The question as to the reference to the Versailles War
Council, and as to the number of white troops in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Palestine, would seem to be capable of simple proof or disproof, but the words in which the Prime Minister framed his answer
POSTAGE APROAD D. about the numbers of the British Army on the Western Front are more complicated. As Sir Frederick Maurice says, the present great German offensive began on March 21st, and what we really want to know is whether the numbers of the Army had been diminished by that date. The comparison between January list, 1917, and January 1st, 1918, does not help Us. And yet if the Prime Minister did not mean his words to refer to the strength of the Army at the beginning of the present German offensive, they had no application of any value to the question put to him, and very little meaning at all except an evasive one.
