TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PRIME MINISTER'S SPEECH.
IN the House of Commons on Wednesday week Mr. Lloyd George came through the latest of his recur- rent crises , with the ease which we had anticipated. He may be said to have made friends with his critics, as much as by anything else, on the merits of his uproarious castigation of Lord Northcliffe. The authors of the notorious telegram on indemnities to Paris took the line that they were only anxious to strengthen the hands of the British representatives. No one need doubt their sincerity in that respect ; but if that were their only motive the telegram was most unhappily worded, for the first thing that leapt to the eye was that it questioned the sincerity of the Prime Minister's pledges. However that may be, Mr. Lloyd George had a " success," thus adding one more point to his long score in successfully pulling chestnuts out of the fire. We would not be thought to suggest that he did not deserve his success ; there were many good and reassuring points in the speech. To begin with, the speech, though we cannot honestly call it a speech of great statesmanship, did, show most welcome signs of a sense of responsibility, of looking further ahead than Mr. Lloyd George usually looks, and of judging intricate questions on broad principles and not on the principle (which we had occasion to deplore last week) of satisfying the immediate demands of some specially vociferous group. Above all, the speech was notable for a break so definite as to seem to be quite irreparable between the Prime Minister and the Northcliffe Press. Specimen phrases in the speech which tend in the desirable direction we have named were to the effect that the Prime Minister would rather have a good Peace than a good Press''; that if he thought he had misled the country by making too optimistic promises at the General Election he would " come down to the House and say so " ; and that those critics who believed that the British nation was out for a vindictive Peace rather than for a Peace of justice entirely misunderstood the national temper. All this was to the good, and no seriously minded person could read such passages without real satisfaction.
The other and much less alluring side of the picture was the roistering quarrel that Mr. Lloyd George picked with those newspapers which had been his specially chosen supporters during the war. Let us not be misunderstood. We rejoice in this split, and think it is entirely in the national interest. At the same time one cannot escape the reflection that it was humiliating that the British Prime Minister, with all the world looking on, should have found himself in such a position that he had to turn round upon one whom he had made only a few months ago his Achates and abuse him like a pickpocket. This kind of thing has not marked the relations of British Pride Ministers with their supporters in the past. It does not convey an edify- ing impression of British constancy or sanity to those who look on from beyond our shores, and who at this time have little means of judging us except by our words. The French might be led to suppose—quite wrongly of course— that this domestic upheaval meant some change in our policy. The United States, peopled by political idealists, wonders why we cannot get on with the Peace " without wasting energy upon undignified wrangles which seem to have little connexion with the major issues that are vexittg the world. Worst of all, the Germans must be asking themselves whether the British waters have not become sufficiently muddy for them to throw in their well-baited hooks with a prospect of a good day's fishing. Such a situation is the simple and inevitable result of Mr. Lloyd George's past habit of overdoing things. When he was off with his old love of left-wing Liberalism and was not sufficiently on with his new love of moderate Liberalism and Unionism, he felt that in order to make his power effective he must be able to rely upon a fresh band of sup- porters. He found those fresh supporters in the Press. He formed a closer alliance with the Press than had ever been known in British politics. He made the Press his Party. The upshot of this extravagance is that we have Mat seen in the House of Commons the bitterest row
between a responsible Minister and a newspaper proprietor that can be found recorded anywhere in the pages of Hansard.
As regards the special relations of the Prime Minister and Lord Northcliffe we shall say something further in another article. Here we will turn to other matters in the speech. Mr. Lloyd George's declaration that the country must keep its patience till the Peace terms are published was thoroughly sound, and the reasons which he gave were good. There was no trace here of warding off an immediate danger by a pretence of doing something that he had no right to do or was not in a position to do. On only one point about the coming Peace terms would we dispute the validity of what he said. He asked his audience to believe that the creation of the League of Nations, as an inseparable part of the Peace Treaty, so far from wasting time, had actually saved time. In form this is true, for it is easily understood that with the League of Nations in the background as an ultimate Committee of Reference, the Peace Treaty need not go into much
detail. It is possible to say : This, that, and the other question of great complexity affecting races and boundaries need not be settled now, for these are just the kind of things which ought to be decided by the League." Unfortunately, though time may nominally be saved in this way, the alleged saving may easily be a tax on futurity. To carry over puzzles into the coming years is not to save time in any true sense of the word. As we have said on previous occasions, the revised Covenant is a considerable deteriora- tion from the original draft. The stipulation that the League cannot take action without a unanimous vote confers a fiber um veto on any minor nation. Day by day we see how difficult it is even for the " Big Four ' with all their authority, and in spite of the comparative sim- plicity of their motives, to come to any settlement. What hope will there be when the motives are more various and the number of the voters much larger ? The last thing we want to do is to write discouraging words for the sake of writing them, but it is essential to perceive the difficulties clearly if we are to surmount them.
A large part of the Prime Minister's speech was taken up with the Russian problem, and in this matter his policy, although by no means of that sort which throws a brilliant light into a dark place, was at all events thoroughly sensible and convincing so far as it went. By an eliminating argu- ment Mr. Lloyd George stated what it was possible to do in Russia as the culmination of showing what it was not possible to do. He was on very sure ground when he declared that the nation was not in the temper for another great war, And that of all military undertakings one of the most pre- carious is that of landing troops in a foreign country in order to help one party in that country against another. The Athenians learnt something of that danger in the expedition to Syracuse, but we need not look further back than the French Revolution for a complete illustration of how disparate groups will rally together when some one raises the cry that " our Homes," or " la Patrie," or the Fatherland" are being invaded. All that we can safely do in Russia—and we should be guilty of disloyalty to our friends if we did less—is to meet the demands of those Russians who wish to remain in alliance with us, and who are asking for a certain amount of support and military material. Mr. Lloyd George said that their requests were quite reasonable. We ought, then, to send Admiral Koltchak and Generals Denikin and Kharkoff all they need. For the rest, the lava flow of Bolshevism can be staved oil from Western Europe only by making a barrage of properly armed States from the Baltic to the Black Sea. In other words, it is essential that Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, and Rumania should be independent nations, unreservedly vested with the great incentive which independence gives to keep their countries inviolate.
In one respect it is difficult to reconcile Mr. Lloyd George's Russian statement with facts which have been published broadcast in the newspapers. He said that there had never been any question of 'recognizing " the Russian Bolsheviks —" it has never been proposed, never been even discussed." Literally Mr. Lloyd George's words can be defended, but surely it would have been either wiser or franker to admit that the Plenipotentiaries in Paris have given cause to those who say that in one practical sense the Bolsheviks are being recognized. In answer to a question from Mr. Clynes, the Prime Minister enlarged upon his denial that there was no recognition of the Bolshevik Government :—
" I have only heard of reports that others have got proposals, NS Ilia they assume have come from authentic quarters, but these have never been put before the Conference by any member of that Conference at all. There was some suggestion that there was some young American who had come back. All I can say about that is that it is not for me to judge the value of these communications. But if the President of the United States had attached any value to them he would have brought them before the Conference, and he certainly did not."
What seems really to have happened, if we may piece together the available news, is that the Associated Powers are planning to feed Russia through the mediation of some distinguished neutrals headed by Dr. Nansen. The condition imposed upon the Bolshevik Government is that all fighting should
cease in Russia before the food is delivered. It hardly needs to be pointed out that if food is sent into Russia, the Bolsheviks will be fed as well as their victims, and probably be fed a great deal better, since one of the methods of Bolshevik government is to withhold food from those who declare themselves not Bolshevik. The Associated Powers are said to have been persuaded to make this attempt to feed Russia largely- by the reports of some American inquirers in Russia, to one of whom Mr. Lloyd George referred in the passage we have quoted above. The Paris correspondent of the Daily News states that one of these American inquirers on arriving in Paris was invited to breakfast by Mr. Lloyd George, who was much impressed by his narrative. For our part, we have no difficulty in believing that the American traveller stated accurately what he had seen, but we ought to add that an American correspondent informs us that Mr. Lincoln Steffens—one of the American inquirers—is an uncompromising advocate of Bolshevism. Mr. Steffens is credited with the following gem of political thought : An illiterate Russia had a successful revolution. Likewise Moscow. Only educated people are prevented from making true social progress." If all these statements are true, the Prime Minister unneces- sarily withheld the truth from the House of Commons. We repeat that literally there may be no question of recog- nizing Bolshevism, but the Prime Minister should have made some provision against provoking the natural scruples of those who will say that dealing with the Bolshevik Government through a third party is so much like recog- nition as to be indistinguishable from it. We are by no means saying that the policy now being attempted is wrong, but we do submit that, while either a full statement or complete silence may be wise and honourable, an explanation which is not an explanation is thoroughly undesirable.
The upshot of the whole matter is that Mr. Lloyd George has gained some strength from his wrestle with the House of Conunons, and in all the circumstances we are glad of it. Whether his Parliamentary opponents are really satisfied or merely fobbed off, we do not know. There was a vivid incident in the French Revolution when various Dputies who had been flying at one another's throats in the Assembly were suddenly recalled to a spirit of reconciliation by the eloquent intervention of Lamourette, the Bishop of Lyons. So great was the effect of his speech that Deputies shed tears of emotion and the most violent enemies hob- nobbed like brothers. But within a few days of " the Lamourette kiss they were all quarrelling more furiously than ever. Whether this happens or does not happen in our own Parliament, one great advantage of the Prime Minister's speech will remain—that he spoke over the heads of Members to the country at large. He spoke as a states- man of Left-Centre views who valued his principles, and not with the haggling opportunism which we criticized last week. He is not likely to go far wrong if he recognizes the simple fact that the .nation is perpetually Left-Centre in conviction. The startling turnover of votes at the recent by-elections was a proof of this. People talk foolishly of the swing of the pendulum, as though British voters were really the unconscious agents of some soulless and auto- matic mechanical influence. What really happens when there is an enormous change of voting strength within a very short time is that people wish to warn the Government that they are overdoing things. The nation obviously thought that Mr. Lloyd George had gathered too much power into his hands, and in an intoxication of strength was carrying on dangerously. They wished to trim the boat. " We are all over on one side ! " they seemed to say— indeed to bawl, for a landslide of eleven thousand votes is not less than bawling. " We must throw some weight on the other side." It is of good omen that the Prime Minister was not unwilling to learn the lesson read thus to him.
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