " that has yet been felt during the war. A few malicious aliens as yet undiscovered could not do a thousandth part of the mischief that was being plotted in the name of efficiency, justice, and patriotism by the worst of our journalistic whippers-in. In an admirable letter, full of common-sense, which was published in the Times on Monday, Lord George Hamilton, Chairman of the Mesopotamian Commission, said that such a thing as punishment—except in one instance—had never entered his head when the Commission distributed their strictures. Public censure, loss of command, and reduction to half-pay are very heavy punishments for a soldier. Of the civilians expressly affected by the Report, Mr. Chamberlain has resigned and Lord Hardinge is no longer Viceroy of India. It is being asked, however : why should civilians get off when soldiers suffer We appreciate the point, but though it may seem a hard, and even a cruel, saying, we fear that a distinction between the treatment of soldiers and civilians is often inevitable in the very nature of the case. If the world were re-made and made differently, it might be otherwise ; but in the world as we know it the distinction normally exists, and must exist. A soldier's is a peculiar profession : it is something out of the normal, and its code is therefore abnormal. A soldier is shot for the worst sort of neglect of duty ; a civilian is never shot for going to sleep in his office ; even in the offices of the Yellow Press those who make mistakes survive. A soldier has opportunities of tremendous personal renown, and his opportunities of personal humiliation corre- spond. These conditions are inherent in military service, ani are accepted as such. To try to place a statesman's errors of judgment on all fours with a soldier's failure in duty is to live in an unreal world. You can frame a prosecution beim a Court-Martial easily enough ; you cannot frame a criminal charge against a political bungler, however great his blunders. Soldiers are properly responsible to the heads of the Army, and to them alone. Statesmen are responsible to Parliament. The attempt to try both kinds of delinquents before a common Court is based on an entire misunderstanding.
The balance-sheet of the Government in this affair, so far as it has gone, does not read well, though the credit aide can still be redeemed. The country has lost the services of Mr. Austen Chamberlain, and Mr. Churchill has been taken into the Government. In ordinary times we should have said that Mr. Chamberlain was right to retire, on the principle that the head of a Department is responsible for all the acts of his subordinates—the only possible principle which consorts w:Vi. Parliamentary government. But these are not ordinary times. War is a negation of the normal ; the services of every good and tried man are urgently needed ; and therefore we greatly regret the loss of Mr. Chamberlain, who had mas- tered all the details of the India Office. His successor, Mr. Montagu, recently produced a scheme for more or leas demo- cratic reforms in India. If he is allowed to prOceed with it during the war, the Government will be consenting to a new diversion. • They should absolutely refuse their permission, for the sake of India not less than for that of the whole Empire. As for Lord Hardinge, we have said before what we thought of the spirit of the Government of India, but we are unable to understand why any criticism on that point should prevent him from serving his country at the Foreign Office, where he has notoriously displayed great ability and devotion. It is of the essence of the concentration we needlo use everybody
and waste nobody. - •
Previous page
