SOME PROBLEMS OF PUBLICITY.
THAT Colonel Repington's Diary, The First World War (Constable, 42s. net), ought not to have been published goes without saying. If such indiscretions were common
there would be an end of all the amenities of social life. As a cynical woman of the world remarked, " If this sort of thing goes on, one won't be able to dine out." No man would dare to speak his thoughts to a friend, and con- versation at a house party would become that irreducible minimum which reigns in a railway carriage when there are two people who know each other and all the rest are strangers, or, worse still, people one knows by sight or name and who know who one is and who is one's friend.
No doubt the social freemasonry by which every conversa- tion between friends or friends' friends is regarded as " tiled" has often helped to shelter bad men and bad things and has proved irksome or well-nigh intolerable to the man who wants to expose sonic misdemeanour, to achieve some reform or to stop some intended wrong. On the whole, however, the freemasonry of which we are speak- ing works well. It prevents men from having to walk as one walks in a street where a bravo is said to be lurking in every doorway, or in a country lane where the hedges and ditches are lined with potential assassins. Living in London society-would be like living in Ireland. From such a fate we are preserved by the rule against publishing any- thing heard in private conversation.
How comes it that Colonel Repington has broken through all our most cherished conventions, has divulged the secrets of " tiled " meetings and has forgotten the promise which binds the members of a civilized society not to betray private talk ? Though Colonel Repington does not, so far as we can discover, offer any excuse for his act, he would, we have little doubt, answer that he has broken his implied social word of honour, because not to have done so would have broken a higher pledge—that of loyalty to his country. He believes that to tell what under ordinary conditions ought not to be told will help the nation to understand, and, therefore, to make use of the lessons of the war, and to realize how nearly we lost the war in spite of the nation's splendid courage and self-sacrifice. We must at all costs learn how, in a future dark and uncertain, we may avoid many of the dangers which come from the ignorance, the folly and the moral cowardice of our rulers.
Colonel Repington's apologia would in effect be that of the revolutionary. " I must do bad things in order to prevent worse. I must not dread being called harsh names even when these names will be in a sense well deserved, if thereby I can warn my country. Who am I to mind being gib- beted if the public will gain safety and prudence thereby ? I shall wear my social dishonour like a star if only I can make people see with what little wisdom the world is governed.
Even more important, I must snake known to sny country- men how mean, how timorous, how petty often are the views of politicians whom the world considers as men of character and decision, how great men or great statesmen drift in an ignominy of indecision, or, what is worse, let the country drift into vast decisions not because they are the right decisions, but because they are convenient at the moment. If I do this I shall have done something so valuable for my country that I need care nothing about my own reputation or about shaking the foundations of social security, and making politicians, before they tell their real thoughts and aims, look round at their friends' faces, and wonder, ' Will my words be printed two years hence, and just when, perhaps, I want to make up my quarrel with this or that present enemy, and go into a political partnership with him which will involve the closest intimacy ? ' " Here let us say that this desire that the public should understand the recklessness, the levity, the intellectual and moral squalor with which they are often governed is one that has been shared by some of the best and most patriotic of Englishmen. When the present writer remonstrated with Lord Cromer upon his working so hard at the Dardanelles Commission, that it was certain to bring death to a man already broken in health, Lord Cromer admitted fully, and without any bombast or romanticism, the danger, but added quite simply that he thought it was worth while because it would give him a chance to do what had never been done before. He would make the British people realize the kind of way in which great and far-stretching policies and acts of State are under- taken in this country. People supposed, he went on, that Ministers elaborately think out and work out their plans and have great and penetrating intentions. Yet, he added, ho had again and again found that the biggest matters are often decided with little or no appreciation of the consequences, and without anyone thinking out to the end what was the real meaning of what was being done. " If I can bring this fact out in a clear case like that of the Dardanelles, I shall have done a piece of work really worth doing." That was Lord Cromer's last message to his countrymen. It would not, however, be fair to give the impression that Lord Cromer was either thinking or talking bitterly, for that was quite contrary to his nature and intent. He never betrayed, and never could have betrayed, the confidences of public men. He wanted the story of the Dardanelles expedition told fully, but he did not want to denounce, to ruin or to injure any individual. He only wanted to warn the country as to the absence of due seriousness in great affairs. In a word, what he complained of was the desperate levity with which high policy is so often handled.
Consciously or unconsciously, but as we feel sure con- sciously, Colonel Repington exposes the facts, tears the
mask off the sly or hesitating statesman, and shows us the man as he is and as he talks in private, and not on the platform or in Parliament. If Colonel Repington's book is carefully read, and its lessons are properly learnt, we think it will go far to make the men and women of this country say that in future though they may not be able to find really great men to act as their servants in the work of the Government, at any rate they will have men who will not play with them and their dearest interests and treat them as counters in the game of personal or party politics : " They shall not be allowed to gamble with our lives and feelings, and if we catch them at it, we will not merely make the immediate punishment pro- portionate to their crime but will put them on the political Index."
Once more, in spite of the value of publicity, and all that can be said in defence of Colonel Repington's action—
we have done our very best to urge what can be said in his favour—we cannot bring ourselves to think that Colonel Repington has done right. Since, however, be has chosen, as it were, to turn King's evidence, and to turn so from good motives—he will get plenty of kicks out of his book, and comparatively few halfpence—we are not going to be so pedantically and austerely virtuous as to refuse to admit the extraordinary interest of the things recorded in the Diary and of the marked ability of the Diarist. These matters of detail must, however, be left to another issue. On the present occasion we have dealt with the problems of publicity raised by the book's appearance. Next week we will give some examples of Colonel Repington's unveiling of what we may call the drama of the political servants' hall at a moment of imminent peril and crisis. The best of their male masters were dying in the trenches. The best of their women masters were toiling in hospitals or in muintion works, and were putting heart and faith and brain into the great cause before them—the cause of Britain, of civilization, and of humanity. In the political basement, however, the inmates were snarling and cursing at each other, and trying to filch, as Colonel Repington shows, as many as they could and dared of the soldiers wreaths and put them on their own bald heads. Some of them were working more to supplant a comrade or to gain the favours of a pretty woman than to serve the cause. Others were trying to avoid responsibility or to prepare a bolt hole if unpleasant things " came out later " ; others were simply in a " funk." It is an ugly, nay, a disgusting picture, but we should be hypocrites if we did not say at the same time that it is intensely interesting and intensely amusing. Colonel. Repington has added to the old moral tag, " With what
little wisdom the world is governed I" the words " and also with what selfishness and pettiness I" Though he does not show us in his picture corruption, treachery— there was, Heaven be thanked, none of that—or selfishness or bad morals beyond the normal, he does show us a levity in great affairs that is wholly contemptible.
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