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On the one hand, your Parliamentary Correspondent speaks of the promoters of the meeting on the 14th instant for the continuation of the Coalition as follows:

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'In the result they have discovered that the party is sub'stantially united, but united in desiring the formulation of a Conservative policy as the policy of the Government which it supports. The Prime Minister is warned that this must be the price of continued Unionist support. Will he surrender?' On the other hand, your leading article on 'Lord Curzon's Reply' speaks of the Cabinet and its management by the Prime Minister as follows:

'This miserable Cabinet squabble has revealed in all its nakedness the travesty of the Constitutional system which the present Prime Minister has developed under the conditions that have followed the war. Under that system Parliament ' has been reduced to a machine for the registration of Minis'terial decrees. . . . The collective responsibility of Ministers has vanished with the freedom and the control of the House ' of Commons. The Cabinet provides the Prime Minister 'with men of widely divergent opinions, from amongst whom ' he is able to select for any particular project a committee which ' he knows beforehand will recommend the policy he desires.'

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If we compare the passage quoted from your Parliamentary Correspondent's report with the passage quoted from your leading article, we cannot but conclude that the question about the present Prime Minister is not merely, 'Will he surrender?' but far more, Is he trustworthy?' Can Mr. Lloyd George be trusted either in the Cabinet or in Parliament to carry out a Conservative policy, or indeed any policy but his own?

What is the policy of Mr. Lloyd George? He is at bottom a demagogue; and throughout his career the key to his policy has been the subordination of the superior to the inferior, which is a common property of all demagogues, but the very contrary of Conservatism. He has lately (see The Times of December 9, 1921) described himself to Lord Leverhulme as a Liberal Prime Minister, acting for no

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party, but in the interests of the nation'. This is a flattering portrait of himself by himself; but how can a Liberal Prime Minister act for no party, and yet at the same time be the Prime Minister of the Conservative Party? An authoritative and noticeable statement has been proclaimed by the American Government, and quoted in your leading article of March 10. It is as follows:

'Production is conditioned upon the safety of life, the recognition by firm guarantees of private property, the sanctity of contract, and the rights of free labour."

These inestimable blessings, descended for ages from the institutions of the Common Law, are among the very things which form the basis of Conservatism, and indeed of all good government. But they are also the very things which have suffered at the hands of Mr. Lloyd George throughout his career, and especially during his so-called reconstruction, which has gone far to destroy all of them, and with them, in consequence, the means of production. How, then, can such a destroyer be fitted to lead the Conservative Party, or indeed anything else but revolution?

In fact, this Liberal demagogue is not fitted to lead any party to the realization of the public good in the time of peace, because he is neither trustworthy nor steadfast. How, then, comes it that he is supposed to be indispensable? Partly because he has created a bureaucracy of lackeys, and partly because he has misled them into such a labyrinth of muddles that he alone can see his way into them without seeing how to get out of them.

This also is why one is constantly asked who could succeed him; but the answer is simple. Any good citizen who, in the language of Aristotle, the prince of political philosophers, has the ability and the purpose to rule and be ruled for the public good; who would set himself to clean the Augean stable

of bureaucratic extravagance and excessive rates and taxes; who would reflect on the lesson of history that the greatest of nations depends far more on moral principles and traditional institutions than on experimental legislation and statutory laws; who would therefore steadfastly follow the pronouncement of the American Government that production is conditioned upon the safety of life, the recognition by firm guarantees of private property, the sanctity of contract, and the rights of free labour; who would also realize that the present crisis is a time for order before progress, and that the Armistice ought to have been followed not by blundering reconstruction but by wise reversion to Britain as it was before the war; any good citizen, I say, chosen for these purposes after an election, would not only be a more trustworthy Prime Minister than Mr. Lloyd George and the little Lloyd Georges who hang about him, but also have good grounds of hope to become the saviour of the nation by Conservatism. Corpus Christi College, Oxford, March 16, 1922.

VI

LETTERS ON FOREIGN POLICY

GERMANY'S TRADITIONAL POLICY

On December 29, 1895, Dr. L. S. Jameson with 500 men crossed the Transvaal frontier from British Bechuanaland near Mafeking. On January 1-2, 1896, he and his men were driven back and captured by Boer forces at Doornkop. On January 3 the German Government sent the celebrated telegram, signed by the Emperor William II, to President Kruger, congratulating him on the defeat of the Raiders ' without appealing for help to friendly Powers'. This produced a very tense situation between Germany and Great Britain, but Lord Salisbury, Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, managed to close the incident by diplomacy. The telegram, which some people thought to be a momentary lapse by the Emperor, but which recently published documents prove to have been a calculated act of the German Government, was the occasion of the following letter of Case.

Frederick William III was King of Prussia from 1797 to 1840. He and Alexander I of Russia had been allies in the War of Liberation against Napoleon in 1813-14.

In 1870, during the Franco-German War, the Prussian Government acquiesced in Russia's repudiating the international treaty (or clause of treaty) which had declared the Black Sea to be neutralized (Treaty of Paris, 1856). A Conference of London, 1871, consented subsequently to Russia's repudiation.

In 1878, at the end of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8, Bismarck was President of the Congress of Berlin, when the Kingdom of Bulgaria was called into existence. In 1885 Bulgaria added to itself the nominally Turkish province of Eastern Rumelia.

The German Empire, created by Bismarck at the close of the FrancoGerman War in 1871, had remained on good terms with Russia, but had insured against a possible Russian war by making the Austro-German Alliance in 1879. This treaty of alliance was kept secret; but on February 3, 1888, at a moment when Russo-German relations were uneasy, Bismarck published the Austro-German Treaty as a warning. Three days later Bismarck made the great speech, which Case alludes to, in the Reichstag. It was a complete review of the foreign policy of the German Empire, and is considered the greatest speech that Bismarck ever made.

FROM The Times, JANUARY 9, 1896.

The present attitude of Germany to England is not a mere humour of the moment, nor entirely a result of colonial jealousy, nor altogether an explosion of long-cherished animosity on account of our insularity and supposed selfishness and self-aggrandizement: it is all these; but it is also connected with a traditional policy, which may be briefly described as the conciliation of Russia at the expense of England. The great danger to Germany being her position between France and Russia, her first idea is to detach the latter. In itself, this end is nothing to England. But, as a means, Germany pursued the constant policy of protecting her own frontier by allowing Russia freedom in the East, and by this means becomes a difficulty to England in an Eastern crisis, and a greater and more lasting danger in Europe and Asia than in the Transvaal.

The famous speech of Prince Bismarck to the Reichstag on February 6, 1888, is the text and commentary for this traditional policy. He first admitted that a Russian meant a French war. He did not, however, believe that Russia in 1888 was massing her troops near the German frontier for this hostile purpose. 'Russia', he said, 'awaits a new Eastern crisis.' Having recalled four Eastern crises in this century-in 1809, 1828, 1854, 1877-he predicted that the next would come about 1899. He added that Germany would not be primarily interested in it, but would wait until the Powers most concerned, those in the Mediterranean and the Levant, had made up their minds either to agree with Russia or to fight her. Here are two points for our reflection. Prince Bismarck foresaw then the cloud which we descry now by its first shadows in Armenia; and his plan evidently was to divert Russia by giving her scope in this coming Eastern crisis.

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