Staff under the Order in Council of January 1916, defining his functions and giving him real powers within the military sphere, was interpreted as an adequate guarantee that amateur strategists would "keep off the grass." But the public were not aware that Mr. Lloyd George-who has a much higher opinion of his own strategic genius than any one else had been trying ever since June 1916 to cripple the Imperial General Staff, and had demanded when he became War Minister, on the death of Lord Kitchener, that the most important of Sir William Robertson's functions should be transferred to him. In other words, the position to which Lord Kitchener had been reconciled was not good enough for this aspiring civilian. We should also have been warned of what was in store for us-but here again the incident remained shrouded in mystery-by Mr. Lloyd George's effort last February to eliminate our Commander-in-Chief in France, Sir Douglas Haig, and place the British Army under General Nivelle. Our Only Ir goes without saying that the Five who replaced the TwentyThree are equally "irreplaceable." Of this they are sincerely convinced, and it is declared morning, noon, and night by the numerous organs, great and small, which in one way or another have become attached to the Government car. But beyond the range of this desperate clatter there is a widespread and ever-growing feeling that it would be far better for the country to lose the War Cabinet than to lose the war. This is flat treason in the eyes of the 120 or 140 Members of Parliament for whom official employment, honorific or otherwise, has been found. It is leseLloyd George in the eyes of the vast Secretariat that flutters around Downing Street, but elsewhere the resentment against the War Cabinet has reached overwhelming proportions and it seems incredible that the newspaper proprietors who form the Prime Minister's bodyguard should be able to sustain him much longer. For one thing, however, we should be grateful to Mr. Lloyd George. The peculiar regime he instituted greatly facilitates a change of the head of the Government. No one wishes to have a "Ministerial crisis" of the conventional type, lasting a fortnight, during which Government is practically suspended while some seventy or eighty Peers and Commoners adjust their various "claims to as many offices which another seventy or eighty vacate for their benefit. It would be intolerable to upset all the Departments just as Ministers are beginning to master their complicated jobs. There is no need and certainly no demand for such a convulsion. It is here that Mr. Lloyd George's "reform" is serviceable. Leaving the Departments unmolested -or at any rate most of them-reconstruction could be confined to the War Cabinet. Such a suggestion naturally outrages Tapers and Tadpoles, who live by crises involving the largest possible displacement, but we would remind them that we are at war and that all that is vital is some temporary arrangement until the end of the war, without prejudice to any personal or Party claims. ASSUMING that the rest of the Administration remained as it is, and that the Five retired, though Mr. Barnes might acceptably stay on unless some other Labour stalwart took Other Fives his place, there would be four places to fill if the Cabinet retained its present size. In the natural desire to escape Party Leaders who have not shone, and to import new blood, it is suggested in the Morning Post, the Spectator, and other independent journals that Mr. Lowther, the Speaker of the House of Commons, should undertake the Premiership. He is a man of high character, wide experience, and undoubted ability, but it may be doubted whether he would care to repeat the Addington experiment, which rather went to show that a man might be an ideal chairman of a great assembly, and yet lack the driving force required to beat Napoleons or Mailed Fists. Then Mr. Lowther has been intimately associated with Front Benches all his life, and the "Front-Bench mind" is not what we need. Sir Eric Geddes and Sir Auckland Geddes are both efficient men and determined men, who know what they want. Either of them would strengthen the Cabinet, though there are some reasons for choosing a Labour Prime Minister. Lord Sumner is another "outsider" who is highly regarded, although he labours under the disability of being a lawyer, but he has the advantage of not being a "political lawyer," and he is known to possess exceptional brains as well as backbone. It is perhaps unnecessary for us to reiterate that what all our War Cabinets have lacked is competence in war, and for this reason, though only for this reason, we may welcome Sir William Robertson's ejection from the General Staff, as it renders him available for any fresh combination to which he would be a tower of strength, as his character is universally recognized as a great national asset, and when the history of the war comes to be written we shall appreciate what a great man he is. With him might be associated Mr. Asquith, who is acknowledged even by political opponents to have first-rate abilities, while there is no better consultant on public affairs. Then notable men of business like Lord Leverhulme suggest themselves, as also Admiral Beatty and Mr. Hughes, the Australian Prime Minister. Mr. Austen Chamberlain's star is rising. He should have a future, provided he resists Mr. Lloyd George's invitations to commit political suicide by joining his Government. There is, indeed, an embarrassment of riches directly we discard the shibboleth that Messrs. Lloyd George and Bonar Law with My Lords Milner and Curzon are the only living Britons fit to manage the war. There would be no difficulty in finding a War Cabinet equal to the present-half a dozen could be named off-handnor need we be intimidated by parliamentary considerations, as we learnt on the fall of Mr. Asquith that parliamentary majorities follow the patronage. THE past month has produced a particularly painful episode provoking bitter controversy, of which the echoes are still audible Painful and the effects operative. Needless to say we refer to the War Cabinet's treatment of Sir William Robertson. We do not, however, propose to enlarge upon this topic, as the harm is done and cannot be undone, and is altogether too serious to permit of inflammation. There is, however, one important point which must be set right, as we cannot afford to allow the Cabal which has conducted this successful vendetta against one of the first soldiers of the age to cast upon our Allies the kudos or odium of their own achievements. It is intolerable that the British public should be encouraged to believe that the French Government or any other Allied Government represented at Versailles, or any Allied soldier consulted by any of these governments, ever suggested or imagined such an interference with the Higher Command of the British Army as that to which Mr. Lloyd George and Lord Milner-who had carte blanche from the War Cabinet-committed themselves and their colleagues and this country. Even this "tame " Parliament would have repudiated the arrangement had it realized its genesis, which was obscured by the usual ingenious compound of suppressio veri et suggestio falsi. We are debarred by the tortuous and far-reaching regulations grafted on the Defence of the Realm Act from telling our readers the whole truth, which is common knowledge in Paris. We shall therefore confine ourselves to saying that M. Clemenceau had no more responsibility than the writer for the project that was substituted for his own unimpeachable proposal, approved by every soldier, French and British; and we can appreciate the surprise of all the Allies assembled at the Trianon that on British initiative unity of control in the British Army was sacrificed and the position of both our Commander-in-Chief in France and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff made as difficult as possible. It cannot be allowed that Mr. Lloyd George and Lord Milner should ride off on the pretext that the emasculation of the Imperial General Staff, which the former had Honour where long sought and in which the latter now acquiesced, Due was inspired by any desire for "co-ordination on the Western Front," with which it had no connexion. Indeed, that principle demanded, as the French were the first to recognize, that our Chief of the Imperial General Staff should occupy a similar position with similar powers to General Foch, the French Chief of the General Staff, Sir William Robertson's "opposite number” in France. As Mr. Lloyd George and Lord Milner profess to be proud of what they have done, which a faithful Press duly applauds, there is less than no reason for crediting it to any one else, least of all to our astonished Allies. Nor can any juggling be allowed to conceal the fact that this unwarrantable civilian interference in a strictly military matter has no serious military approval. It may be the best and wisest thing in the world to entrust the War Cabinet, plus Lord Derby, with the Higher Command of the British Army. In that case let honour go where honour is due, but do not let us pretend that Sir Douglas Haig bears any responsibility in the matter. Those who have at last succeeded in getting rid of Sir William Robertson must at least have the courage of their opinions. They will assuredly VOL. LXXI 3 be held responsible for anything that goes wrong. The ultimate result of all this manoeuvring is that a soldier whose record at the General Staff was a theme of universal admiration has been ejected. Sir William stood for a sound and vital principle universally approved by men of sense. He had the misfortune to serve a Government unworthy of such service. General Plumer, another of the ablest soldiers in Europe, refused his place, now shorn of essential powers, for the benefit of Lord Derby-whose place is already bespoken by more than one aspirant-and in his dilemma Mr. Lloyd George was constrained to recall Sir Henry Wilson from Versailles to London, thus upsetting the plan he had specially commended to Parliament. Sir Henry Rawlinson now takes Sir Henry Wilson's place at Versailles. If any one can explain the mutual relations of these two distinguished and capable soldiers, as also their relations with the Commander-inChief, we shall be grateful. Sir William Robertson retires for the time to the Eastern Command. He emerges from this affair with much enhanced prestige. Beaverbrookism As already mentioned, when the War Cabinet lost Sir Edward Carson the Prime Minister, who plumes himself on his " political strategy," is understood to have wished to appoint Mr. Winston Churchill. But there was sufficient protest against another "amateur strategist" to prevent it. The Premier's second string is believed to have been Lord Beaverbrook, for whom he entertains undying gratitude since December 1916, and whom, in common with Mr. Bonar Law, he regards as one of the most remarkable men of this or any other age. The project of promoting Lord Beaverbrook to the War Cabinet miscarried for the same reason as the "Churchill stunt," with the result that that nobleman had to be consoled with the more modest office of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster-conveniently vacated by another of our Lancashire nobility, Lord Cawley; but to gild the pill and to increase the importance of an office which had once been discarded by Mr. Churchill as a well-paid sinecure, Lord Beaverbrook was also appointed “ Minister in Charge of Propaganda," thus assuming duties which had been discharged by Sir Edward Carson. An ungrateful public, instead of congratulating itself that Lord Beaverbrook was not to manage the war from the Cabinet, was highly indignant at his being placed |