A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
MR. .LLOYD GEORGE, it must be assumed, had General Smuts' permission to reproduce, as he does in the new volume of his memoirs, the memorandum the South African leader drew up for the War Cabinet after a visit to the Western Front in 1917. It is a sur- prising document. For it begins with a statement of war-aims in four paragraphs, and the first of the whole four reads as follows :
" Destruction of the German colonial system with a view to the future security of all communications. vital to the British Empire. This has already been done—an achievement of enormous value, which ought not to be endangered at the peace negotiations."
The second begins
" Tearing off from the Turkish Empire all parts that may afford Germany opportunity of expansion to the Far East and of endangering our position as an Asiatic Power."
Now this was written less than four months after the Allied Powers had sent to President Wilson what Mr. Lloyd George calls " a complete outline of the terms of settlement they meant to enforce "—an outline which contained not a word about the German colonies. General Smuts' memorandum was, of course, intended for the eyes of the War Cabinet alone. The publication now of this naked demand for the destruction of Ger- many's colonial system for the benefit of the British Empire can do singularly little good and may easily do great harm, particularly to the reputation of a statesman who sponsored as conspicuously as General Smuts did the altruistic mandates article of the League Covenant.
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