The way that the country has taken Lord Birkenhead's now
notorious speech on the occasion of his installation as Rector of Glasgow University has been one of the few cheerful signs in a gloomy world. The speech itself, if viewed impartially, reads as silly rather than iniquitous. All Lord Birkenhead's remarks actually come to is a plea for caution in international affairs and a pessimistic survey of the situation of the world to-day. But, for all that, the country has been perfectly right in expressing its disgust at the speech, for these platitudes were expressed in a tone which must be an insult to everyone who last Sunday mourned for a relative sacrificed in the pursuit of those "glittering prizes " which Lord Birkenhead told his audience were still the reward of" sharp swords." For sheer intellectual perversity it would be hard to beat Lord Birkenhead's main argument, which was that the War should have been the greatest rebuke to all those who seek to prevent war. On these lines one might argue that the outbreak of an epidemic of measles should be a lesson to all doctors on the criminal futility of their efforts to prevent that disease. Lord Birkenhead is always accusing his opponents of sloppiness, but what, after all, could be more confused than to give up all attempts to prevent the phenomenon of war, which, as he admits, has already shattered the basis of European civilization, because we have only too obviously not yet succeeded in this great attempt ?
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