TOPICS OF THE DAY.
GRAVITY AND GOVERNMENT. THE outstanding lesson of the last six months, the period during which Mr. Lloyd George's Administration has been in power, is that gravity, weight, and a due sense not only of responsibility but of dignity and solidity arc absolutely necessary in the government of a great Empire at a great crisis. That the present Government have done well in certain matters, and especially well on the neaative side, there can be no question. They have not interfered with military policy, and they have been conspicuously successful in supply- ing the financial sinews of war. They have also shown a com- mendable alertness and activity, and, what is perhaps best of all, a high spirit. They have refused to be depressed, or to allow the nation to. be depres.sed, by difficulties or by the " enemy " bluff. But after we have made all allowance for their good qualities and good intentions, we are bound to say that there has been a certain levity—we do not of course use the word in the popular sense of frivolity, but as the opposite of weight and steadiness—a certain irresponsibility, a certain fuss, hurry, and confusion in all their doings. They have laid themselves open to the charge of raising every sort of problem but of solving none, of applying emollients and counter-irritants either mixed or laid on alternately ;—here a soothing-syrup and there a mustard-plaster, here a poultice and there a cautery, here a styptic and there an application of leeches. It is, if you will, a well-meant, clever, passionate, eager clinic, but at the same time a mighty maze and quite without a plan—or if not quite without one, there is such an infusion and suffusion of plans that the original scheme has been lost, strayed, or mislaid in the jungle of new inventions which is alwa.)-s springing up.
" Subtle aims that never hit, Vivacity that is not wit; Schemes laid this hour, the next forsaken, Advice oft asked but never taken."
That is a caricature, but caricatures, even when as unjust as this one, often throw light upon the inner man. So far as they are true, the lines indicate the defects of the qualities which we praise in Mr. Lloyd George—his rapidity of action, his determination, his patriotic fervour, his energy, his resolve never to rest as long as there is anything that can be done to further his country's cause. We admit this plea in arrest of judgment. You cannot have the incom- parable gifts of dash and vigour without payina k'price for them. Further, so greatly do we value these qualities that, though we did not desire to see the old Coalition Government upset, and deprecated very strongly the manner in which it was brought to the ground, we were willing, when Mr. Lloyd George achieved power, to support him and his Government, and to encourage the nation in giving him every chance to do his work. But to speak frankly, one of the chief considerations that induced us to take this line, in spite of certain strong mis- givings in regard to Mr. Lloyd George's levity, flightiness, and general lack of gravity, was that we were told that the new plan of a supreme War Cabinet would provide exactly the check upon his political defects which is required at a time of national crisis. Mr. Lloyd George was to develop the neces- sary engine-power, and his colleagues of the War Cabinet were to be the controls which were to direct that energy into its rightful channels, to steady it where necessary, and to apply it at the right time and at the right place. More cynical people said that it was the old story of the wild elephant between two tame and experienced elephants (Lord Curzon and Lord Milner). They were. to keep their gay and headstrong colleague to his task, and to see that he did not fling the logs about too wildly or diverge too widely from the path in coming from, or going to, his work. We are bound to say that the part of the scheme which so much attracted us, and we believe won for the Government the support of a large section of the serious men of the nation, has proved a failure. We see little signs of the controls being at work. The wild elephant is out on his own, and the tame elephants are standing helplessly by, or else trotting painfully miles behind him while he goes tearing and trumpeting through the forest.
The War Cabinet has introduced no element of gravity into the Government. At the moment levity rules unrestrained in the councils of the nation-. We might pile up examples of what we mean when we say this, but we shall only take one or two. In the first place, there are the confusion and administrative friction produced by that secretarial. system called, in the slang of Whitehall, "the Kindergarten," which it was hoped—we were among the strongest hopers—would do so much to strengthen and clarify the Prime Minister's executive actions. Next, there are the muddles connected with the new offices. We are not going to say anything about Mr. Neville Chamberlain's scheme, because its " producer "—he was not its author—has met with a mixture of ill-luck and unfairness of treatment which has been grossly unjust. We take rather the Food Con- troller's Department. There, if anywhere, quietness, con- fidence, and steadiness were the requisite qualities. It is always dangerous to touch the food of the people. When it is necessary to do so, as it is now, the first thing is not to encourage unrest by uncertainty and instability of action, but to speak plain truths and steer a consistent course ; not to avoid asking people to make sacrifices, but to be sure when you have asked them that they were the right sacrifices, and that you can, and ought to, maintain them. Gravity is this department of administration was an essential. Yet levity has been written all over the Government's dealings with food. Take next the case of appointments to offices of prime importance. Here again levity has ruled supreme. We only quote one instance—the appointment of Lord Northcliffe. We are not going to say a word against the abilities of the person appointed. Now that he has been made Mr. Balfour's " successor "—the definition is Lord Northcliffe's own—we sincerely hope that Lord Northcliffe'a well-known admira- tion for America and powers of work will enable him to do good service for the State. He has many qualities which should make for success. He must, then, receive all the support his countrymen can give him. What we object to is the amazing levity in the manner in which the appointment was made. It is one in the region of Foreign Affairs ; that is, in the Department of Mr. Balfour. But the Government apparently did not wait for Mr. Balfour to come home, though such waiting would only have delayed the appointment by four or five days. The argument for a little delay is not merely a courtesy argument, and because the appointment lay in the region covered by Mr. Balfour's Department. The essential reason for waiting was the fact that Mr. Balfour had, for the particular purposes of the appointment, become the greatest expert who could possibly have been consulted. Mr. Balfour, with conspicuous success, had been spending six weeks in America in the closest and most friendly intimacy with the President, the Secretary of State, and all the ruling men. He had got to know them at close quarters. He, if any man, could give a sound opinion as to the qualities requirei by his successor. Surely it would have been worth while to put the question : " In view of all you have seen and heard in America, do you think that Lord Northcliffe's appoint- ment would be one that would be wise and useful at the present moment ? " For all we know, Mr. Balfour would have replied that the appointment was an excellent one. In that case there is no more to be said. Again, it may be that Mr. Balfour's agreement was secured by cable. But even if that is so, would it not have been a great public advantage for Mr. Balfour and Lord Northcliffe to have met ?
As a final example of levity take Mr. Lloyd George's well- meant address to the Commissioners on Labour Unrest. A great deal of the speech was excellent, stimulating, inspiring in a high degree, but what malignant power induced him to take up a senseless word of invective like " profiteering " And use it to inflame public opinion, to produce a sense that there are people in thousands out to do a great wrong and to starve and torture the working classes ? If Mr.. Lloyd George used a catchpenny, rhetorical, question-begging word like " profiteering," he ought to have defined it, but we can trace no helpful definition in his speech. If " profiteering " merely means the raising of prices—for example, the doubling of the price of the Daily Mail or the Times—it may be the most perfectly innocent and legiti- mate thing in the world. Again, take the raising of 'the remuneration of labour in which we all rejoice. Is the fact that such remuneration has sometimes increased by three hundred per cent. an act of " profiteering " on the part of the labourer or is it not ?—and if not, why not ? Statesmen have no right to use words like " profiteering " unless they tell us what they mean by them.
We do not want, however, to scold but to suggest a remedy. In the first place, let us say quite plainly that the remedy we want is not the remedy of a change of Ministry. That, in our opinion, would be a great evil. Mr. Lloyd George and his Cabinet, if it is humanly possible, must remain in office and finish the war. But though we do not want to see the present Ministry fall to pieces or its head dethroned, those who are re- sponsible for Mr. Lloyd George and his continuance in power —that is, those who command the majority of votes in the House of Commons : i.e., the leader of the Unionist Party, the leaders of the Labour Party, and the leader of that motion of the Liberal Party which supports Mr. Lloyd George— must see to it that the levity of which we have spoken is restrained, and that Mr. Lloyd George's energies are kept in their proper channels. They can do it quite well through the War Cabinet. They are there to do it, and the nation expects them to do it. Lord Curzon, Lord Milner, Mr. Bonar Law, and the representative of Labour in the War Cabinet must exorcise the restraining influence which they were in effect put there to exercise. If they do not, we shall run great risks of disaster, and disaster for which the country will hold the whole War Cabinet personally responsible.
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