In the House of Commons on Thursday a debate on
the situation in Somaliland was raised by Mr. Charles Hobhouse, in which the Opposition attacked the Government for their mismanagement, not only military, but political. Why had they pushed so far into the interior, and why had they mis- judged the strength of the enemy ? Mr. Brodrick in reply, while defending all that had been done, both by the Foreign Office and the War Office, as necessary and inevitable, in effect announced the close of the operations. They had accomplished their chief object in turning the Mullah out of the oasis of Mudug, which was his former base, and the Government bad no intention of holding the territory which our troops had reached. Their policy was to keep the coast- line, to protect the tribes which we had undertaken to defend, to prevent the traffic in arms, and to break the power of the Mullah. The Government, however, were not going to send out another large expedition. In other words, we shall now try to withdraw from the interior. But this is easier to Ba3? than to do, and as we point out elsewhere, it would be dan- gerous in a high degree to abandon the struggle because of a defeat. We ought to have been far more circumspect in our conduct of the operations, but rashness in the past cannot unfortunately be corrected by pusillanimity in the present or future. Reviewing the incident as a whole, we can only say, though the Opposition have somewhat exaggerated the situa- tion, that it will prove difficult to persuade the British people that the problem in Somaliland has been as skilfully handled as it might have been. No doubt the Mullah deserves punish- ment, but it is not always wise policy to punish those who deserve it, and though we were bound to protect the tribes, such protection could surely have tem accomplished without operations on the scale of the present expedition.
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