In connexion with China we must mention the speech which
Mr. Lloyd George made at Bradford last Saturday. It is very difficult to understand how an ex-Prime Minister could have so divested himself of all sense of responsibility as to make such mischievous statements. People of all shades of political thought, including a great many Liberals, have read his speech with dismay. Surely_ ordinary prudence, not to say ordinary fairness, ought to have prevented him from failing to distinguish between a policy of protecting innocent lives and a policy of forcible intervention in Chinese domestic affairs. He talked about " a gunboat policy " and suggested that there was a desire here for war with China. It was a cruel thing to speak so at the moment when Mr. Lampson was just arriving at Hankow to review the whole situation with an unprejudiced mind. And it came with a particularly. bad grace from the statesman who nearly and quite. unnecessarily involved us in war with Turkey over the Chanak affair.
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