TOPICS OF THE DAY.
A NATIONAL MINISTRY.
AGOOD deal of despondency and anxiety has been visible in the Press and in the public mind during the past week. This despondency has come primarily from fears of a prolongation of the war owing to the increased military strength of the enemy, due to the Russian collapse. No sane man, of course, doubts that we shall be victorious in the end, but it is only natural that the country should be dis- appointed at the thought that the struggle is likely to be protracted and become more desperate, and that still greater sacrifices will be demanded of us before ie can achieve our redemption. But beyond this natural and inevitable die- appointment-5 feeling which must not, however, be regarded as unwholesome, as it will, we believe, be the ground of higher endeavour—there is considerable anxiety and uneasiness caused by the gradual recognition of the failure of the present Government to carry out that intensive cultivation of the war which they in effect pledged themselves to carry out when they took office a year ago. Instead of a greater effi- ciency in all Departments, more quickness in action, and above all greater sternness of mood, the public sees with regret that not only is there as little method, as little power of decision, and as much delay as there was under the former regime, but that there is often apparent in the mind of the Government a rashness, a levity, and an irresponsibility of outlook which are ill-suited to the times. Such incidents as those connected with the appointment of the Air Minister have impressed the serious part of the nation most unfavourably. But even if the nation could pass over the methods of the Govern- ment in silence, it could not but notice their failure to make good in certain particulars in which it was universally hoped that there would be a vast improvement. When the Government came in we all hoped and believed that in the year immediately in front of us there would be no failure to take the firmest and strongest measures in the matter of the organization and supply of our man- power, both for the field and for the manufacture of munitions. We hoped and believed that the whole nation, men and women, would be arrayed for war, and that each of us, accord- ing to his strength and skill, would have his part assigned to hum; that the Government would call out the whole energy of the nation for the war and the national existence, and for nothing else, and would awaken that absolute devotion to duty which in the case of the British people is never appealed to in vain. Unfortunately the Government have failed us. There has been no arraying of the nation. Here a word must be said as to the most conspicuous feature of this failure. The Government, who came into office in order, as the nation believed, to pick up the pieces broken and scattered by the weakness of their predecessors, were specially beholden to make good the loss of man-power in Ireland, and to insist that, since the Irish will share the benefits that must come from the destruction of German militarism, and will be saved with us from becoming a ruined nation in a mined world, Ireland must do her part in the work of salvage, and make the sacrifices already so cheerfully and so valiantly made by England. Scotland, and Wales. To have insisted on the performance of this duty by Ireland would have given us a quarter of a million troops, and these troops would by this time have been trained and fit for the field.
Next, in the vital matter of food conservation, we all hoped and believed that long before now the nation would have been put upon the strictest rations consistent with the main- tenance of the national health, and that we should all have been told authoritatively the amount not only that we ought to eat but that we were allowed to consume without penal consequences. Thereby we should have gone some way not only to defeat the 'U -boat campaign, but also to mitigate, if not to end, the sufferings of the poor' in the matter of distribution— sufferings which, though' borne with extra- ordinary courage, patience, and good feeling, ought not to exist. The Government by failing to stop the undue con- sumption of food now practised may have put off the evil day a little, but unquestionably they have rendered that evil day when it does come, as come it must, worse than it need have been, and therefore more dangerous. If this time last year the Government had made it a legal offence to con- sume more food than was wanted for the maintenance of life, our stores of food nitkiii the country would have been far larger than they are now, and therefore our position would have been better. We do not for a moment suggest that the position.is even now in any sense desperate. It is not that. Still, a Mr. Prothero has again and again insisted in his speeches, the nation is in grave peril. As a result the nation is not now as well victualled as it ought to be, and as it might have been if the Government had not been afraid of telling the people the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and insisting on appropriate action. For example, with famine approaching and the nation in a beleaguered condition, pleasant or un- pleasant as the public recognition of the fact might be, it was surely little short of madness to go on converting cereals and sugar into beer instead of keeping them for food.
Yet another failure of the Government is to be found in their shilly-shallying and want of decisive action in the matter of shipbuilding. We have not done as much as we ought to, or as much as we could, have done in the way of beating the Germans in the shipyard. While a single slip which might have been employed is not being utilized, and while a single man who can swing a hammer or drive a bolt is being employed in a luxury trade, as unquestionably many men are at this moment, a failure must be registerect A capital example of failure is again to be found in the way in which we have allowed the spread of Boloism in this country, and still more in Ireland. Men have been allowed to write things, to say things, and to do things in the United Kingdom which would not have been tolerated for an instant in any other country in the world. For example, we have seen the amazing spectacle of Irish agitators tried and punished in America for conspiring against the British Empire, whilst in Ireland the leaders and propagators of the Sinn Fein type of Boloism have been allowed to preach and practise High Treason with absolute impunity. Even when found guilty of serious offences against the safety and welfare of the nation, Sinn Feiners have been let out of prison on the flimsiest of excuses.
But we have no desire to produce a full catalogue of the failures and disappointments. Our object is not to discredit the present Ministry or to bring about its immediate collapse if that collapse can be avoided. Weighing all the circum- stances of the hour, as we ought, we would far rather that it should survive than perish. Further, we are quite willing to admit that the intentions of the Ministry have been good all through, even in the very matters with which we have been dealing. We are willing, in fact, to make the very largest concessions to those advocates for the Govern- ment who say that Ministers could` not have done the things which we say they ought not to have left undone, for the good and sufficient reason that they were not strong enough to tackle them. "Without a united nation behind them, but instead with an angry and unhelpful Opposition on their flank, how could the Government incur the unpopularity you have asked them to incur ? "
Very likely this is the true explanation of the Government's failure. We are inclined to think it is. But if it is, it is only another proof, and perhaps the strongest proof, of what we have felt for some time past—namely, that the present Ministry must sooner or later give way to a really National Ministry, a Ministry which shall represent all the phases of the national life, and from which shall be excluded no important party which is capable of inclusion. [We mean by this reservation that you could not include the Paeificists, whose whole idea is to make peace, when the need is to make war ; or the Sinn Feiners, who openly tell us that salvation, as they understand it, ran only be obtained by a German victory and the down- fall of England." You cannot drive with one horse pulling one way, and another pulling in the opposite direction.] All other parties—i.e., all the patriotic parties—should be at the back of a National Ministry, employed, as we have just said not to make peace but to make war, until such time as a settlement which will not be merely the first act in future wars, but will be consistent with the true ideals of Freedom and Democracy, shall have been obtained.
But it will be said : "How will it be possible to establish such a Ministry, when you will have to begin by turning out the present Ministry and producing an embittered political crisis?" We have no thought of any such upheaval. The new National Ministry must have the strength to ask for the supreme sacrifices which must so soon be required from the nation. It must be able to dictate a peace which will give, not only security to the world for the future, but also Repara- tion, Restitution, and Redemption. It could not, we agree, do this if the present Ministry were to be turned into a fierce Opposition. Therefore She new National Ministry must come by widening, expanding, and developing the existing Ministry, and not by merely packing off the present holders of power to make way for their political rivals. We Arta be told that we are asking,: or the impossible. One part of the nation would under no consideration agree to an Asquith
Premiership, whilst another would refuse to see Mr. Lloyd George at-the head of a greatly strengthened Administration. "In such circumstances as these, is not the only safe thing to stick to the status quo?"
Those who express the kind of doubts and fears we have just described forget that there is an alternative not open to these objections. We can quite well form a National Ministry without either an Asquith Premiership or a Lloyd George Premiership, and yet without losing the services of
these two statesmen. In our opinion, in order to form a true National Ministry neither of them should be Prime Minister. But who is capable of heading the National Ministry ? We have made some suggestions on this point before, but we believe that the best choice of all is to be found in the Speaker, Mr. J. W. Lowther. He is, in our opinion, exactly the man to be the head of the Government in such a crisis as lies before us. Ile is a typical English- man. He is a man whom everybody trusts, and he is a man accustomed to deal impartially with both Parties in the State. No politician, however much of a partisan, would fear that under a Lowther Administration his Party was being injured, or placed in a position which would handicap it unfairly when the time for the return to ordinary Party conditions came about. The Speaker would see to it that there was no grab- bing of opportunities, no "riding jealous," no insidious use of war opportunities to improve a Party situation. Above all, he would see to it that the vast patronage at the disposal of the Prime Minister was used for national and not for sectional or personal purposes. This, however, is not the moment to enlarge upon the virtues of the Speaker. We will merely say that we are convinced that his action in regard to that thorny and difficult subject, the revolution in the Franchise, has shown his ability to handle men, and, what is even mom important, has shown the trust of the politicians in his firm- ness and good sense. To use an American expression, all Parties feel about him that he is one of the men in whose mouth you could put your finger and go to sleep without any fear of its being bitten off in the night I Again there would be no injury to the amour propre of any Minister by serving under the Speaker. At all events, although we have no right to speak for such men as our two ex-Prime Ministers, Mr. Balfour and Mr. Asquith, and our reigning Prime Minister, Mr. Lloyd George, we do not for a moment believe that any one of them, or any of their supporters, would think it derogatory for them to hold office under the Speaker in a National Ministry.
In our opinion, in the ease of a National Ministry the need for a small Cabinet would he as great as ever, and in addition there must be, as now, a smaller War Cabinet. The recon- struction of the Ministry must no doubt involve a certain number of resignations, because to obtain a National Ministry it is essential that there should be a representation, not merely of the Lloyd George Liberals, but of the Liberal Party in the wider sense. Mr. Asquith could not be asked to enters National Ministry except accompanied by a certain number of the ex-Ministers who have supported him since his relinquish- ment of the Premiership. But whilst the Liberal Party must be more strongly represented, great care must be taken that the Unionist Party, which it must never be forgotten is the strongest Party in the House of Commons, must be as worthily represented as ever. No National Ministry could be created which involved the resignations of Mr. Boner Law and the chief Unionist leaders. Once again, the essential matter is that the Ministry should represent the whole nation. The notion of leaving, as now, the whole of the old Liberal Party out is unthinkable. To put it quite plainly, that Party must be committed to the responsibilities and the sacrifices that are involved in the intensive culti- vation of the war and in the final settlements.
We have no fears as to the patriotism of the Chiefs of the Liberal Party, but as long as the Party as a whole is not committed to the responsibilities of the war there is always a danger that, from restlessness and other causes, sections of the Party may break loose and cause the appear- ance of national disunion. We need not go into details, but there are a certain number of men in the Liberal Party who, if they are not bound by the tics of office, may do a great deal of mischief.
Very possibly we are premature in thus sketching a possible National Ministry. In some ways we shall not be sorry to find that we are premature, because, as we have said before, we by no means wish to see a Ministerial crisis precipitated. We do, however, want to do two things, and want mast earnestly to
do them. The first is to lead the public to see that sooner or later, if we are to get the last ounce out of the nation--and we shall have to get it—a National Ministry must be formed. Secondly, we desire to show the nation that it nnist not let itself be misled by party talk into thinking that a National Ministry is an impossibility. In reality it is a matter, we had almost said, of easy adjustment.
A National Ministry formed on the lines that we have suggested would, we believe, not merely satisfy the nation, but would bring a sense of untold relief to a great ninny men who, intensely patriotic themselves, are made anxious and uneasy by the fact that they may sonic day be torn by a double allegiance and that Party ties may be invoked to their discomfiture. In a word, what we Want to do is to macaw nation realize that there need be no despair while it has got this great asset of a truly National Ministry ready to its hands. It .tis the sign in which it can, and we believe will, conquer.
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