Mr. Lloyd George, who returned to the House after his
illness, peppered the Protocol with ridicule. It was " a booby trap for Britain." When he was describing what he called the five Alsace-Lorraines of Poland • (Eastern Galicia, White Russia, Vilna, the Corridor and Silesia) and was laughing at the notion that Poland would ever refer these questions to arbitration, Mr. Austen Chamberlain intervened with a rebuke. " I think my right honourable friend is talking very rashly. I am grateful to him for giving me the opportunity of dis- sociating myself with what he has said." The rebuke was only an incitement to Mr. Lloyd George to go into further details. Mr. Lloyd George is often guilty of a recklessness which is rare in ex-Prime Ministers, or even in ex-Ministers, but his comments and the protest of Mr. Chamberlain together may, after all, be of some value in calling the attention of Frenchmen and Poles to the very grave estimate which Englishmen have formed of Franco-Polish policy.
* *
Previous page
