(To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR, — The Spectator's attacks
on Mr. Lloyd George are a grief to many of your readers, and we marvel at the strange company in which you are finding yourself. The enemies of the Government form just now a curiously mixed flock. The fight-to-a-finish lion lies down with the peace-at-any-price lamb. The Spectator joins hands with the Nation, the Morning Post with the Daily News. The strident tones of that stern patriot, Mr. Horatio Bottomley, are heard mingling with those of disgruntled Generals and poli- ticians out of a job, in full-throated chorus. High Tories and hot Radicals, Pacificists and a certain section of Society," unite in drinking—the -beverage may be "cocoa slop " or old port—con- fusion to the man who a year ago was hailed as England's hope. The arguments used are, as might be expected, mutually destruk- ive, and no less heterogeneous than the people who use them. Any stick is good enough to beat a dog with; so the Pacificist blames the Premier for not making peace, while the Spectator " slates" him for not making war. You complain because he allowed Mr. Chamberlain to go out of the Government: many cried "Shame! " when Mr. Chamberlain was reinstated. Some say it is scandalous to conscript Ireland; others that it ought to have been done long ago. You pleaded long and urgently for a naval offensive; but the changes at the Admiralty were greeted with much harsh criticism. The Government, blamed for the partial failures of our forces in one field, must surely be allowed a share of the credit for the Navy's exploits under its new leadership. Your motives, we are well aware, are patriotic and disinterested; but there are others of whom the same cannot be said. There is a bad spirit abroad just now in certain quarters, a spirit of faction aud mischief- making, of offended vanity and personal animus, which requires curbing. The upshot of the whole business is that the Opposition is discredited by a Parliamentary fiasco, and Mr. Lloyd George stands higher to-day in popular estimation than he did a month
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