NATIONAL MISMANAGEMENT.
IF British people had a habit—and it is fortunate in some respects that they have not this habit—of contemplating the failures of a Government as a whole, instead of as isolated incidents met with in the course of daily newspaper reading, we are sure that they would feel extremely uneasy at the record of the present Government. In whatever direction we look we cannot discover signs of clear thought, plain leading, or methodical statesman- ship. We do not write this without warrant, for we shall attempt to prove what we say. But before we begin the attempt let us be perfectly frank with our readers, and add that we have been almost in two minds about the desirability of making any such attempt. Every one recognizes that the primary need of the moment is public confidence. Without confidence—and that of course implies trust in those who are ruling our lives—we cannot expect the full measure which we desire and mean to win of national recovery and prosperity. It may be asked : Why then write criticisms which can only have the effect of weakening or delaying the growth of confidence ? There is undoubtedly something in the question, and as a pledge that we recognize the value of that something we shall try, even though our criticisms may be strong, to avoid that kind of recrimination—only too familiar at the moment—which would create the impression that the country has cause for despair, and that it is in so bad a case that hardly any effort can save it. To create an impres- sion of that sort is wicked. We can be saved by our efforts, and we believe that we certainly shall be saved by our efforts. To tell people that their future is being muddled away but that they can do nothing to prevent it is to drive one class into 'folly and extravagance on the prin- ciple, "Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die," and another class into a determination to bring about revolution. It is precisely because we know that Great Britain can and will be saved by her efforts that it is necessary to tell the truth. At thiS point another familiar objection arises before us—namely, that there is "no alternative to the present Government." It must be admitted that for the moment there apparently is no alternative. But if the necessity of an alternative be not admitted, we shall never have the political condition,: which will produce salvation. The need generally produces the man or the system or the party. We must first under- stand and face the need. In the management of national economy, of housing, of the Irish question, of India, and of Russia the Government have persistently spoken with contradictory or faltering voices and have left the nation in a state of bewilderment. With all these subjects we must deal, but as it is impossible to tell the truth about more than one subject at a time, we shall write first about the policy of the Government in regard to Russia.
I.—RUSSIA.
Last week in the House of Commons Colonel Malone referred to a set of terms which the Russian Bolsheviks proposed for the acceptance of the Allies, and the text of those terms has since been published in various news- papers ; for example, in the Times of Monday. When we compare these new proposals from the Bolsheviks with the proposals which the, Bolsheviks conveyed to the Allies last spring through the American journalist Mr. Bullitt, we are struck by the fact that the new and the old proposals are practically identical. Throughout the greater part of both sets of terms the same language is used. There has been no change of policy for many months on the part of the Bolsheviks. It is humiliating to make a comparison between the justly detested Bol- sheviks and our own Government when the comparison must necessarily be unfavourable to ourselves, and yet facts are facts, and cannot be ignored. During the same period in which the Bolsheviks have methodically stood their ground, Mr. Lloyd George's Government have wobbled and. shilly-shallied ; they have formed exalted expect- ations from temporary military successes by the Constitu- tional Russians—transferring the credit of those successes to the account of their own policy—till all who have tried to pick their way through the fog have utterly lost their bearings and do not know now where they are. It is one of the penalties of this confusion that the Allies should be exposed to the remarkable indignity of the language with which Lenin ends his latest proposals. "The Soviet Government," he remarks, "hopes that it will not be necessary to transfer this offer (with the necessary modifi- cations) to the Central Powers." Over and over again we have pleaded for information, but in vain. It was not merely that Mr. Lloyd George withheld information. His statements positively confused the issue.
There can be little doubt now that the substance of what Mr. Bullitt said in his examination by the Foreign Relations Committee of the American Senate was true. Yet Mr. Lloyd George declared, or allowed it to be declared, that Mr. Bullitt's statements were "a tissue of lies." It is not necessary to say more of Mr. Bullitt's Ittatements than that they are worthy of consideration, for we can find nothing to say in defence of his conduct in revealing confidential documents. Nor had he any genuine griev- ance in the fact that his mission to Russia was disavowed and his scheme of a settlement "turned down." He was not a diplomatist, not a properly accredited representative of the Allies. He went to Russia as a kind of scout to spy out the land, and to see whether he could find anything useful to bring back for the guidance of the Allied Council at Paris. When an agent of this kind fails, or when his advice is ignored, he cannot fairly assert that a public affront has been put upon him, because he was never a diplomatist. Mr. Bullitt seems to us to be an excited visionary who talked as though he had really mastered the Russian problem after a visit of only a few days by applying to it the principles of extreme political dogma. Nevertheless, one can well understand his furious indignation at the language which Mr. Lloyd George thought it right to use about him. After having entertained Mr. Bullitt at breakfast and talked over the whole situation with him, Mr. Lloyd George gave the House of Commons to under- stand that he knew no more than that there had been talk about "some young American" who had been to Russia, but whose views had not been taken aeriously by President Wilson, and therefore did not matter. Whether Mr. Lloyd George was right or wrong to refuse to act on Mr. Bullitt's suggestions at the time, we cannot undertake to say definitely. What we can fairly do, and have a right to do, is to protest against the reasons which Mr. Lloyd George mentioned in his conversation with Mr. Bullitt for his inability to go on with a plan which he himself seems to have approved. He said in so many words that Unionist members of the Coalition were working up opposition to any arrangement with the Bolsheviks, that they had the support of Lord Northcliffe's news- papers, and that nobody could stand up against that sort of thing. Assuredly that was not a reason or an excuse for abandoning a policy which Mr. Lloyd George evidently deemed promising, nor was the argument one which a British Prime Minister should have employed even in a casual conversation.
Having abandoned the idea of an arrangement with the Bolsheviks, Mr. Lloyd George sanctioned the policy generally associated with the name of Mr. Churchill, and continued to hope for something to turn up. Several times when Admiral. Koltchak, General Denikin, or General Yudenitch won a success, we were encouraged to believe that the Allied policy was working out to its final justifi- cation. But the moments of illusion passed, and once more the members of the Government, so far as the public can judge, are not only without a policy but are in a state of chaos. We admit that on this point we may be wrong, and that the contradictions between Mr. Churchill and Mr. Lloyd George may have been more apparent than real. We are basing what we say merely upon the general impression made by events of the past few days. It is the duty of a Prime Minister always to be plain. In the House of Commons last week Mr. Churchill, speaking, as everybody assumed, with the sanction of the Prime Minister, said that though it had been prudent to with- draw British troops from Russia, the hopes of the Allier; must necessarily be centred on the Constitutional Russians, and that so far as possible we must continue to help Admiral Koltchak, General Denikin, and their friends. That at all events seemed clear. But Mr. Lloyd George in his speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet astonished every one by appearing to throw over Mr. Churchill, and to cast back all his hopes and thoughts to the plan which was in the air at the time of the Bullitt episode. We are not prepared to agree with the Daily Mail that what Mr. Lloyd George now proposes is "to shake hands with murder." We have been allowed to know so little of the facts that we cannot pretend to judge with any accuracy. It is possible that Mr. Lloyd George is right, for the very good reason that no other solution except an arrangement with the Bolsheviks will save the new Baltic States whose existence we are obliged to defend. In that case a very distasteful course might be necessary as the most honour- able one in the circumstances. But whether this be so or not, what are we to say of the amazing vicissitudes of policy in the process of which Mr. Lloyd George, months ago, favoured an understanding with the Bolsheviks, then abandoned it for a frivolous and unworthy reason, then spoke insultingly of the American whose ideas he had once approved, then let himself be led along a new path by Mr. Churchill, then threw over Mr. Churchill's estimate of the cost of helping the Constitutional Russians (vide the Guildhall speech), and then suddenly bolted off in another direction which brought him back to the point from which he started ? We are assuming for the moment, of course, that an agreement with the Bolsheviks was what Mr. Lloyd George really had in his mind when he spoke at the Guildhall. If he did not mean to return to the policy of Prinkipo, his references to Rut sia really meant nothing at all, or at all events nothing whatever plain or coherent.
In the debate in the House of Commons which is taking place almost at the time we write this article, it may be that Mr. Lloyd George will explain everything away and unsay what he seems to have said. But if he should back the Prinkipo or Bullitt policy, he would undoubtedly have a new fact on his side—namely, the definite announce- ment made by the Baltic States, Esthonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, that they have entered upon peace negotiations with the Bolsheviks. Mr. Lloyd George would be entitled to argue that in these circumstances it is no longer neces- sary to fight Bolshevism in order to safeguard States which are at peace with the Bolsheviks. He might also argue that Admiral Koltchak and his supporters have themselves made it very difficult for the authors of the Covenant to support them, as they have refused to recognize the inde- pendence of the ilex./ Baltic States. The plea that Russia must be "one and indivisible" indeed bears a disagreeable resemblance to the motto of the Committee of Public Safety in the French Revolution, which decided that Lyons must be razed to the ground rather than have its independence recognized. Whatever Mr. Lloyd George may say, however, cannot wipe out the extremely unfor- tunate record of our Russian policy in the past. Even if a perfectly new and explicit policy were declared for the future, every one would have the unpleasant feeling that it might be changed or abandoned like the other policies before it.
Mr. Lloyd George, largely no doubt through his mistaken and unnecessary absences from the House of Commons, has allowed Mr. Churchill and Mr. Bonar Law to say things which were verbally irreconcilable with his own state- ments. As a rule Ministers should speak officially only on behalf of their own Departments. If any deputed Minister may speak on such a vital subject as foreign policy without the Prime Minister even knowing or caring exactly what he says, all administrative work is threatened with collapse. We see before us an extremely anxious situation—men and women looking for counsel and truth and leadership ; weaee the whole nation in an excitable and unsettled state which makes simplicity and method more necessary than ever they were before. And at the head of this nation we see a statesman who is apparently incap- able of simplicity and directness, though he is a master of setting a Parliamentary scene ; one whose principal accomplishment is that he has a truly lyrical gift of speech, though even this is a danger because he can be played upon by th emotions of the moment as the music of an Aeolian harp is varied by the passing breeze.
(To be continued.)
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