.. case of victory, should be penalised by the United States, and should surrender an efficient cause of her superiority. Even the President saw the folly of this suggestion, which was repeated from time to time, and then dropped into a wastepaper basket. Its place was taken by "the Freedom of the Seas," which, ever since it was whispered in the ear of Colonel House by a cunning German before the war, had filled his and the President's brain. would have given the United دو Meanwhile, Colonel House pursued his conversations indefatigably. In November 1917 he is doing his best to find what was in Lloyd George's mind regarding peace terms. Mr Lloyd George's mind was too full of the war to have room for peace terms. And at last Colonel House, who was so far remote from the meaning of the war that he thought only of the "peace-table," presided over and dominated by "the most powerful individual in the world," was obliged to confess his failure. "I find," he mournfully confesses, "it will be useless to try to get either the French or British to designate terms. Great Britain cannot want the new Russian terms of 'no indemnities or no aggression,' and France." We should think not. "Great Britain at once would come in sharp conflict with her colonies and they might cease fighting, and France would have to relinquish her dream of Alsace and Lorraine." These things did not matter to the blessed cords no triumph at all. It simplicity of the Texan Colonel. "We are not embarrassed," said he, "by any desire for territory or commercial gain, therefore we are in a better position to outline peace terms than any of the other belligerents." Such was his comfortable opinion, that they who had suffered were the least capable of estimating their sufferings or their needs. So he and the President drew up the terms which they proposed, when the time came, to force upon Europe. When the time of conference arrived they had the business, which only concerned them at a distance, cut and dried. The Fourteen Points were there and the Covenant. Why President Wilson, who represented the least of the great Allies, if we count achievement by any other standard than the standard of money, should have presumed to dictate terms to the others we do not know. We do know that he declared that if his points were not accepted he would not participate in the settlement. The spoilt child would not play if he were not permitted to choose the game. Professor Seymour has written a chapter which he calls "The Triumph of the Fourteen Points," and it re records merely how one of the Allies, relying upon his country's wealth, attempted to rob those who had borne the burden of the fray of the fruits of victory. And in this discussion Colonel House rose somewhat above his own level. Indeed, he sadly forgot himself. He discovered that the British Cabinet had the impertinence "to rebel against the Freedom of the Seas, and wished to include reparations for losses at sea." This was intolerable, and not to be borne. And Colonel House treated the English lackeys as he thought they should be treated. He adopted the same sort of tone as when he determined to recall Sir Cecil Spring-Rice.1 "I told Wiseman," he boasts, "and later to-day told Reading, that if the British are not careful they would bring upon themselves the dislike of the world. ... I did not believe the United States and other countries would willingly submit to Great Britain's complete domination of the seas any more than to Germany's domination of the land, and the sooner the English recognised this fact the better it would be for them; furthermore, that our people, if challenged, would build a navy and maintain an army 1 We notice in these later volumes that the Colonel revised his opinion of the English Ambassador. He describes the man with whom he had threatened to break off relations as "perhaps the ablest and best-trained member of the British diplomatic service." He says that "he gave his life for his country as though he had been slain on the field of battle." Remembering the grossness of his previous insolence, we decline to believe in the sincerity of this belated praise. greater than theirs. We had Belgium, or prove disloyal to more money, we had more our entente with France. We men, and our natural resources are greater. Such a programme would be popular in America, and should England give the incentive, the people would demand the rest." There is the real Colonel House, the Jingo unveiled, the hero who stands upon the table and leads the chorus, "We have the men, we have the ships, we have the money too." Not a bad explosion for one who was in the very act of making the world safe for democracy, and seeing that, militarism having been destroyed, equal justice should be done to small states. We hope that Sir William Wiseman and Lord Reading were properly impressed. The end came soon. 'The most powerful individual in the world" was not powerful enough to get ratified the peace which he had attempted to dominate, and Colonel House himself passed into obscurity, leaving behind him the sad memory of a superfluous episode. None who lived through them is ever likely to forget the last days of July, the first days of August 1914. We passed the time in anxious uncertainty. We knew not what was being said by Cabinet Ministers, and we could do no more than hope that we should not break the pledge solemnly given to know now from Lord Morley's posthumous 'Memorandum '1 that the Cabinet also was uncertain and divided. Of this uncertainty and this division we presently got a hint from the speech delivered by Sir Edward Grey on the last Monday of our peace. It will be remembered by all who on that day were in the country that the evening paper which brought us only the first part of Sir Edward Grey's speech convinced us that the Government had renounced its obligations, and sent us to bed in shame. When in the morning we read the last part of the Foreign Secretary's speech, we found that he, feeling his way cautiously and testing the temper of the House as he went on, had in the end delivered an ultimatum to Germany. And now we learn from Lord Morley's 'Memorandum' with what difficulty Sir Edward Grey had carried the Cabinet with him. It was on or about 24th-27th July that Sir Edward took his colleagues into his confidence. "In his own quiet way," writes Morley, "which is none the less impressive for being so simple, and so free from the cassant and overemphatic tone that is Asquith's vice on such occasions, he made a memorable announcement. The time had come, he said, when the Cabinet was 1 'Memorandum on Resignation, August 1914,' by John Viscount Morley. London: Macmillan & Co. VOL. COXXIV. -NO. MOCCLVIII. 2L bound to make up its mind whether we were to take an active part with the two other Powers of the Entente, or to stand aside on the general European question, and preserve an absolute neutrality. We could no longer defer decision. Things were moving very rapidly. We could no longer wait on accident, and postpone. If the Cabinet was for neutrality, he did not think that he was the man to carry out such a policy. Here he ended in accents of unaffected calm and candour." It is thus clear that Sir Edward Grey, though he kept his own counsel in silence, though he breathed no word of his intention to France or Germany, was on the right side. His strenuous simplicity, as Morley calls it, set the other side agoing. Harcourt instantly set to work to organise the opinion of those of his colleagues who favoured neutrality. Lord Beauchamp, M'Kinnon Wood, Hobhouse, and Pease, as well as Morley, were among the zealots of peace. They already had confidence in their number, and Morley, tapping Winston Churchill on the shoulder, said with a solemn gravity, "Winston, we have beaten you after all." Mr Lloyd George was brought over to what Morley considered the right side by the news communicated to the Cabinet by the Prime Minister. Mr Asquith informed his colleagues that "he had been consulting the Governor and Deputy Governor of the Bank of Eng land, other men of light and leading in the City, also cotton men, and steel and coal men, &c., in the North of England, in Glasgow, &c., and they were all aghast at the bare idea of our plunging into the European conflict; how it would break down the whole system of credit with London at its centre, how it would cut up commerce and manufacture, they told him, and how it would hit labour and wages and prices, and when the winter came would inevitably produce violence and tumult." Mr Lloyd George said afterwards that he had never believed this nonsense. But the nonsense was characteristic of the men and the moment. Few of the Cabinet seem to have possessed foresight or to have excluded irrelevancies from their mind. Morley feared that, if Germany and Austria were beaten, Russia would be predominant in Europe; he thought also that Home Rule would be imperilled, and that many other fads, which appeared important to this one or that in domestic policy, would be overlooked. By none of the doubters do the claims of honour seem to have been considered. Even on 3rd August the Ministers were still discussing uncertainly our obligation to France and to Belgium. The party of peace grew larger, and John Burns was staunch in his determination to resign. Morley was driven by Mr Lloyd George and Sir John Simon to lunch at Lord Beauchamp's, and there was an understanding that all three were in favour of resignation. They were truly an ill-assorted collection, and loosely held together. It is evident that John Morley had not a simple faith in their professions. Pease had been lunching with the Prime Minister, "who begged him to keep the conciliabule which he was joining 'out of mischief,' or some such good-natured phrase. Pease also argued that Grey was never so stiff as he seemed. His tone convinced me that the Quaker President of the Peace Society would not be over-squeamish about having a hand in Armageddon." And Mr Lloyd George-what was he doing in this plot? John Morley was naturally perplexed. What exactly brought Lloyd George among us," he wrote, "and what the passing computations for the hour inside his lively brain, I could not make out." All these comings and goings between Lord Beauchamp's house and Downing Street were merely a form of bodily exercise. They were not destined to change the face of European history. It is improbable that the grave conspirators ever thought for a moment in terms of European history. They seem one and all to have been deficient in imagination, and to have had but a dim idea as to what would be the consequences of their action or inaction. Compared with their resolute opportunism, the threat of Armageddon appeared a trifling matter. Even when the dis solution of the Ministry was probable the sanguine eyes of John Morley could see only the spectre of a broken party. "Would even the break-up of the Ministry be less of an evil," he asked himself, both for Liberal principles, and the prospects and power of the Liberal Party, than their wholesale identification with a Cabinet committed to intervention in arms by sea and land in Central Europe?” He was sure of nothing, not even, and here he was justified by the event, "that the fervid tone of the colleagues whom he had just left, sincere though it was, would last." Wherever he looked he saw no "standardbearer." Though the ardent protestations of Mr Lloyd George and Sir John Simon still echoed in his ear, he knew, as a matter of hard fact, that the power of Asquith and Grey, and the "natural cohesion " of office, would prove too difficult for an isolated group to resist. That to which he and his friends of the moment never listened was, as we have said, the voice of honour and duty. They forgot easily the debt of duty which they owed to Belgium; they forgot the debt of honour they owed to France. They knew so little about Germany, which John Morley believed to be the community in Europe best fitted to understand England, that they could not picture to themselves what Europe would be when it had been put securely under the heel of |