In the House of Lords on Tuesday Lord Ribblesdale initiated
an interesting debate on the Government and public expenditure, in the course of which he reminded the House of the grave warning given by Lord Cromer in 1908 when he said, on the second reading of the Old-Age Pensions Bill : " The main duty of the Government is to make provision for the European conflict which will be forced upon us before many years have elapsed." Lord Ribblesdale ended by expressing a wish common to the whole nation that we could get out of this time of conflict and return to a time of commerce. " Were an inhabitant of Mars or Saturn to visit Europe now would he not say, viewing the waste of treasure and life: ' Send for a mad doctor' F " That of course is per- fectly true. The madness, however, does not apply to the Allies, unless it is mad to resist a criminal lunatic. The only madness of which the Allies have been guilty, and it was perhaps more imbecility than madness, was to refuse to take proper precautions against the outbreak of the said criminal lunatic, though tbey'were warned again and again to do so. If France, Russia, and Britain bad taken the precautions they should have taken, they would have had far less difficulty in putting the madman under restraint than they have now.
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