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5. M. las chiefly maintained as a convenient whipping-boy when en he told thing goes so hopelessly wrong that even the Premier's ss can't pretend that everything is as it should be. Let the pst hope that Lord Hardinge's appointment to Paris may be liance serpreted as a sign of returning sanity, as a recognition of fact that Foreign Affairs are less likely to be made a mess e point if conducted from the Foreign Office than if manipulated on & hi the Kindergarten over the way. After all, the raison. Theatre of a Foreign Office and let us add of a Foreign sa bulimister-is the transaction of Foreign Affairs. Lord Curzon ed to be aware of a truism which he now appears to have gotten, but which he would be well-advised to reassimilate. herwise many of us will be reduced to praying that the sh Amable Earl may shortly become a still more noble Marquess last id take his congé.

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se heNOTHER tardy sign of grace is Sir Eyre Crowe's appointment be at Lord Hardinge's successor as Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Thus at last Sir Eyre Crowe comes into his own. The announcement is warmly welcomed by friend reryone with any knowledge of the rôle of the British ften soreign Office during the last quarter of a century. He is Ons exceptionally able and clear-brained man with a mastery Dhis subject, and a disinterested public servant with a onery fine record and a character that secures him the of lonfidence of his colleagues and the respect of his superiors adven when, as frequently happens, they reject his robust Ind uncompromising advice. Had Sir Eyre Crowe been anistened to before the war, peace would at any rate have "Cad a dog's chance. He knew and understood the Prussian ully, and realized that no more than other bullies could he e propitiated by "soft sawder" nor permanently bought ff by blackmail, and that, of all bullies, he was the worst do run away from. Unfortunately, other advice was more alatable to the powers that were, and Sir Eyre Crowe became unwelcome to Pacifist chiefs because he dissented rom Lord Haldane. By the irony of fate he became an object of general obloquy when the storm burst, being made

a scapegoat by ignorant clamour for every blunder against und which his official career had been in perpetual protest. There were few men in British diplomacy whom the tra Wilhelmstrasse was more anxious to oust from foreign d affairs than Sir Eyre Crowe, because he was among the microscopic minority to whom German psychology was and open book. He could never be "nobbled" by the Germans With other Foreign Office officials he tried to save the Peace Conference from fiasco, but once more his views had become unfashionable, although it is common knowledge that when at he ultimately sat on the Peace Conference as our representa tive, British interests were more effectively championed than at any time since the Armistice. But the Kindergarten grew restive, and finally Sir Eyre Crowe was eliminated asi being too "anti-German " to suit a pro-German Coalition Anyhow, he knew how to gain the esteem and regard of men so diverse and penetrating as M. Clemenceau and Marshal Foch. In his new sphere he may be able to do somethings to retrieve the situation if political charlatans are not to vain or too conceited to listen to sense and knowledge.

AMONG disquieting features of Coalition foreign policy our diplomatic desertion of Belgium. At the Paris Peace Conference last year we appear to havi Belgium entrusted the decision of questions concerning Belgium to General Smuts. As such questions usually affected Holland-who, in the past, was aggrandized tr Belgium's detriment-it is needless to inquire how the were regarded by a politician of Dutch prepossessions, and one hand in glove with Dutch diplomats. King Albert's Government was entitled to expect British support on the question of the Scheldt Estuary, whose control by Holland is offensive to all patriotic Belgians. It was not forthcoming and, as a Daily News correspondent at Brussels lately reminded us: "King Albert, on his present visit to Brazil, had to sail from Zeebrugge instead of from Antwerp, because no Belgian warship can go up the river to the Belgian ports without Holland's permission." The Belgians had imagined, as did most Englishmen, that one of the first fruits of the

er agwar would be the redress of this grievance, and it was not pranreasonable to suppose, after all Belgium had endured hom and after all Britain had suffered since 1914 at the hands 1 foof Holland, that our Government would insist on a settlenong ment dictated by our common interests, to say nothing of wommon decency. Unfortunately, on this as on other Gerquestions, the friends of pseudo-German Holland carried he too many guns. To the amazement and chagrin of Belgian bestatesmanship, Downing Street adopted an attitude of at letachment indistinguishable from hostility, and in a similar presespirit joined forces with President Wilson to prevent the ned election of Brussels as the chosen home of the League ergarf Nations, which was accordingly relegated to Geneva. ateAnother territorial grievance, as mentioned by the same Dalit Daily News correspondent, is "Dutch sovereignty over of part of Limburg, which thrusts awkwardly down into Belgian Marerritory, and through which, incidentally, large German ethorces escaped in October and November 1918." Connot dering the amount of British eloquence expended on the dgefelgian cause between 1914 and 1918, we cannot be surprised

hat recent Coalition policy should arouse resentment in licyelgium, or that relations should be seriously strained Pesetween Holland and Belgium. When the inside history ha Dutch War Policy is disclosed, as it may be some day, ernihere will be no less indignation in this country at the sualonduct of those of our Ministers who invariably act as ed hough we were under some irredeemable obligation to the thutch. As Sir Edward Carson observes in another conection, it is another manifestation of "the microbe of berank." The Minister without a Portfolio has confessed s much.

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MINISTERS Without Portfolios have more time than collateagues burdened with Departments to verify their facts. They have consequently less excuse for misrepresentations. Among recent achievements n this line, that of Sir L. Worthington Evans at a meeting of his constituents at Colchester-if correctly reported-is oteworthy. He was asked "what the Government had

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done to fulfil their promise that the Kaiser would be brought t to trial and ample reparation exacted from the Germans." The true answer is, as we all know, "nothing.". But Sida L. Worthington Evans told his audience "that the Kaiserhat had not had a trial because we could not get him without going to war with Holland." There are too many intellett gent people in and around Colchester to permit any such fable going down. The sitting Member should try again To suggest that a country so deeply wedded to peace a Holland proved herself to be during the World War would o risk her existence for the sake of the ex-Kaiser is a patent absurdity, and though politicians are apt to regard any statement as good enough for the platform, this is really beyond the permissible. The Kaiser's trial was never seriously pressed because influential British Ministers deemed it too great a humiliation to impose on poor dear Ger many." Sir L. Worthington Evans's further assertion tha the Coalition had fulfilled their promises as regards "repara tion," by securing the surrender of German shipping territory, etc., is equally beside the mark. The Britis electorate were promised in terms by Coalition vote-catcher that Germany should pay British war costs. She has no paid one mark towards them, and the whole influence the Lloyd George-Worthington Evans Government ha been directed to sparing the Fatherland this penalty. Ou Coalitioners would apparently sooner quarrel with Fran than inflict such an injury on Germany. We have no even been paid the cost of the Army of Occupation, reduce though it be to a derisory figure; nor shall we be, so lon as we are governed by men who, judging by their conduc prefer to bleed England white rather than impose an indemnity on Germany.

COLONEL AMERY, the capable Under-Secretary for the Colonies-who was lately rumoured to be about to succeed Lord Milner as Colonial Secretary-has man aged to say the word in season on a subject that lends itself to perversity. The occasion was a luncheon of the British Passenger Agents' Association

A Word in
Season

be brat the Hotel Victoria on October 12th. In proposing the Gem Overseas Dominions," Colonel Amery, who was a traveller Bas well as a student before becoming a politician, expressed the surprise that Mr. Marriott, the Member for Oxford University, m should have committed himself to the heresy that "the ny Dessence of the Dominion status consisted in the moral right any to peaceful secession." The speaker doubted whether any try responsible Dominion statesman would endorse that definipetion (at a pinch we could name South Africans who might Vardo so). Colonel Amery added:

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It was perfectly true that if the great mass of the people of any Dominion were willing to sacrifice the privileges and abjure the duties and responsibilities of their world-wide British citizenship, and if their elected representatives and as responsible Ministers were prepared to tear up their Constitution and break their oath of allegiance, we in this country would neither have the power nor the heart to attempt to stop them.

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That, as the speaker pointed out, was a statement of fact, but not of Constitutional or moral right," and he proceeded to paint the other side of the picture:

After all, it was equally true that we in this country could at any moment, has if we chose, decline to recognize any further obligation to defend the interests or territories of the Dominions, and could refuse to treat our fellow-subjects from overseas, when they came here, as fellow-citizens. We could also secede nt from the Empire if we chose. Nobody could forcibly forbid or restrain us. Does that give us the right either constitutionally or morally to do so? No. However bloodlessly it might be accomplished, secession on the part of any of us "would still be in the nature of a revolution, an unconstitutional act, and, what Te is more, a profound moral wrong to the Commonwealth and to the whole of humanity. So let us hear no more of the moral right of any of us here in the Old Country, or overseas, to destroy the unity of the British Crown, to impair So the heritage of our common citizenship, or to ruin that greatest and noblest work of time-the British Commonwealth of free nations.

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Colonel Amery went on to describe the union of the British Empire as "indissoluble." This badly wanted saying, when efforts are being made by political empiricists and ideologues to merge the British Empire in the League of Nations and to use the latter to dissolve the former, so that "the brotherhood of man "" may eventuate in that World State with which we are threatened by the young lions of "the Round Table."

VOL. LXXVI

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