NEWS OF THE WEEK.

pARMAMENT reassembled on Wednesday, and it instantly became clear that the House of Commons was alert for information and satisfaction on a variety of questions. First and foremost among these, of course, is the urgent necessity of economy—which problem indeed embodies all the others. For this reason, the pertinent questions which were urged upon the Government about our Russian policy and military expenditure may be regarded as all part of the 'same peat problem. We must note at once that the Government are in a stronger position than when Parliament adjourned for the recess, and that Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Bonar Law seemed to be quite conscious of that access of strength.

It may appear paradoxical to say so, but the combativeness of the Government's critics was in itself a sign that they also recognized this fact. The truth is that the present House of Commons does not in the least want a dissolution, and if the Government had seemed to be tottering on the brink of one a little more tenderness would have been shown. For the access of strength which the Government enjoy we have entirely to thank Labour. By the wild policy of Direct Action, which, though it is going very slow at present, was persisted in long enough to do a great deal of mischief, and by the wholly unnecessary railway strike, Labour—or at all events the considerable part of it which was responsible—rallied all the forces of caution and sanity to the side of the Government. That is the present position. Labour achieved the exact contrary of the results at which it aimed.

Before the Prime Minister entered the House on Wednesday —for he generally arrives late when he comes at all—Mr. Godfrey Locker Lampson expressed the feelings of a large part of the House when he protested against Mr. Lloyd George's absence. We all know and understand the reasons for Mr. Lloyd George's rare attendance at the House of Commons during the war and during the Peace Conference. He carried burdens enough to break the strength of any man. Allowances must be made for that. But when all allowances have been made, it must be recognized that we are now in a state of peace, and that the great obligations of governing the country at present are not sufficient to excuse the Prime Minister's absence from the House. If he continues habitually to be absent, it will mean that our ancient system of representative government, of the direct responsibility of the House of Commons

to the nation, has broken down. There is no prospect that the difficulties of government will be smoothed away, or that the variety of responsibilities will become less onerous, for some years. If Mr. Lloyd George continues to shun the House of Commons on the ground of being busy elsewhere, a precedent will be established, and no one can say whither it may lead.

In our opinion, Mr. Lloyd George's practice of sequestering himself in the War Cabinet so that he was not accessible to the House of Commons was a mistake even in war time. The " businesslike smallneSs " of the War Cabinet was in most ways an illusion. The War Cabinet could decide nothing without consulting the dependants upon whom authority had been theoretically devolved, and as a result the meetings of the War Cabinet, so far as we understand, were often as crowded as the meetings of the old over-sized Cabinet. The true solution is the grouping of cognate Departments under a limited number of Cabinet Ministers, who shall attend the House of Commons regularly, the Prime Minister himself included.

As regards the all-important question of finance, it was arranged that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should lay papers on the table next Monday showing revised Estimates, and it was also of course, agreed that there should be an early opportunity for debate. Meanwhile Mr. Chamberlain stated that the national balance-sheet for the six months ending September 30th was as follows :

Daly expenditure £4,225,000 Daily income £2,508,000 Daily deficit £1,717,000

The Government definitely announced that there was no idea of introducing a second Budget this year.

Mr. Churchill stated that the Army expenditure next year is expected to be about 88 millions ; that is to say, one-fifth of the Ai my expenditure of 410 millions for the current year. Mr. Churchill also said that the troops in Ireland now numbered 55,000, and were maintained at a cost of £210,000 a week. In this connexion we cannot too strongly condemn the deliberate disingenuousness of the argument of some of the news. papers which have recently been converted to Home Rule that this expenditure is to be reckoned in the long catalogue of " pure waste." The argument of course is used to support the alleged necessity of a fresh Irish settlement, but it is impudently irrelevant, because if those who use the argument were closely questioned, they would no doubt admit—at least we give them the credit of believing this—that whatever settlement may be in prospect for Ireland, it will always be necessary to keep order. On the very same day on which such arguments were being written Lord French described how difficult it was to carry on government at all in Ireland in spite of the support of the troops and the wonderful Irish constabulary. Moreover, it must he remembered that such troops as have to be maintained are kept more cheaply in Ireand than anywhere else.

While writing of economy, we may draw attention to a letter by Mr. Geoffrey Drage which was published in the Times of Thursday week, and to which we had not space to refer last week. In supporting the proposal of the Times that a Royal Commission should be appointed to inquire into the condition of national finance, Mr. Drage recalled the fact that the Poor Law Commissioners of 1832 were given executive powers. He therefore proposed that a Royal Commission on National Finance should be appointed now, and should also have executive powers. We doubt the possibility, not to say the desirability, of doing such a thing, as the nation has travelled far in the arts of representative government since 1832. To give a Royal Commission executive powers would be to substitute a Royal Commission for the Government.

At the same time we cannot too strongly support the motive which is working in Mr. Drage's brain. He is a most accomplished statistician, and has a real grasp of the whole problem of economy. He understands that nothing but very drastio methods will save the country. We have ourselves proposed that there should be, so to speak, a Government of Trustees taking office with the sole purpose of overhauling the finances of the country, just as a •body of trustees administer a shaky estate. Unhappily it is almost impossible to get a Government elected on a single issue. And even if this were possible, a General Election has been pushed further into the distance by the renewed strength of the Government We have written elsewhere on the whole matter of national economy, but we would like to suggest here that the present Government, though they cannot delegate their powers, might appoint an exceptionally strong advisory body.

The idea would be that this body, appointed ad hoc, should be as much a body of experts as the Admiralty are experts about the Navy and the War Office about the Army. No Government likes unpopularity—some Governments dislike it more than anything in the world—and it is certain that the financial economies which will save the nation will have to handle most severely many persons and many interests. But if the Government were to inform the nation in advance that financial brutality was absolutely necessary, that they had chosen the greatest experts they could discover to invent methods of making the country solvent, and that they intended to act on their experts' recommendations, they would at all events be earning unpopularity at one remove. Besides, would not the reputation the Government would earn for honesty and strength be a sufficient set-off against the dislike they would earn from those who were injured ?

This is truly a matter for experts. Few people understand our national expenditure, and one is almost tempted to say that it is not meant to be understood. The Treasury has never recovered its lost powers of control, and, as Mr. Drage has pointed out in his letter, it has taken six and a half years to obtain a complete return of so comparatively simple a thing as the expenditure classified as " Public Assistance." Even now the return agreed to last Session will not separate administrative from other expenditure.

The Prime Minister visited Sheffield last week to receive the freedom of the city and to deliver several speeches. On the Thursday, at the Cutlers' Feast, he emphasized the prime necessity of greater production. The standard of living had risen, as well as the Debt and the taxes, and the only way to maintain it was by producing more than ever before. The world's demand for manufactures was unlimited, as all stocks had been exhausted during the war. We could meet the demand if we had peace abroad and peace at home. If Germany observed the Peace terms, we must give her a fair chance to lead a decent existence. We could not expect the great convulsion to subside immediately. " Earthquakes do not pass away with the signature of a fountain-pen." But peace was coming even in the most disturbed areas. At home Capital and Labour must learn to co-operate. " Capital must have confidence that its enterprise will be fairly remunerated." Labour must feel confident that it will share the reward of prosperity, though no section of Labour could be allowed to " hold all industry up because it cannot get its own way in one subject on which it has set its heart."

The Prime Minister went on to say that the less the Government interfered in Labour disputes, the better it would be. We cannot help wishing that he himself had practised in the past what he now preaches. He added that the Government could do much to help industry and agriculture by improving the transport services, and by developing electric power and also water power. Man power was essential to industry as well as to war. Therefore the Government must do more for public, health and for education.

The need for economy was the burden of the Prime Minister's speech on Friday week. Greater thrift, he said, was the necessary complement of greater production. The Government had to set an example, but everybody must follow it. He hoped that the House of Commons would examine public expenditure in a sober and practical fashion. During the war there was not time to consider whether every pound was wisely spent. The

permanent expenditure was largely irreducible. It was useless to expect that we should ever return to the days of a low Income Tax. The Debt charge of £400,000,000 must be paid. The Navy, Army, and Air Force, even on a, peace footing, would cost much more than before the war. Any attempt to cut down the Education Vote would be as uneconomical as a, farmer's refusal to use fertilizers for his crop. The rates had risen because teachers, policemen, and other municipal employees were, very properly, paid more, in consideration of the higher cost of living. Normal and permanent expenditure of these kinds must remain far higher than it was in 1914.

Coming to the temporary expenditure required for the transition from war to peace, the Prime Minister declared that the bread subsidy must disappear soon, that the coal subsidy had gone, and that the railway subsidy must be ended through an increase in the railway rates. The Navy and Army were mainly responsible for the abnormally high expenditure. But fleets and armies had to remain on duty until peace was secured and the terms carried out. If on the signing of the Armistice the soldiers had gone home, we should not have gained a favourable peace. It would have been folly to imperil the results of a costly war for the sake of saving even hundreds of millions. The delay was due to the question of Turkey, which could not be settled until it was known whether America would share in the burdens of civilization. Great Britain could not undertake all the responsibility for Turkey, as we were getting to the limit of our strength, nor could France do much more. The Prime Minister hoped that the appeal of Turkey's oppressed peoples to America would not be in vain. In spite of this delay, the Government had released four millions of men, and hoped by the end of the year to have demobilized ninety-eight per cent. of the conscripts. He concluded by whimsically reminding his critics of the notice to carters : " Please slacken the reins in going uphill." A Prime Minister in these anxious days might wish, he said, to be treated as humanely as a horse.

Mr. Asquith, speaking at Westminster on Tuesday, said that the Government had led us into a financial morass. Expenditure depended on policy. He asked for more light on the Russian policy, which had, he thought, cost us a hundred millions since the Armistice. It was for the Russians to decide on their internal and domestic affairs. He did not like Bolshevism, but he did not know what was to be substituted for it. As for revenue, the country was not poor, and new sources of taxation must be found. We had to choose between a definite increase of the Income Tax and " some form of charge on the realized or realizable wealth." The possibility of a capital levy should be examined. He would not, however, approve of confiscation or of any breach of faith with the nation's creditors. Nationalization was an ambiguous term. He was not prepared " to submit the daily details of the infinitely intricate and complicated working of a great domestic expert industry to the handling of a set of Government officials."

In the by-election in the Rusholme division of Manchester, held just after the railway strike ended, the Unionist candidate, Captain Thorpe, retained the seat for the Coalition, polling 9,394 votes. The Labour candidate stood second with 6,412 votes. The Asquithian Liberal, Mr. Pringle, was a bad third with 3,923 votes, and a National Party candidate came last with 813 votes. The significant feature of the result was the. Liberal's failure to add more than two hundred votes to the Liberal poll at the General Election, though the Labour poll was doubled. When the contest began, Mr. Pringle and the Manchester Liberals showed great resentment at the appearance of a Labour candidate, and suggested that he should retire. It is now clear that that was a case of the Liberal tail trying to wag the Labour dog. Mr. Pringle was tempted to outbid the Socialists for the favour of the Rusholme electors, but he probably alienated many sane Liberals by such tactics. The Daily News in its disappointment was driven to suggest tentatively a Liberal-Labour coalition, but Sir Donald Maclean, the Liberal leader in the House, has set his face against the confiscatory projects in which the Socialists would vainly seek a remedy for our troubles.

The ironfounders' strike was not ended, as we hoped, by the agreement which their leaders made with the employers. The members of the leading Union rejected the terms on a ballot, and remain on strike. As the engineering industry is largely dependent on the castings produced by the ironfounders, a strike of some thirty or forty thousand men may throw a far greater number out of work. The dispute arose out of a refusal to accept the award of the Court of Arbitration or to apply again to the Court. It is to be regretted that a Union led by Mr. Henderson should set so bad an example, for all save three of the Engineering Unions were content to abide by the decision, while asking that it might be reconsidered.

The gravity of the peril which the British Mercantile Marine survived is• shown by a White Paper giving full details of the damage done by enemy warships during the war. In all, 2,479 merchant ships, with a total tonnage of 7,759,090, were sunk, and with them 14,287 lives were lost. In the worst month, April, 1917, 169 ships, of 545,282 tons in all, were sent to the bottom. Fortunately the U'-boats were gradually checked and mastered in the succeeding months. Besides the merchantmen, 675 fishing vessels were sunk, and 434 fishermen were killed. The return shows also that no fewer than 1,885 vessels, of 8,007,967 tons, were attacked but not sunk. If we count in the ships, of 1,272,738 tons, lost through ordinary causes, we see that very few merchantmen, out of a total British tonnageof about 19,000,000, came out unscathed.

The Federal Devolution Commission has at last been appointed, with the Speaker as Chairman. The Commiesion is composed of sixteen Peers and sixteen Members of the House of Commons. Eight of the Members are Unionists, five are Liberals, and three belong to the Labour Party. Among the Commissioners we may name Lord Brassey,, Lord Chamwood, Lord Gladstone, Lord Oranmore and Browne, Captain Charles Craig, and Mr. Murray Macdonald. The Commission is to report on " a scheme of legislative and administrative devolution within the United Kingdom," having regard to (1) the reservation to Imperial Parliament of foreign and Imperial affairs and subjects affecting the whole Kingdom, (2) the allocation of financial powers between Imperial Parliament and the subordinate Legislatures, and (3) the "special needs and character. istics of -the component portions of the United Kingdom in which subordinate Legislatures are set up." The word " Federal " has no place in this programme. The idea of Federation is the direct opposite of the .idea of Devolution to which the Commissioners are to give practical form, if they can

Senator Williams, a Democrat who site for Mississippi, performed a delightfully fresh piece of truth-telling—as reported• by the Washington correspondent of the Morning Post—in the Senate debate on the Shantung Clause of the Treaty of Peace. Mr. Williams, it may be remembered, was the only member of the Senate who voted against the Irish resolution recently passed by the Senate. In the course of the Shantung debate, he said that he was " sick and tired " of Sinn Fein propaganda and of the " Irish attempts to falsify history." General Robert Lee, he remarked, had never advocated a policy of shooting from behind trees at the Yankee Army. When he surrendered he kept his word and came back into the American Union. " Irishmen might learn a little bit of something from us. They might at least learn, if they have any sense—and I doubt whether they have—that while they are seeking the freedom of part of Ireland, they might at least allow Ulster her freedom."

Mr. Williams went on to ridicule the claim that fifty per cent. of the troops in the American Revolution were Irish. Only four per cent. • of the population of the United States was Irish at that time, and " two-thirds of that four per cent. were Scottish-Irish, English-Irish, and Ulstermen." More Irish, he declared, fought against Washington than •under him. It was an Irish regiment that took the works at Bunker Hill and turned what should have been an American victory into a defeat. In Virginia and South Carolina the chief forces under the command of Carlton were Irishmen.

Finally, Mr. Williams had something to say about the legendary assertion that in •the Civil War the South was defeated because of the preponderance of Irish regiments in the Northern armies :

" As a matter of fact,. of course, the Irish never whipped the South at all. They could not whip the South at any time. It is part of the braggart nature of the Irish. They are always contending that they have done everything everywhere at every time. I am tired of this vanity and nonsense. I do not care how many Irishmen vote a Democratic ticket. The men who are opposed to the League of Nations and to the Treaty of Peace are constantly emphasizing what they call Americanism, but what they mean by it isTro-Germanism and Irish-Amerioanism, Magyar-Americanism and Austrian-Americanism. We have finally reached the point where no man can be a real American unless he is an Irish-American or a German-American, or some other sort of hyphenated. American. Suppose that we English and Welsh and Scotch Americans, who have never hyphenated ourselves, united'in one single party and announced to the American Republic that every man in America who is Scotch or English or Welsh, or the son or the descendant of one of these races, shall join one party, where would these others of whom I speak be ? "

The American Senate on Thursday week rejected the most important of the amendments which the Republicans desired to make in the Peace Treaty. Senator Lodge proposed that the German rights in Kiao-chau and Shantung should be transferred to China and not to Japan. His proposal was defeated by 55 votes to 35. If we may regard this as a test question, the outlook for the Treaty would seem to be more hopeful. But the long delay in the Senate is none the less unfortunate. Until the Treaty is ratified and the League of Nations has been constituted, many provisions of the Treaty cannot be put into operation. America as well as Europe is injured by the uncertainty which impedes the return to normal peace conditions.

General Yudenitch's advance on Petrograd has been checked since Monday, partly perhaps through transport difficulties. He was then at Tsarskoe Selo, ten miles south of Petrograd, and was said to have cut some of the railways leading from the city. The Allied fleet is reported to have bombarded Kronatadt, the powerful fortress which blocks the Neva. Two out of four Bolshevik destroyers which tried to bombard the Esthonian coast were sunk by Allied warships. In the South of Russia the Bolsheviks claim the recapture of Orel from General Denikin, though they admit the loss of Kiel In the east they say that they have advanced once more into Admiral Koltehak's country. Obviously the Bolsheviks are making a tremendous effort to avert defeat before the winter sets in and stops campaigning. But if the patriot forces can act in unison, the end of Lenin's t despotism -may not be far off.

Lord Allenby has been appointed High Commissioner for Egypt and the Sudan, in succession to Sir Reginald Wingate. It is an excellent appointment. Lord Allenby has shown himself a tactful administrator as well as a great soldier. That we have heard comparatively little even of Syria since the Armistice is the best tribute that could be paid him. He showed firmness and good sense last spring when he was charged with the duty of restoring order in Egypt. The personal prestige which he has won will be as helpful to him as it was to Lord Kitchener when he had to govern Egypt. The peoples of the Near East— like other peoples, for that matter—respect a •great man when they have found him. We must not leave this subject without adding that the nation owes a deep debt of gratitude to Sir ,Reginald Wingate. He has governed coolly, wisely, and liberally. Neither his statesmanship nor his military sense has :been at fault. No one knows better than Lord Allenby how large a part of the credit for our Arabian and anti-Turkish 'successes in the war is due to Sir Reginald Wingate.

We have been deeply interested in the letters we have published in regard to Pope's portrait. Surely that portrait—on the assumption that it is genuine, as we believe it to be; may be described, from the literary and emotional side, though not of course from the point of view of the figurative arts, -as one of the most memorable and interesting in existence. Here 'you have the picture of one of the greatest emotional actors who ever lived, the first exponent, indeed, of modern acting, ;portrayed by one of the greatest of satiric and critical poets, and also within his limits one of the greatest masters of the English tongue. Finally the picture belonged to perhaps the greatest jurist of the English-speaking world, the young Soots lawyer of Jacobite stock who won the affection and the admiration of Pope in the days when he (Mansfield) was the beet of fencers, the most eloquent of barristers, and the handsomest of young men about town. Lord Mansfield to the present generation may only be the Lord Chief Justice who told us that the slave who breathed English air was free, but in his own age men wondered why he preferred to sit in the seat of Coke and Holt rather than be what he might have been—the Prime Minister of Britain.