MR. LLOYD GEORGE AND THE WAR.

pERHAPS the most poignant example of the Irony which watches over, and waits on, the great mutations in human affairs is the strange, the uncanny fact that if we look closely we find politicians, unconsciously, writing or speaking the clearest judgments on their own acts. It is they themselves who show us not only the ruling passion but the ruling motive, the " very pulse of the machine." Well indeed was it said: " Thine own mouth condemneth thee."

It is on this ironic foundation that Mr. Walter Roch, Member of Parliament for Pembrokeshire from 1903 to 1918, has built his very remarkable book, Mr. Lloyd George and the War. Mr. loch, with an intense clarity of expression, and what is more, with an analytical skill and persistence like that of a chemist or a mathe- matician, has traced the course of Mr. Lloyd George's actions leading up to and during the war. Mr. loch 's manner is beyond praise from the literary and historic point of view. It is a commonplace to praise historians for letting the facts speak for themselves, but too often this praise is accorded to those who have not deserved it, to those, that is, who only make a pretence of fairness and of an impartial marshalling of the evidence for the public jury while in reality they anticipate the verdict, or at any rate suggest its findings. Mr. loch really does leave the reader to form his own conclusions. To the very end of the book it would be extremely difficult for any person who knew nothing of Mr. Roch and his career to say what was his personal inclination, so entirely devoid of rhetoric, invective, insinuation, or hint in his analysis. The acts and sayings of Mr. Lloyd George are paraded before us much as a battalion is paraded for the keen-eyed inspection of a general. That this method of piling fact on fact, quotation on quotation, rather than of substituting for them theviews to which the recorder's prejudice or passion, friendship or enmity, has led him, is always or necessarily impartial we do not of course pretend. It is notoriously possible by emphasizing certain acts and sayings and by leaving out others, in fact by a diabolic selection, to give a totally unfair presentment of a case, and so to distort the subject's acts and motives. We do not think, however, that any one who knows his period—that is, who has followed public events in detail during the past five or six years—will, if he is sincere, say that Mr. Roch has been unfair in his selection, or that his narrative is coloured and misleading. For example, he has again and again refrained, we will not say from unfair emphasis, because to say that is merely to attest his honesty, but from emphasis even where it could have been used with perfect justice.

We must return to that foundation of ironic self- condemnation, unplanned and unconscious, of which we have spoken. At the end of 1915 Mr. Lloyd George used these words :- " wonder,' he said to the Holise of Commons on December 20, 1915, in speaking of the time wasted in securing an agreement with Labour, ` whether it will be too late ! " Ali ! fatal words of this war ! Too late in moving here ! Too late in arriving there ! Too late in coming to this decision ! Too late in starting with enterprises ! Too late in preparing ! In this war the footsteps of the Allied forces have been dogged by the mocking spectre of " Too late " ; and, unless we quicken our movements, damnation will fall on the sacred cause, for which so much gallant blood has flowed.' " That this was a true verdict cannot be denied for a moment. It is the absolute truth. But, strangely enough, it is truer of the man who said it than of any of his colleagues, or any other of the ruling

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men of the Empire. We were too late at every stage of the war because we were too late in our peace-time prepar- ationi, because we realized too late that Germany had formed the intention of 'rearing her world-power upon the destruction of ours, and was preparing for the deadly venture. Mr. Lloyd George, in spite of all his patriotism—we admit it to the full—in spite of all his activity of mind, his power of persuasion, his instinct for leadership snd for controlling and directing the course of public opinion, did more than. any other public man to keep us from realizing till it was too late the true bearing of events. He might have opened our eyes, he might have led us to safety. Instead, though of course quite unconsciously and with the besnntentions, he bade us close our eyes. He chloroformed us with his marvellous gift of rhetoric, he misled us into thinking the path we were treading was the path of security. In short, he never mentioned the words " Too Late till it was too late. We are not speaking without book, and we are not saying anything that we have not said again and again during the last six years.

On New Year's Day, 1914, Mr. Lloyd George " allowed to be published " in the Daily Chronicle a statement which we will present partly in Mr. Roch's very fair summary and partly by actual' quotation :— "This ' conversation ' began by Mr. Lloyd George telling his interviewer that if our national military expenditure had re- mained at the figure which in 1887 Lord Randolph Churchill had regarded ' as being bloated and profligate,' there would have been a saving equivalent to four shillings in the pound in local rates, or, reckoning the saving in terms of imperial taxes,

the whole of the duties on tea, sugar, coffee, and cocoa would have been swept away and the income tax reduced to twopence in the pound.' Passing from these alluring possibilities, he proceeded to give three reasons why he thought that the present was the most favourable moment for twenty years ' which had presented itself for overhauling our expenditure in arma- ments :

`First That our relations with Germany were infinitely more friendly then than they had been for years.

Second. That Continental nations were directing their energies more and more to the strengthening of their land forces. . . .

The German Army was vital, not merely to the existence of the German Empire, but to the very life and independence of the nation itself, surrounded, as Germany is, by other nations, each of which possesses armies as powerful as her own. We forget that, while we insist upon a 60 per cent. superiority (so far as our naval strength is concerned) over Germany, being essential to guarantee the integrity of our own shores--Germany herself has nothing like that superiority over France alone, and she has, of course, in addition, to reckon with Russia on her eastern frontier. Germany has nothing which approximates to a Two-Power Standard. She has, therefore, become alarmed by recent events, and is spending huge sums of money on the expansion of her military resources.'

Having regard to this :

' He felt convinced that., even if Germany ever had any idea of challenging our supremacy at sea, the exigencies of the military situation must, necessarily, put it completely out of her head.'

Under these circumstances, it seemed to him that we could afford, just quietly, to maintain the superiority wo possessed at present, without making feverish efforts to increase it any further. The Navy was then, according to all impartial testi- mony, at the height of its efficiency. If we maintained that standard no one could complain, but if we went on spending and swelling its strength we would wantonly provoke other nations.

' Thirdly. The third reason was the most hopeful of all. It was the spread of the revolt against military oppression throughout the whole of Christendom, certainly throughout the whole of Western Europe. Events in France and Germany had shown the same temper among the people of those lands as was manifested at the meeting of the National Liberal Federa. tion at Leeds.'

The interview closed with the exhortation that the present. ' was a propitious moment for reconsidering the question of armaments, and, unless Liberalism seized the opportunity, it would be false to its noblest. traditions, and those who had the conscience of Liberalism in their charge would be written down for all time as having grossly betrayed their trust.' "

It is interesting to note that, as Mr. Roch points out, Mr. MacCallurn Scott, the well-informed biographer of Mr. Churchill, tells us in his sketch of Winston Churchill in Peace and War that at this time—the period in which Mr. Winston Churchill was trying to keep naval preparation well to the front, i.e., in the years immediately preceding the war—Mr. Winston Churchill's " principal opponent '.' in the Cabinet was Mr. Lloyd George, " a view," adds Mr. Roch, " for which there is ample evidence.". Unless then it is not too late to prepare for war after war is declared, Mr. Lloyd George comes directly under the terrible con- demnation which in 1915 he himself launched at all those who were " Too Late."

But, as Mr. Roch shows, Mr. Lloyd George's lateness did not end here. So thoroughly had he anaesthetized himself as well as the country with the rhetoric of inter- national amiability that in the first days of the conflict Mr. Lloyd George was all for peace. He did not till it was almost too late see the necessity for springing to arms, and for declaring without the loss of a moment that we would not only stand by Belgium but stand by the two Powers, France and Russia, which had been selected to bear the first brunt of the German onset.

It is quite possible that if, the moment Austria threatened Serbia with the destruction which the great Slavonic Empire of Russia could not possibly see unmoved meted out to her, we had instantly warned Germany that if war took place we should immediately come to the aid of France and Russia, the German Emperor would not-have dared to provoke the contest. He ran what he knew was a great risk largely because his counsellors told him that there was a chance, and perhaps even more than a chance, of keeping Britain neutral. Of this point Mr. Roch writes as follows :— "There are some facts with regard to this incident which are still obscure and even conflicting. On Monday, August 3, the German Ambassador sent a communication to the Press, which was published in the Manchester Guardian and the Westminster Gazette, to the effect that if England remained neutral, Germany would give up all naval operations on the French coast. It would seem that this undertaking was considered favourably by Mr. Lloyd George and the ' non-interventionists ' in the Cabinet as a formula, under which our intervention might be avoided. For in the interview published in Pearson's Magazine to which we have already referred, Mr. Lloyd George told his interviewer : ` But this I know is true—after the guarantee given that the German Fleet would not attack the coast of France, or annex any French territory, I would not have been a party to a declaration of war, had Belgium not been invaded ; and I think I can say the same thing for most, if not all, my colleagues.' " We may remark here that events have shown that Mr. Lloyd George was going much too far when he said that most if not all of his colleagues would not fulfil the nation's obligation of honour, though not of Treaty or of contract, to stand by France. Sir Edward Grey certainly was not one of those who took the view—No invasion of Belgium, no armed opposition to the German policy. Again, Mr. Asquith and Lord Haldane did not take that view. Nor, pre- sumably, did Mr. Winston Churchill or Lord Crewe. No doubt the invasion of Belgium united every one in the Cabinet except Lord Morley and Mr. Burns, but from the very first there was a large party, if not the strongest party, in the Cabinet for standing by France, partly because of our moral, if not verbal, pledges, and partly because the true view of our own safety bade us not share the fate of thoSe who are taken in detail. In fine, Mr. Lloyd George was too late in realizing that when Germany declared war on France and Russia there was neither honour nor safety for us except in going to the aid of those who later became out Allies. Mr. Lloyd George himself admitted, though not in so many words, that we were bound to be too late, in the interview in Pearson's Magazine in March, 1915, referred to above :— " On Saturday [i.e., the Saturday before we went to war] . a poll of the electors would have shown 93 per cent. against embroiling this country in hostilities.' By the following Tuesday a transformation had been effected, inasmuch as on that day a poll would have resulted in a vote of 99 per cent. in favour of war ; and' the City interests which lmew that our participation in a great European war would mean heavy loss and might bring ruin on them, and were, therefore, on Saturday morning unanimously opposed to war, by Tuesday were quite as unani- mously in favour of it.' What had happened ? ' asked Mr. Lloyd George, ' in the meantime ? ' . . . The revolution in public sentiment was attributable entirely to an attack made by Germany on a small and unprotected country which had done her no wrong ; and what Britain was not prepared to do for interests political and commercial, she readily risked to help the weak and the helpless. . . . 'If Germany had been wise,' he concluded, !site would not have sot foot on Belgian soil. The Liberal Government then would not have intervened. Germany made a grave mistake.' " Mr. Roch affords us yet another example. of Mr. Lloyd George's self-condemnation. After showing how Mr. Lloyd George was the leader of the anti-war or Pacificist party up till war broke out, he quotes Mr. Lloyd George's own apologia for that attitude ‘, Germany [he then told the House of Commons] had been preparing for years. . . . She had been piling up materials. • Until she was ready she was on the best terms with every one. We all recollect the great Balkan crisis. Nothing could have been friendlier than the attitude of Germany. Nothing could have been more retiring, more modest, or more unpretentious. It was always after you.' She did not want to push herself to the front at all. She had a benevolent smile for France. She treated Russia as a friend and a brother. She smoothed . down all the susceptibilities of Austria. She walked arm-in- arm with Great Britain through the Chancelleries of Europe, and we really thought that, at last, the era of peace and good- will had-dawned. At that moment she was forging and hiding .up immense accumulations of war stores to take her neighbours unawaresh and murder them in their sleep."

Who could deny that Mr. Lloyd George deserves high praise for such a confession ? He had the wisdom and the intel- lectual honesty to admit his fault in the fullest possible way. Of course we are certain that Mr. Lloyd George's pre-war blindness was as honest as the declaration we have just quoted, but again how terrible is the implication of the " Too Late " condemnation. And Mr. Lloyd George must not drag us all down in this condemnation. Practically the whole Unionist Party—and that was half the nation, if we leave out the anti-British part of Ireland, which was admittedly pro-German—was fully aware that the era of peace and goodwill had not dawned, but, on the contrary, that we were in the darkening hush which pre- cedes the tornado. The Unionists saw that Germany was storing and hiding immense accumulations of war stores, and that her intention was to " take her neighbours unawares, and murder them in their sleep." As our readers will remember, the Spectator again and again warned the nation—and of course here we were only one voice among thousands saying the same thing —that German battleships were built not as excursion steamers, but for the one and only purpose of fighting and with- standing British battleships, and that Germany's vast military preparations were not for defence but for offence —the cash to be paid at the counter of Fate for the Empire of the World.

Mr. Lloyd George is the greatest of all offenders under the indictment of " Too Late." If we may use a Hibernianisin, he began to be too late earlier than any other statesman. It is curious, too, to note that even in the matters in which one would have thought it would have been impossible for him to be too late, he still managed to achieve it. The demon which he had denounced with such passion and sincerity seemed to dog his footsteps throughout. If we look at the story of Mr. Lloyd George's strategical schemes during the war, we shall find that they were almost always too late, though in this case we must admit that it is fortunate that they were. If we had been extreme Easterners, men with views as to the war like those against which Sir William Robertson and Lord Haig fought so consistently, we should be compelled to say that Mr. Lloyd George was too late. He, it appears, was always an Easterner, but he did not push his Eastern views hard enough or soon enough. Indeed, according to General Callwell, his most important decison in favour of the Eastera view was adopted so late that had it prevailed it would have been in operation at the very moment when the Germans were at the height of their Western onset. If we are to judge from the very plain hints in General Callwell's candid article published in Blackwood last winter, Mr. Lloyd George had determined to move some quarter of a million men from the Western Front to Abxandretta, as a kind of loan. The said troops were to have been sent out in O3tober, 1917, and brought back by March, 1918. Fortunately Mr. Lloyd George was too late. Take again the ques- tion of Irish Conscription. Mr. Lloyd. George's friends and defenders tell us that he was perfectly sincere in his determination to apply Conscription to Ireland. At any rate, he was too late, for by the time he was ready to apply the law which might have altered the whole situation in Ireland, and changed the fortunes of that unhappy island for the good, the position had hardened so much that the War Cabinet had a fair excuse for holding that it was too late to carry out the Act by force. We might" give other examples of " Too Late " in Mr. Lloyd George's recent handling of foreign and of home affairs. We will only quote one. We ourselves have felt very strongly, as we believe have the bulk of Englishmen, the importance of bringing the ex-Emperor William to justice for the evil deeds which he committed or allowed to be committed, and which he could quite easily have prevented. Who can doubt, however, that " Too Late " must now be applied to Mr. Lloyd George's effort to redeem his election pledges ? It is not, we arc glad to say, too late to put on record a condemnation of the ex-Kaiser, but unfortunately it is too late to bring him in person to trial. The first official act of the League of Nations could hardly be to coerce Holland by an appeal to arms !