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truthful," while this particular episode was noted, within an hour of the conversation, in my diary."

Lady Guendolen Cecil was the next critic to take our author to task. The result was disastrous to the diarist, and goes far to shake public confidence in her as a raconteur, and encourages a suspicion that where her personal prejudices are involved her Autobiography unwittingly contains a due proportion of romance among genuine reminiscences. It is not that she means to romance-she may be a passionate lover of the truth-but her feelings are too strong for her pen. Many of us were surprised at the words put into the mouth of the late Lord Salisbury, so inconsonant with everything one ever heard of him.

I asked Lord Salisbury if he had ever heard Chamberlain speak. (He was Secretary of State for the Colonies at the time.)

LORD SALISBURY: It is curious you should ask me this. I heard him for the first time this afternoon.

MARGOT: Where did you hear him ? And what was he speaking about ? LORD SALISBURY: I heard him at Grosvenor House. Let me see . . . what was he speaking about? . . . (reflectively): Australian washerwomen? think . . . or some such thing.

MARGOT: What did you think of it?

LORD SALISBURY: He seems a good, būsinesslike speaker.

MARGOT: I suppose at this moment Mr. Chamberlain is as much hated as Gladstone ever was?

I

LORD SALISBURY: There is a difference-Mr. Gladstone was hated, but he was very much loved. Does anyone love Mr. Chamberlain ?

That Mrs. Asquith loved Gladstone and hated Chamberlain goes without saying. Hence her belief that Lord Salisbury shared her sentiments. The sequel is instructive:

One day after this conversation he came to see me in Cavendish Square, bringing with him a signed photograph of himself. This was in the year 1904, at the height of the controversy over Protection, when Arthur Balfour was Prime Minister.

Knowing that Lord Salisbury was a Free Trader, I did not quite like to mention the political situation; but, guessing my embarrassment, he opened the conversation at once by asking me if I thought that the fiscal controversy would come to anything. I was shocked by his apparent detachment, and said:

"But do you mean to tell me you don't think there is any danger of England becoming Protectionist ? "

LORD SALISBURY (with a sweet smile): Not the slightest! There will always be a certain number of foolish people who will be Protectionists, but they will easily be overpowered by the wise ones. Have you ever known a man of firstrate intellect in this country who was a Protectionist ?

MARGOT: I never thought of it, but Lord Milner is the only one I can think of for the moment.

He entirely agreed with me, and then said:

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'No, you need not be anxious. Free Trade will always win against Protection in this country. This will not be the trouble of the future." MARGOT: Then what will be ?

LORD SALISBURY: The House of Lords is the difficulty that I foresee. I was surprised and incredulous and said sweetly :

"Dear Lord Salisbury, I have heard of the House of Lords all my life! But, stupid as it has been, no one will ever have the power to alter it. Why do you prophesy that it will cause trouble ? 22

LORD SALISBURY: You may think me vain, Mrs. Asquith, but as long as I am there nothing will happen. I understand my lords thoroughly, but when I go mistakes will be made: the House of Lords will come into conflict with the Commons.

This narrative was so explicit that it might have passed muster among the unknowing, but for the unfortunate fact to which Lady Guendolen Cecil was constrained to call attention. As she at once wrote to the Sunday Times :

Memories are notoriously treacherous, and I feel bound to call attention, however reluctantly, to the surprising tricks that Mrs. Asquith's has played her in connection with her intercourse with my father, the late Lord Salisbury. In the instalment of her Autobiography which was published in your issue of the 15th inst., she recalls, among other things, a conversation with him as having taken place in her house in Cavendish Square in the year 1904, and recounts observations which he then made upon the fiscal controversy—“ then at its height." Lord Salisbury had died the year before-in August, 1903. Not only so he was already seriously ill when the controversy broke out in the early summer of that year. He took no part in it, and was never in London after it had begun, remaining in close retirement at Hatfield until his death. Therefore, no such conversation as is referred to could possibly have taken place, either at the time specified or at any other time.

Lady Guendolen added:

The other conversations reported cannot be brought to the same test of external fact. As regards the bulk of their matter, those who were personally acquainted with my father's habits and conversation must judge for themselves, upon internal evidence, how far Mrs. Asquith's recollections are to be trusted. There is one point, however, involving considerations of more impor tance, which requires special mention. The depreciatory references to Mr. Chamberlain-particularly the singularly infelicitous suggestion of his incapacity to attract affection-would in any case have been difficult of acceptance. Where such comments upon a colleague of many years' standing are presented as having been addressed by Lord Salisbury to a lady belonging to the opposite party in politics, and with whom his acquaintance was of the slightest, their authenticity must be pronounced wholly inadmissible.

Little abashed by this rebuke, Mrs. Asquith answered:

While the substance of my reminiscence of the late Lord Salisbury is absolutely accurate, I have to apologize for two minor inaccuracies. The date 1904 is an obvious misprint, and should have been 1903. In Liberal circles

the fiscal controversy was always acute; Free Trade and Protection were discussed long before Mr. Chamberlain's opening speech on the subject in, I think, Scotland, May 1903 (my diaries are in London or I could verify the exact date). It was careless of me to write "at the height of the controversy over Protection." I will correct this and in the same connection that Lord Hugh Cecil had been heard by my husband speaking on Free Trade, among other subjects.

Whatever happens, Mrs. Asquith, it will be observed, remains "absolutely accurate." Lady Guendolen Cecil is not, however, informed, like Dr. Huxley, that the challenged episode "had been written down within an hour of the conversation, in my diary," while the vagueness of the diarist's memory for political events transpires in her suggestion that Mr. Chamberlain's "opening speech on the fiscal question was "I think in Scotland, May 1903 (my diaries are in London or I could verify the exact date.)" Mr. Chamberlain, as our readers remember, first raised the issue of Tariff Reform at Birmingham in May 1903, though his big platform campaign opened in Glasgow the following September. It is a small point. Accuracy is a habit which some people never acquire. Were Mrs. Asquith's Autobiography more accurate, it might be less readable, but as it is, we must take her impressions on politics and politicians with a grain or two of salt, and the future historian who relies upon them for his inside information because the author was so long at the hub of the universe (No. 10 Downing Street) is likely to mislead others as he had himself been misled. Is it too much to hope that before this volume assumes final form some discreet friend may be allowed to "blue pencil" all the dubious or otherwise objectionable passages? There would be enough left to entertain without offending. In its present form it will hardly help our Flappers to lead the higher life.

READER

HOW POLAND SAVED HERSELF

AMONG all the adventurous romances with which the history of Poland is crowded; among all the high military feats which have been placed in the past to the credit of Polish arms; among all the multitude of services rendered by Poland to civilization, there stands out pre-eminent her recent overthrow of the Red Army and her defeat of the last barbarian invasion from the Eastern snows.

The story will not be known in its fullness for many years yet, and a brief summary of the military events as they developed is all that can be attempted here.

As is well known, the conclusion of Pilsudski's spring offensive, undertaken to anticipate a Bolshevik blow which was known to be in preparation for the early summer, saw the Polish front advanced to the line of the Dnieper, the Beresina and the Dvina, with a bridgehead covering Kiev. On this front, far more favourable for defensive purposes than that formerly held in the middle of the White Russian plains, which had been buttressed by no natural obstacle, the Poles from the middle of May to the end of June resisted all their adversary's efforts to advance, and threw back in complete defeat a counter-offensive on a large scale against the northern sector of the line between the Dvina and the Pripet marshes. By this time, however, the Soviet Higher Command had assembled on its Western front overwhelmingly superior forces and renewed the attack on a large scale. The operation as planned by them was to be in two parts-the prelude, a holding attack by the crack cavalry corps of Budienny in the gap between the Dnieper and the Dniester; the main act, a drive by two armies against the already weakened sector of the Polish battlefront north of the Pripet marshes.

The actual course of events fell out rather differently, though the effect of their operations probably surpassed even the Red leaders' fondest hopes. Budienny managed to work his way into the rear of the Polish lines southwest of Kiev; those units which held firm had to be withdrawn in conformity with those going back, and presently the whole front in the south melted away westwards. Kiev was evacuated (without those atrocities or that devastation which Bolshevik propagandists, whether in Moscow or in London, asserted to have occurred), and though the forces holding it were successfully extricated,

all the gains of the recent offensive had to be abandoned, and the Polish units were not able to regroup themselves for a renewed stand until fresh reinforcements reached them on the eastern frontier of Galicia.

Meanwhile, to the north the Polish High Command had decided that to await the imminent Red attack in their illprepared advanced positions south of the Dvina would be folly, and a "Hindenburg retreat was planned, which should bring them back onto the old German lines of defence covering Vilna, Lida and Pinsk. This movement was actually commenced a day before the grand Soviet attack was timed to open, and the latter thus became a blow in the air. For some days the retiring Polish columns lost contact with their pursuers and regrouped themselves in the German entrenchments as they had intended. But the prolonged retreat, for which there seemed at the moment no need, demoralized the troops, disorganized the supply services, and caused the commanders of the higher formations to lose touch with the situation. In fact, the army had proved itself unequal to the physical and moral strain of the withdrawal, and was in no fit state to make a serious stand in its new positions.

The Bolsheviks pressed forward, swinging their extreme right wing well to the front and striving to envelop the Polish left flank, which was but inadequately covered by a detachment at Vilna. This town fell into the hands of the Reds with little resistance; a treaty of peace signed a few days before with Lithuania assigned it to that country, but the Lithuanian army was not strong enough to be a match for the Reds, who settled themselves in Vilna for the present and pushed their advance guards and cavalry at full speed upon Grodno.

The Polish line being now entirely outflanked, any further stand in the old German trenches became impossible, and the army streamed away to the westward. This renewed retreat ere long degenerated into something like a rout; certain units indeed held together and fought a series of stubborn rearguard actions against their pursuers, who followed only with caution and deliberation; but the majority rapidly lost all military order and became dissolved into bands of scattered and unorganized soldiers, following the first leader who presented himself or no leader at all, and quite incapable of effective or concerted action of any kind.

In a word, by the middle of of July the Polish armies in the north were no longer a fighting force, as we understand the term, and the Bolshevik advance was being