The balance of the speech would have been quite perfect
if General Smuts had also said something about the blame that rightly attaches to Germany for her reckless and unscrupulous financial policy in the period before she entirely lost control of her affairs, and for her failure to make it clear to the world long before she did that she honestly meant to pay all the reparations within her power. However, this missing part of the speech was, we think, implied. The great thing is that a speech has been made, splendid in its outlook mad in its sweep of right feeling, amid that this speech has come from a representative of one of the great Dominions. When we have said this a certain humiliation overtakes us. Week after week we have watched in vain for the word that sets hearty on fire and redoubles determination to conic from One of our own statesmen. Instead of that, misunderstanding has followed misunderstanding in an atmosphere of painful silence, and the world has been in danger of attributing to the British Government either indifference or au inclination to look for an opportunity to snatch material advantage out of the general drift of events—both of which things are, we know, absolutely non-existent in the mind of the Prime Minister or of any other member of the Government.
