TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE GOOD FIGHT.
THE events of the past few weeks have undoubtedly been the cause of a good deal of anxiety, not to say despondency. To be abandoned by an Ally, as Great Britain is now being in practice abandoned by Russia, even though one readily admits that the real heart of Russia is sound and true if only that heart could find utterance, is one of the most spirit-breaking experiences men can go through. Through- out the Alliance men are telling themselves that if Russia, with her enormous resources of humanity and wealth, had only used those resources with half the energy and practical good sense which have been displayed by Great Britain and France, and are now being displayed by the United States, the war would already have been over. It is a heart-breaking experience, again, to see Rumania, whose gallantry and faith- fulness we have all admired, suspended as it were in mid-air, and forced by circumstances to consent to an armistice against which all her inclinations protest. But when all the facts have been set forth we are inclined to say that the despondency naturally caused by great disappointments has not been so deep as it might have been. If, for instance, the British nation had shown any sign of quailing or growing stale and weary in its resolution, which it has not, the unfortu- nate letter by Lord Lansdowne—unfortunate in expression, as we believe, rather than in intention—would have been seized upon as an excuse for framing tricky and easy sophis- tries, and arguing that after all the great faith in which we began this war must be read in the light of new circumstances and adapted to the latest events. We are devoutly thankful to say that no such signs are anywhere apparent. The applause and hearty approval with which the speech of the Prime Minister at Gray's Inn was received prove this. There may have been despondency and there may have been weariness—for what people do not grow weary of war ?- but the determination to go on fighting the good fight is as strong now as it was in the first delirious days of 1914. It is an odd characteristic of Englishmen that they thrive on set- backs ; they are never more dangerous than when recovering their senses from a stunning disappointment. The Germans have yet to learn this, but they will certainly learn it.
No one could have made a speech more fitted to the moment than Mr. Lloyd George made last week. He has the real gifts of fire and persuasion and the lyrical touch. If we have a criticism to make of a speech so admirable in form, temper, and taste, it is that while we were reading it we seemed to be living life again as it was lived more than a year ago. For Mr. Lloyd George dealt once more with all those national needs which required to be satisfied when Mr. Asquith was forced from office, and which, as we understood, were to be satisfied forthwith. But the fact is, as Mr. Lloyd George told us in the speech, that the vital problems of man-power, of arraying the nation, of rearranging industrial life on a war basis, of providing more tonnage, and of ensuring greater economy in the use of food and a larger supply of food, are all problems still to be solved. We should think that thou- sands of readers must have experienced the same feeling as they read the speech. But the last thing we want to do now is to say anything ungracious, and indeed the ungracious word would be singularly misplaced, for the truth is that, if the old national needs still have to be met, one of the filet things to do is to throw people into the right attitude for a mighty effort. No speech could possibly have been better designed to do that. It is said that Mr. Lloyd George's attractive lyrical fervour is characteristically Celtic. But that criticism, though conventionally accepted as true, by no means covers the whole ground. Mr. Lloyd George has something that is much more than Celtic in his literary sense and his choice of words. It is a hard saying, and we fear rather a discouraging one, for all but the very few, but the qualities of a Chrysostom appear to be a pure gift. Such qualities cannot be acquired by assiduity and learning. Oratory which seems to flow from a natural fount is implanted in some men and not in others, just as springs appear in some lands and not in others. It may be graced and decorated by learning—as, for example, Lord Rosebery graces it—but it cannot be replaced by learning. Learning is no substitute. We may be delighted by a play of philosophic fancy, as we are in Mr. Balfour's highly cultivated speeches, or by Imperial passion assisted by wide reading, which we recognize in Lord Curzon's speeches, but we find something different in Mr. Lloyd George—a welling up of thoughts which spontaneously clothe themselves in a glowing raiment of words as they reach the surface. The supreme example, of course, of the orator who always spoke with almost superhuman felicity in his choice of words, words generally quite simple though noble and austere, was Abraham Lincoln. He learned from the book of life rather than from the printed page, though it is true that those few models of great literature which he read he pondered and studied with a most attentive and retentive mind.
What Mr. Lloyd George succeeds in making us feel aboye all is that there is a time before us which will put all our endurance to the test, but that it will be an ennobling time. There may he adversity for us, but there cannot be humilia- tion. For since the world began no man was ever humiliated by doing his utmost in the name of right. There can be, as Mr. Lloyd George said, " no security without certainty of punishment." And if Germany is allowed to feel that she has profited by a war which she deliberately procured, law and order and all the amenities and attractions of life for decent people will go by the board in international relations, just as much as they would go by the board in a State if the com- pelling and restraining hand of the law were suddenly relaxed. What a glorious cause is this to fight for through thick and thin, through good and evil report I Even though those who were once our Allies should finally fall away, not wholly through their own fault perhaps, but partly through circum- stances, partly through unpractical ideals, and partly in order to enjoy some immediate easing of their agony, yet we venture to say that there are those who will go on to the end, and the end will not be bitter but splendid.
There is no need to look further than Russia to see the result of trusting to the German rulers in their present frame of mind. They have persuaded M. Trotsky and his colleagues, who are much simpler persons than they imagine themselves to be, to agree to terms of an armistice which allow Germany to do very much as she pleases. She is permitted, for example, to transfer troops to the Western Front, and therefore to the disadvantage of Russia's Allies, if such transfer had " already begun " at the time of the signing of the armistice. But what transfer could not be said to have been " already begun in a sense that would satisfy the facile consciences of the German rulers A transfer that has been arranged on paper is, in a sense good enough for them, already begun. The trans- fer thus " begun " has only to be "carried out." We may be sure, therefore, that the Germans will make what new disposi- tions they may think fit, and will find no kind of restraint upon their movements in the terms of the armistices But we must not imagine that Germany will be able to move so many men from the East to the West as some people suppose. Probably she has been holding her Eastern line with skeleton divisions, and with very young, or fairly old, men. A more serious matter is that she will be able to move across to the West large amounts of artillery. It is being freely suggested that she will also find enormous reinforcements in the German prisoners in Russia, who will be able to return to the German Empire. We doubt very much the validity of this specula- tion. Russia is in a condition of chaos, and it seems mom likely that the German prisoners will conveniently disappear in the vortex long enough to make their service of no great use to their country. Even if they voluntarily return, these eremites who have been removed for some time from the hard discipline of their drill sergeants, and have not had their minds continually attuned to the turmoil of war, are not likely to show a moral that will satisfy the German conception of soldierlike efficiency.
We have written first of signs and portents that have accounted for the late despondency. But there is much that may be placed on the credit side. We leave out of the ques- tion the absolute supremacy of our naval power and all the advantages that flow from it—the industrial freedom of the Allies and the partial economic paralysis of Germany. These things may be taken for granted in every review of the situa- tion. We go on to minor yet very significant facts. It is impossible, for instance, to pass by the results of the Canadian General Election without expressing a word of deep admira- tion for a country which votes for the severest form of military obligation. Spontaneously the Canadian people have placed their necks under that heavy yoke. They did so because they saw that otherwise the reinforcements necessary to main- tain the Canadian force at the front could not be supplied. We cannot think of any finer declaration, made, let us re- member, by ballot—in ciroumstances in which no man could tell whether his neighbour was not secretly recanting the patriotic expressions of his outward life. It is worth noting also that the Canadian General Election was the first General Election within the Empire that has taken place on the
question of conscription. In Australia the question was referred to a Referendum, and when the Referendum went against conscription and a General Election followed, that Election was avowedly not fought on the conscription issue. Another Referendum on conscription is approaching in Australia, and it cannot be doubted that the self-sacrificing example set by Canada will have an enormous effect in the sister-Dominion. Another sign of soundness within the Empire, though different in character and in degree, is the draft Memorandum on War Aims which has been issued by the Labour Party. We do not know whether this draft will be accepted by the Conference next week, but, whether it be accepted or rejected, we can fairly say that the spirit of the Memorandum does credit to Labour in this country. The leaders of the Labour Party have put into practical words what the Russian extremists would have said if they had had any capacity for reducing their shadowy principles to terms of practical thought. We do not say that everything in the Labour 'Party's Memorandum is satisfactory. The question of Alsace-Lorraine is rather indefinitely treated. On the whole it leans to a plebiscite. Again, the ambition of Labour to help in setting up a supreme International Legislature goes far in advance of what seems practical. And in our opinion the demand that the African Colonies of the various Powers should be placed wider international control is definitely bad. Can the leaders of the Labour Party point to any example of uncivilized or semi-civilized tribes receiving fair, considerate, and stable treatment from joint rule ? It is from the point of view of the native populations that we may be allowed to regard this matter first of all ; but of course we insist never forget the desire, so strong as already to amount to a decision, of both South Africa and Australia to control the territories contiguous to their own countries. The people of these Dominions form great democracies, and it is impossible for a handful of officialshere to write off the demands of democracy in other parts of the world as not being really democratic because they do not happen to agree with them. In the main, however, as we have said, the spirit of this draft Memorandum is thoroughly sound. The tendency of it is so utterly opposed to Prussian methods and principles that it is impossible to imagine the officials of the Labour Party holding out on points which prove to be unpractical at the risk of yielding our whole cause to Germany. Further, we imagine that the bulk of working men in this country have very much more passionate ideas about the intolerableness of German methods than those held by the Labour officials, sound and practical though these generally are. When the working man freely expresses his opinion of Germany, one hears the natural man speak ; his wrath is positively demonic in force. And though we would not go further into the matter now, we may say that we suspect that if the scheme for recon- structing the whole Labour Party is realized, and the borders of the Party are greatly enlarged, the real, genuine, natural working man may be less prepared than is commonly assumed to put up with principles for ruling his life and the life of the whole world which have been framed by a few leading Labour officials drawn mostly from the middle class.
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