Probably no Prime Minister of modern times has come near
Lord Beaconsfield in successfully misleading the people he is supposed to guide. Within about three months he has made two speeches to the City of London. On August 6th he said this :—" It was to the City of London that I first announced the determination of her Majesty's Government to secure for our Indian Empire an adequate and scientific frontier. I now have the gratification of reminding the City of London that that object has been accomplished and achieved, with a precision of plan and a rapidity of execution not easily equalled in the annals of statesmanship and war," Within exactly a month, on September 6th, the City .learned that Sir Louis Cavagnari and his escort had been massacred, and that Afghanistan must be recouquered, if it were to be held at all. On November 10th, Lord Beaconsfield again addressed the City, in the Guildhall, and again referred to his promise in the previous year of a scientific frontier ; and these were his words:— "My Lord Mayor, when I had the honour of addressing your predecessor, I informed him that her Majesty's Government
were contemplating large military operations in Central Asia, with the object of strengthening and securing the North- Western frontier of our Indian Empire. These operations have been conducted with signal success. We have strengthened and secured our North-Western frontier. We have asserted our supremacy in Central Asia, and the general result of our operations will be, I hope, to establish tranquillity in these regions and increase the welfare of their inhabitants." Again, a month, elapses, and on December 11th we learn that General Roberts is besieged in Shirpore, that the hostile Afghans are swarming round every post we hold in Afghanistan, that the " scientific frontier" has turned out a deadly peril, and that nothing so little like " tranquillity " has ever been known even in those regions of perpetual civil war. Surely no Prime Minister in Europe can pretend to compete with Lord Beaconsfield in the boast that the object of misleading a great people has been, to use his own classical English, " accomplished and achieved with a precision of plan and a rapidity of execution not easily equalled in the annals of statesmanship,"—and oratory.
