THE GREAT UNKNOWN.
AVERY great deal has been said both for and against swapping horses in the middle of the stream. Some people denounce such procedure as necessarily a blunder in a high degree. Others defend the proposal on the ground that, if your horse is dead-beat, or has gone lame, or has shown an inclination to lie down in the middle a the water, the very best thing you can do is to jump on to another horse as soon as possible. On the respective merits of these arguments and considerations we are not going to attempt to pass judgment. And for this plain reason. Before the merits of swapping or not swapping can be decided, it is necessary to ask one simple question. Is there another horse to swap with ? If there is not, then the three-and-twenty excellent reasons for swapping or against swapping are totally valueless, as valueless as the arguments for and against ringing -the church-bells to welcome Queen Elizabeth when there were no bells to ring. It may be our " beastly ignorance," as the schoolboy said when he abused his " pal " for squinting, but as far as our limited vision extends there is no other horse available. Therefore the question of swapping horses in a stream or out of it is clearly academic, and one which we are not going to discuss. Until the opponents of the present National Ministry have brought out and paraded on the bank ten or twelve, or, if you will, five or six, sound and trustworthy mounts, it is.merely waste of time to consider the question of a new Ministry.
The onus of producing the new horses plainly rests upon the critics of the Government, and not upon those who, like ourselves, do not advocate a complete change. " The great unknown," be he a single individua or a group of individuals, a composite personality, must be shown to exist before we or anybody else can say whether they would like him to play, the part of Chatham. This country has no use for veiled prophets. They may be all very well in the Western Sahara and in the land of the Senussi, -but they will never be a popular institution here. Our people have not imagination enough to enjoy them. Before we get rid of the old team we must have a good look at the new one. We are not saying this merely as a dialectical effort to bolster up a particular set of Ministers. We say it as practical citizens concerned at a great national crisis to obtain- the best Govern- ment available. If " the great unknown " and his colleagues turn out to be political supermen; we shall be delighted to accept them. We will go further, and admit that it is quite possible that our political vision is defective, and that we have left out of sight and ignored a great many brilliant people who are far more capable of carrying on the Government than the present Ministry. All we object to is buying a litter of pigs in a poke. We only say that if the great unknown " exist, they must be nameable ; and if they are nameable, why not same them ? Even• if only one " great unknown " can be produced, and he appears to be a really big man capable of making up a new Ministry out of the old materials, we are willing to see him try his hand. But once again, we want to hear his name before the trial is made. But sup- pose that he is producible, and that' some fine May morning he is trotted out of the joint stable of the Daily Mail and the Times or out of that of the Morning Post.
In that event, to avoid disappointment, we have a word of warning to give the public. In fairness to the new Minister, they must not assume that the ardent newspapers just mentioned, Or anybody else, can ensure him a run of luck. His bonds will be held by fate just as much as anybody else's, and the question whether fortune will or will not smile upon him will be as undecided as in the case of lesser souls. If it is objected that the present Ministry must be judged and condemned on their past blunders, and. that it is a sound argument to say that they have done so badly that it is impossible that anybody else would do worse, and most probable that almost anybody else could do better, we are perfectly willing, to take up the challenge. We believe that the present Government's misdeeds have been grossly exaggerated, and that, though they have made blunders and had ill-luck, it is not in the least fair to arraign them as incapables. On the contrary, they have done a great many things for which in the fullest sense they deserve the gratitude of the republic. But here we must distinguish. We are speaking, not of the old Administration which began the war, but of the National Ministry created last May. As will be recol- lected, last May the whole of the Government, except, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, resigned, and the Cabinet was reconstructed from top to bottom. That is the Ministry now in power, and that is the Ministry *hose acts must be judged. They inherited an exceedingly difficult position. They found' themselves involved in the costly, precarious, and thoroughly badly planned campaign in Gallipoli, and also handicapped by a terrible shortage in the chief munitions of war, and by a diplomatic situation• in the Near Ea t- of which the less' said the better. All these tangles had to be straightened out as best they could, under fire not only from the enemy but from the opposition here for, remember, the growth of adverse criticism at home was erystematized•and. became acute almost as soon as the Coalition Ministry had been formed.. It is possible, no doubt, that a good deal could be said in defence of the acts of the Ministry' between August, 1914, and: May, 1915. In our own opinion, indeed; it can be shown that, considering our shortage of menu and material, and the far greater strength exhibited- by the Germans, Austrians, and Turks' than any one had hitherto expected; and considering, also that a lack of preparation. proved to be hampering our Allies as well• as ourselves, the old Administration ought not to be too harshly condemned.
Owing to the force of circumstances, which it is arguable that they could not have foreseen, they lost the initiative at the beginning of the war, and had in the first eight months, with toil and pain, to conform to the plans of the enemy— always a most difficult position, but one which happily English- men face better than any other people in the world. Indeed, given the conditions, we can imagine , an historian of the future describina° with approval the stubborn endurance with which the Cabinet faced unflinchingly the appalling difficulties which beset them from September, 1914; till last May. As we have said, however, that is none of our business. All we, as supporters and defenders of the Coalition Ministry, are concerned to do is to show that the Cabinet. including, of course, the Prime Minister and his Liberal col- leagues as much as the representatives of the. Unionists, have done as well as any Ministry that we can think of would have done, to put the matter at its very lowest. We know very well that at the moment it is an unpopular thing to defend them, and that many people who are better at destruc- tive than constructive criticism will hold up their handl in horror at our poverty of spirit in daring to say a word in defence of those of whom all men speak evil.' Nevertheleis, we will say once again that, in spite of theabuse hiirled Upon they deserve well of the republic, and that, judging them by the past, it is utterly ridiculous to assert that any set of men raked together from anywhere, even under the leadership of " the great unknown," would do better than they have done.
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