The question of the War Inquiry was raised in the
House of Lords on Monday by Lord Sandhurst, who deprecated the appointment of a roving Commission of unlimited scope and indefinite duration. The Duke of Devonshire, replying for the Government, declared that the only definite thing which up to the present had ever been said as to the character and scope of the inquiry, was that it could not be held until the con- clusion of the war. Later on Lord Salisbury stated expressly that he had never promised an inquiry. "The Government had never been in favour of it, but in the position they have held they could not, without exposing the Army to undue suspicion, refuse an inquiry if it was demanded." He went on to warn the House that the inquiry, if held, could not be an "anodyne, an impersonal inquiry." To judge from the atti- tude of both parties in the House, we should not be at all sur- prised if there were no inquiry after all. The Wolseley- Lansdowne episode is likely to prove a strong deterrent.
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