TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. LLOYD GEORGE'S SPEECH.
pLURALIST newspaper proprietors, who,to use jaques's phrase, can "suck melancholy out of a song [or a opeech] as a weasel sucks eggs," read into Mr. Lloyd George's munitions speech confessions of failure and despair. They have mobilized the Fat Boys of Fleet Street and the Mrs. Gummidges of the Press to make our flesh creep, and to show bow appalling must be the fate of a nation which will not follow in docile dejection the lead of its halfpenny newspapers. Forproof they point to the words of the Minister of Munitions. That is not how we read the speech, and that is not the way in which we believe the mass of our countrymen will read it. When they have escaped from the plaintive headlines and the shivering and lugubrious summaries and come to the text itself, they will see that, though it was a brave speech and a candid speech and faced the facts unflinchingly, it was in no sense a panic speech, or one which for a single moment suggested the cry "We are betrayed !"
What the speech first and foremost suggests to our mind, and, we believe, to the minds of the mass of the British people, is a fervent desire to box the ears of the aforesaid Fat Boys and to tell the Mrs. Gummidges to "be a riddance" as quickly as possible—to go into some remote corner and grieve there in as much silence as they can com- mand over the "old 'on" and the glorious times of peaceful sensationalism. The nation has got a serious piece of work before it, and must not have that work interfered with by wailings and lamentations over spilt milk, or high-pitched recriminations as to whose fault it is that we are short of shell, short of machine guns, and short of all the munitions of war. Half a dozen men on a rope, when they find them- selves in danger on a glacier or a snow cornice, do not waste time and energy in cursing the guide for having brought them by "a bad road" or for having a weak rope. They keep their vigour for the immediate work in hand- i.e., saving their lives—and they rightly regard as a danger any member of the party who gives way to hysteria and fills the air with his tears and his curses and his cries of • I told you so !" What will enable the men on the rope to get through the danger zone is to keep their nerves steady, and to concentrate every effort of mind and body on the work before them. To look down and tremble at the thought of the precipice, to be always anxiously probing the snow, or to jump and scream every time a boulder is detached and goes thundering into the or, again, to be always turning round to gaze wistfully at the safer path which was not taken, is the way to ruin.
What is wanted now, to go on with our metaphor, is to keep the party on the rope moving steadily and fearlessly, and not spending their time in panic rushes or squabbles as to who is to blame. No sensible man desires for a moment that there should be any attempt to conceal the dangers of the situation from the people. We want to know exactly what they are, because without that knowledge the spirit of the people cannot properly be roused, nor can they be made to understand what is wanted from them in order to escape those dangers. Mr. Lloyd George seems to us to have struck exactly the right balance in his speech. He made the peril quite clear, but instead of dwelling upon it be went on at once to show specifically how it can be met. Though we are short of practically all the munitions of war, our most immediate needs are high-explosive shells and machine guns. Till the shortage here is made up we cannot show that activity which, we must never forget, is the essential element in all military operations, the sine qua non which, if it does not exist, must in the end metm. defeat. But though in this war we cannot have activity without a great many more shells and a great many more machine guns than we have got at present, it by no means follows, as our pessimists would lead us to believe, that all is lost, or, if not quite all, that the danger is over- whelming. Though it is a capital error in war to go slow or to stand permanently on the defensive, or, in fact, not to be always ready and willing to take every oppor- tunity to push and press your opponent as far as he can be pushed and pressed—to give him no rest by day or night, and to wear him out by a perpetual offensive—it is always possible in any war to go easy for a month or two, or even for three or four months, and meanwhile to make preparations for that policy of attack which is the inspiring genius of war. No doubt the pause while you are getting ready to attack is most likely to be used by the enemy for his supreme effort. When he realizes that you are waiting for more munitions, and therefore at a disadvantage, it becomes with him a case of "Now or never !" But though this is an evil, and a very serious evil, it does not follow that the enemy's effort will be successful, or that you will be unable to stave off his attacks while you are setting your own house in order. Certainly it is not BO in the present case. It is very unfortunate that, owing to our shortage of munitions, we cannot be as active as we should like to be, or as we ought to be, but for all that we shall he able to hold our own in Flanders, and render adequately that co-operation and assistance which we owe to our French allies. After all, our shortage in shell and machine guns, though dangerous, is only comparative. The public must not suppose that when we talk of being short of shell we have literally nothing to put into our guns. That would be a complete error. We have by no means used up our supplies of shell or come down to the bottom of the locker. There is plenty in it for all essential needs. When we say we are short it merely means that we cannot use shell in that royal, open- handed, unlimited manner in which we ought to be able to use it when the troops are going forward in a great attack along, say, thirty miles of front. To put the matter in yet another way. The relative position as regards shell and machine guns is not worse now, but very much better, than when last October the Germans burled themselves against our line in the effort to get through to Calais. Not only was there a shortage of shell and machine guns, but also of men. What the Germans could not accomplish in the autumn they are not going to accomplish now, even if they were able to disengage, which they will not be able to do, a million men from the eastern front.
But though we feel constrained to point out this fact, in view of the lachrymose effusions poured forth from the Enotypes of the Daily Mail and the Evening News, it must not be supposed for a moment that we are in the least satisfied with the existing situation, or do not realize how perilous it is to have to stand on the defen- sive or to mark time in the midst of war. Even if to do so does not mean defeat, it does mean a prolongation of the war which ought not to have taken place. The pause while we make good our supplies of munitions will in all probability cod the country an extra four or five hundred millions, and, what is worse, will mean a heavy increase in our casualties. There is the evil which must be faced. The only way to face it is to reorganize and to abate the present chaos of labour to which in the last resort is due our lack of munitions. That Mr. Lloyd George has hit upon the right way of reducing the chaos and organizing the forces of capital and labour we do not doubt. Roughly, what he is going to do is to sweep away all Trade Union restrictions on output, and so secure for the period of the war freedom of industrial energy. At the same time he is very properly going to do what we have urged in these columns, that is, restrict profits. Next he is securing decentralization. But hand in hand with decentralization goes a scheme of intensive concen- tration which we hope will prove eminently useful. As we understand his speech, he is going to organize a sort of flying squadron or mobile reserve of skilled labour which he believes will enable him to dispense with compulsion under the Defence of the Realm Act or under the new statutory powers which he is now taking. He is going to enlist a large body of munition volunteers, and so create a force which he can throw upon any point where his industrial line is likely to be broken. If be finds that this or that factory is not doing the work it might do because it cannot get certain necessary men, be will supply them from his volunteers—from his mobile reserve. These men will be transferred as need arises from one part of the country to another. And here we may note with satis- faction that the men, in all cases where they are moved, are to have their out-of-pocket expenses paid, both as regards travelling and housing. This is only right and fair. If a hundred men are moved from, say, Bristol to Hull—to take two towns at random—they must not be out of pocket by the transaction.
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