On April 20th he read the full report of the
speech for the first time, and on April 30th, the day after he left office, he wrote to the Chief of Staff pointing out that the statements which he sub- sequently quoted in his letter were incorrect. He waited for a reply until May 6th before sending his letter to the Press. It will be seen that Mr. Lloyd George was verbally quite accurate in saying that " until he left office " Sir Frederick Maurice made no representations to the Chief of Staff ; but we should certainly have thought that if Mr. Lloyd George was aware of the facts he would have stated in the House of Commons that Sir Frederick Maurice had in fact lodged a protest some time before he took the extreme course of publishing his letter. If the protest had been attended to, the letter probably would never have been written. Finally, Sir Frederick Maurice states that it is quite untrue that he worked in concert or collusion with either soldiers or with opponents of the Govern- ment. The responsibility was his alone, and nothing was further from his mind than to serve a partisan political purpose. No one who knows Sir Frederick Maurice's record -needs to be assured of the truth of this declaration.
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