THE NATIONAL REVIEW No. 324. FEBRUARY 1910 EPISODES OF THE MONTH The Predominant Preoccupation GENERAL Elections may come and General Elections may go, but the subject of National Defence remains the predominant pre-occupation of thoughtful and patriotic Englishmen. Month by month we have exposed the plot against the safety of the State of which the ringleaders were that precious Triumvirate of traitors, Messrs. George, Churchill, and Harcourt. Their object, if men may be judged by speech and action, was to transfer British naval supremacy to the Mailed Fist by reducing our Sea-power to such a condition that it would be impossible for this country even to put up a fight against her challenger, and she would automatically relapse into "a naval Austria" without even a naval Sadowa, as at the crucial moment the Demagogues anticipated cowing the democracy into unconditional surrender "in the interests of peace," owing to our obvious inferiority by land and sea. Mr. Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is a fervid Celt animated by a passionate hatred of England and of all things English, which finds frequent expression in his Welsh speeches, which are unfortunately unreported in English newspapers. Mr. Churchill is simply a Tammany Hall politician, without, however, a Tammany man's patriotism. He lives but to advertise and advance himself, and has no sentiment even for a Welsh cabbage patch like his twin at the Exchequer, and in VOL. LIV 57 the event of disaster to a community in which he inspires ever-increasing repulsion, he would be able to migrate elsewhere, and renew a promising career in congenial Transatlantic company. The third of the trio is in some respects the worst. Mr. L. V. Harcourt belongs to that pitiful type of society demagogue who slangs Peers in public and fawns upon them in private. He commands a great fortune made in Protectionist America, and is consequently independent of any misfortune to Free Trade England. He is callously indifferent to the misery which the cold-blooded Cobdenite policy has inflicted on the masses of our people, who in his eyes are so many "voters" whose single function in life is to keep Whig descendants of Plantagenets in high office. He is not so much in the limelight as his confederates, rhetoric being less in his line than backstairs intrigue. Just as Mr. Churchill hopes that Mr. Lloyd George has made himself "impossible "so Mr. Harcourt hopes that Mr. Churchill has made himself "impossible "-thus the way would be open for a plutocrat to buy the leadership of the Radical Party. Mr. Harcourt is animated by an inherited bias against his own country, which found expression yesterday in pronounced pro-Boerism, and to-day in equally pronounced pro-Germanism. He has fought against the construction of every British "Dreadnought" while minimising and defending the construction of every German "Dreadnought." "Futile Ex THE views of these avowed enemies of England and the Empire, who have controlled the Government of this country for the last four years, have found expression in many penditure" speeches, and in their every action. Their object is continually revealed in the organs reflecting their opinions, e.g., the Nation, which openly welcomed Old Age Pensions as necessarily involving fewer British battleships, while the Manchester Guardian not long since protested against the construction of any further British battleships until 1912, so that we might wait and see what Germany would do! The purpose and policy of this anti-national intrigue was audaciously set forth in the Chancellor of the Exchequer's notorious article in the Nation (October 30, 1909), denouncing the squandering of the proceeds of Sir William Harcourt's Death Duties on the renovation of British Sea-power-which, be it remembered, alone saved England and Europe from a bloody war during the Boer War, and incidentally afforded that absolute security which enabled Mr. George and other traitors to spout their treason, and to sneak about the purlieus of British town-halls disguised as policemen. In this same article the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that the proceeds of his wonderful Budget should not be squandered on "futile expenditure upon armaments." In view of the portentous preparations of Germany, who declared war against us by Act of Parliament ten years ago-in the preamble to the Navy Bill of 1900-are we not entitled to say that the conduct of our Demagogues is treason, and merits "impeachment," which, as Lord Cawdor has opportunely reminded the country, is an ancient but not an extinct process? It should embrace other conspicuous persons, whom we would gladly forget had they passed into private life, which is, unfortunately, not the case, as they have been allowed to retain positions where they can continue to undermine our Sea-power. A member of the Manchester School, which is the enemy of all our friends and the friend of all our enemies, has obligingly let the cat out of the bag, and though obscure he is a Member of Parliament, and doubtless expresses the views which his leaders are still afraid to avow. Mr. A. H. Scott, M.P., a Manchester man, in a speech at Sunderland on August 6, reported in the Sunderland Daily Echo of August 7, 1909, and, so far as we know, the report has never been repudiated, though reproduced in National Union Gleanings, said: . . . He was one of a minority which opposed extravagant expenditure on the Navy, thinking we had enough instruments of destruction. Even if the Germans did come, they would not be such fools as to interfere with the industrial and wealth-producing classes. They would only interfere with the landowning classes, and if it were the latter's land that was protected, then let them pay for the protection. The first day the Government declared that the whole upkeep of the Navy was to be found by the landowning classes, in that day it would be found that all the patriotism of that class was in the throat. -Sunderland Daily Echo, August 7, 1909. We doubt whether any member of any Parliament in the world has ever dared thus openly to invite an invader into his country, and certainly no constituency except one within the Manchester miasma would tolerate such a traitor. THE reader must always bear in mind, in order to appraise the individuals we desire to hold up to public execration, that the Sleeping First Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. McKenna) has publicly admitted that the Admiralty was warned of the coming extension of German plant for the construction of "Dreadnoughts" and everything appertaining to "Dreadnoughts" early in 1906, in spite of which the Board consented to reduce the British shipbuilding programme for that year and for the two following years. We also have it on the authority of the present disastrous Prime Minister that the Cabinet only learnt of this prodigious and menacing development of Krupps in November 1908, i.e., two and a half years after Mr. Mulliner had warned the Admiralty. This was a treasonable concealment of information by a Department of which Sir John Fisher was undisputed autocrat-since made a Peer for his "services" in compromising our Sea-power, in nobbling the Press, &c. &c.-and an acquiescence in the grotesque disarmament propaganda of the British Government, which simply served to make England the laughing-stock of Europe, while immensely stimulating Germany to greater efforts, our whining being interpreted in Berlin as evidence of our weakness and impotence to stand the racket of German competition. This calamitous folly completed the work of the German Government in converting the German people to regard the gamble of attacking England as worth the risk, and henceforward the German Navy grew by leaps and bounds without any serious murmur from the German taxpayer, who is convinced that England will ultimately foot the whole bill by the war indemnity she will be compelled to pay as the penalty of her unreadiness. War is popular in Germany because it has always been made profitable. After our Cabinet had learnt in November 1908 of the stealthy acceleration of the German programme, owing to the enormous extension of plant of which the Admiralty was admittedly aware early in 1906, even Sir John Fisher and his satellites realised that the historic exhortation of the previous year that Englishmen should "sleep quietly in their beds" was totally unfounded, and a serious programme of naval construction was accordingly laid before the Cabinet, which had just learnt of the march Germany had stolen upon us. It should be noted that Mr. McKenna, Lord Tweedmouth's successor, had been appointed First Lord owing to his reputation as a Little Navyite and an economist, supported by Dr. Macnamara-an honorary member of the notorious Napper Tandy brotherhoodand a well-meaning farmer (Mr. Lambert), who had probably never seen the sea. Victory of THESE politicians were all instinctively hostile to a big Navy, but they were honest enough to be alarmed at this sudden and sinister development of German "Dreadnoughts,' and the Admiralty Board was unanimous in recommending the provision for the commencement of six more British "Dreadnoughts" in the coming Budget-information which was divulged to the anti-national Press by the traitors in the Cabinet, who, headed by Mr. Churchill, devoted all their talents and energy to rejecting this programme. For a very brief moment resignations trembled in the balance, as there was a small though feeble party in favour of maintaining British Sea-power. But as usual the so-called Liberal Imperialists surrendered to the Demagogues. Hence the miserable compromise of four "Dreadnoughts" for the year 1909-10, and four contingent "Dreadnoughts "-the latter to be counted twice over for platform purposes, once in last year's Estimates and once in this year's Estimates, in order to allay the apprehensions of the man in the street--while the triumphant Demagogues and their organs insisted that these "contingent" "Dreadnoughts did not belong to the 1909-10 programme, but to the 1910-11 programme, in proof of which they adduced the conclusive fact that the Budget did not provide a single farthing towards their cost. Battleships can't be built for nothing even by Liberal Imperialists. Such was the pitiable conclusion of Mr. Asquith's resounding and repeated declarations that côute que côute he would be no party to the diminution of our naval supremacy, and would maintain intact the two-Power standard with a 10 per cent. margin. So far was this pledge from being fulfilled that Ministers have been compelled to confess, and nothing said of them by any of their opponents has been half so damning as this admission, that Great Britain, to whom her Navy is her all in all, because |