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    "source_title": "Encyclopaedia Britannica (1926)",
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    "chunk_id": "1926:engine textile machinery turbines steam engineers military:66e6104a24a7",
    "title": "ENGINE; TEXTILE MACHINERY; TURBINES, STEAM. ENGINEERS, MILITARY",
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    "verified_text": "in the ever-expanding application of engineering science to the ends of war, we note the evolution of a natural process, and a modern classification of engineer work. the former evidences itself in the tendency to fissiparism; that is to say, the separation from the parent body of specialised engineer branches. thus from the royal engineers arose the signals corps; the tank corps may be regarded as a specialised branch of the original corps of ordnance; the royal air force had its origin in the balloon units of the royal engineers; and in the world war the royal engineers were required to father a special or- ganisation of troops for gas warfare. when a nation expends its military forces and puts forth a serious military effort, this fissiparous tendency becomes more marked, as it becomes essen- tial to form specialised branches for electrical and mechanical work, railway construction, inland water transport, road main- tenance, quarry operation, forestry, etc. it is in these specialised units that full opportunity offers for the utilisation to the best advantage of the civil engineer expert. i, the european services engineer work in war is now classified under two heads (1) field engineering and (2) engineer services. field engineering —for this purpose, field engineer units (field companies and field squadrons, r.e. in the british army) are incorporated in infantry and cavalry divisions as integral portions of these divisions, taking their orders only from the com- mander of the division, and entirely at his disposal. these con- stitute the true engineer arm. they may at any moment be required to execute works of very diverse natures, whether they are bridges or roads, or the development of water supply for the troops to facilitate an advance, or construction of works of de- fence or obstacles to assist in the holding of a position of defence, or demolitions to hamper a pursuing enemy. * the essential conditions are speed and the adaptation to the end in view of the materials available at the moment on the spot. for this purpose, the engineer officer must possess a thorough knowledge of the methods and psychology of troops of other arms; he must be able to grasp intuitively the intention or wishes of the commander of the force; whilst, technically, he must know the utmost limit to which he may risk stressing the available materials. engineer services —apart from the field engineer units, how- ever, there is a vast volume of enginecring to be performed in the zones in rear of the fighting troops. for an army operating overseas, i.e., for the normal wars of the british army, it is neces- sary to provide, in the theatre of war, bases of supply from which radiate lines of supply: through these bases and along these channels flow all the reinforcements in men and animals and the munitions, food and innumerable stores required to maintain the army in the field. it is inevitably found that the volume of these supplies far exceeds that for which the available ports, railways, roads and waterways, have been developed for the purposes of commerce. the necessary development of the rear zones, for the purposes of the army, thus involves normally port, railway and road construction, as well as the provision of camps, electric power stations, waterworks, etc., on a scale which would be re- quired to house the population of a large city. in addition, de- ~ velopment of local resources and the provision of repair factorics in order to ease the strain on sea transport demands the organi- sation of other specialised engineer activities. these services are, in the british army, organised under and directed by engineer commanders, and require, in the case of a serious national effort, the mobilisation of civil engineer resources. engineers in european armies.—in the case of european armies, whose serious efforts always are directed to the defence of their land frontiers, the problem of maintenance of these ‘rudiments of an organised reserve. engineers, military armies can be foreseen by provision of suitable rail communica- tion in time of peace, so that, on the outbreak of war, the problem is reduced to that of diverting the manufacturing energy and the peace trade routes of the country to the purposes of war. in consequence, the function of their military engineers in effect begins and ends with field engineering. even in this rele the problem which confronted the staffs of continental armies im- mediately before 1914 was essentially different from that of the british war office. for the national armies of continental powers, it was not only possible, but desirable, to provide spe- cialised units for separate branches of field engineering, e.g., rail- way construction units, bridging units, etc. for several obvious reasons, this is not feasible in the case of the small british army; nor is it normally essential in the first stage of war to provide engineer troops in the proportion which will be necessary after the first few months of war. during the first stage of intense mobility it may be possible to obtain effective help from engineering science with a 5% proportion of engincers; but this proportion must in- evitably be increased to 10%, or even higher, if the war tends towards static conditions. the proportion of engineers in the british armies in 1918 had risen to 123%. training of engineers —the primary aim in the education of the engineer officer being to produce the field engineer, the cadet in the british army is given an 18 months’ course between the ages of 18 and 20 years at the royal military academy, wool- wich, where elementary military knowledge is imparted and spe- cial attention is given to elementary sciences. from the royal military academy he passes as a commissioned officer to a two years’ course at the school of military engineering at chatham and the university of cambridge, where, in addition to the con- tinuance of his military studies, -he is specially and intensively trained in elementary engineering. subsequently, after some years of practical experience with engineer units, a2 proportion are given courses of education in specialised subjects, e.g., electrical and mechanical engineering, while another small proportion are put through the staff college course. during their subsequent career a large number of engineer officers are employed on the supervision of construction of barracks, fortifications, roads, water supplies and other military works at home and abroad. the rank and file of the royal engineers are obtained from two sources, (1) the enlistment of artisans and ‘‘ mates ”’ and (2) the apprenticeship of boys to trades at military technical schools. the objective of subsequent training 1n engineer units is to im- part military training and improve the handiness of all ranks with a view to obtaining the versatility required for field engi- neering and the co-ordination of all ranks in a unit to effect field works, especially the construction of bridges, in the minimum possible time. (see bridging.) (je wes28:) ii. the united states the engineer component of the regular army of the united states is the corps of engineers, which is charged with the en- gineering duties appropriate to the military establishment, and also certain public works functions mainly in connection with the improvement of rivers and harbours. prior to the national defense act of 1916 the maximum strength of the corps was 240 officers and 1,968 enlisted men forming three battalions of four companies each. under the act of r916 the corps of engineers was to consist of 505 officers (including those assigned to public works), seven regiments (foot), two battalions (mounted) and one band. as the increase was to be made in five successive increments, the corps, on april 6 1917, when the united states decided to enter the world war, num- bered 256 officers and 2,228 enlisted men, organised in three regiments and one mounted company. there were in existence a few companies of engineers in the national guard, as also the during the war several changes were made in the organisation of the army, and many regiments of engineers were organised for special (non-divisional) purposes. however, under the system of recruitment, voluntary at first and later compulsory, craftsmen of all sorts were to be found in the combatant regiments of engineers attached to english infantry divisions. the change from trench warfare to the war of manoeuvre eliminated the need for specialist troops, and all engineer regiments performed service as pionecrs and sappers. at the armistice the divisional regiment, with its train, had a strength of 49 officers and 1,695 enlisted men. during the war, 13,527 officers were commissioned as engineers, of which the maximum enlisted strength was approximately 285,000 men. of this number 233,000 served in the theatre of operations. reorganisation.—under the reorganisation act of 1920 the corps of engineers was fixed at 602 officers and 12,000 enlisted men, to be formed into tactical units as the president might direct. engineer troops were classified as general and special, the former including combatant regiments and mounted battalions for infantry and cavalry divisions, with general service regiments and auxiliary battalions (coloured) for the line of communica- tions. special engineer troops included bridge and motor-truck trains, topographical and camouilage troops, railway and other special units as might be needed. lack of appropriations has necessitated certain reductions, and on dec. 31 1925 there were actually in service 500 officers and 5,040 enlisted men including 330 native philippine troops. a number of the units authorised by the act of 1920 were, however, in an inactive skeletonised status. training of officers.—the officers are obtained mainly from the u.s. military academy at west point, a limited number of the most capable graduates at the military academy being appointed to the engineers. inasmuch as the curriculum at the military academy is directed to general military fundamentals, the graduates require additional instruction to fit them for serv- ice as subalterns in the corps of engineers. for the special training of its younger officers, and for the development of en- listed specialists, a military engineering school is maintained at fort humphreys, va., near washington, d.c. the instruction embraces subjects of a general military nature, as well as those pertaining to the application of engineering to the functions of the corps of engineers both in war and in peace. during the first three years of a young officer’s career he is assigned for one year to duty with troops, and spends one year as student at a selected civilian technical institute, where he re- ceives a degree in some branch of engineering, and one year at the army engineer school, where he pursues the “ company officers’ course.” a few officers are appointed to the corps from civil technical institutions and these are assigned for two years with troops and then to the army engineer school to take the “company officers’ course.”” eventually the education of the appointees derived from the two sources is reduced to a com- mon denominator, and no subsequent distinction is made be- tween them in respect of duty or promotion. their technical schooling is supplemented by assignment as junior assistants to officers engaged in public works, where their training is con- tinued in accordance with programmes formulated in the office of the chief of engineers. the practice of appointing the graduate of the military acad- emy to civilian institutions for technical training has many advantages, in that it gives the young officer the benefit of the complete educational plant and specially trained staff found only at large institutions, and his professional education is attested by a scholastic degree of known merit; as a student he comes into competition with young men who will subsequently practise engineering in civil life, and he and his civilian fellows thus ob- tain a mutual knowledge of and respect for one another’s ability. the young officers become members of the fraternal societies and alumni associations of the various institutions, which circum- stance promotes a knowledge of the regular army and an interest in national defence on the part of the civilian practitioner. this is particularly advantageous in view of the traditional military policy of the united states which places its reliance on a citizen soldiery. (g. aly.) english history (sce 9.466).—the history of england from 1910 falls obviously into three main divisions, the years before the outbreak of the world war, the years of the war, and the period that began with the armistice, 1918. for convenience history 983 the third period may be sub-divided, the end of the lloyd george ministry being taken as the line of demarcation. i. from the king's death to the war the truce which the death of edward vii. (may 6 1910) imposed upon political warfare was not of long duration, and the conference in which the opposing parties sought a negotiated peace over the veto of the house of lords broke up on nov. 10 1910, with the announcement that it was unanimously of the opinion that no information could be given on the nature or causes of its disagreement. the general election which followed in dec. was fought specifically over the parliament bill, mr. asquith having announced in the previous april that ministers would not advise a dissolution except on such conditions as would enable them, if successful at the polls, to place that bill on the statute book, despite the resistance of the house of lords. tariff reform and the referendum were pressed on the other side as alternative issues; mr. redmond’s return from america with $200,000 for home rule provoked the cry of “ dollar dicta- tion,” and woman suffragists, in default of the vote, exercised some physical force against prominent ministerialists and public property. but these diversions, while attracting some votes and repelling others, hardly affected the main issue. it was generally expected that ministers would be returned to office, but with a diminished majority, and it was contended that the loss of half a dozen seats on balance would be sufficient to deprive them of that ‘“ adequate ’”’ majority which they them- selves regarded as an essential justification for invoking the royal prerogative of creating peers in order to pass the parlia- ment bill. even that modest hope was frustrated. the govern- ment came back with a nominal following of 398 against 272 in opposition, having thus increased their majority by four. the parliament bill—the parliament bill was accord- ingly re-introduced on feb. 22 1911. objection to its preamble, which accepted the principle of a second chamber and fore- shadowed a reform of the house of lords, was taken by labour members and some radicals; but the bill passed its third read- ing in the commons on may 1s, after a few modifications in committee, by 362 votes to 241. the house of lords had mean- while been secking to ward off the blow by considering various plans for its own reformation. they all contemplated a drastic reduction of the number of hereditary peers and the reinforce- ment of the house by nominated or elected members, the proposed electoral bodies varying from the peerage itself to com- paratively popular constituencies. but there was little agree- ment, and lord lansdowne’s bill, which was given a second reading without a division on may 22, proceeded no farther. more urgent than the reform of the house was the defeat of the parliament bill, and the proposal which commended itself most to the majority, but not all, of the unionist peers and mem- bers of parliament was the adoption of the referendum. mr. balfour accepted it on behalf of the party and even, in response to inquiries from his free trade opponents, undertook to submit tariff reform to this ‘ poll of the people.”” advanced tariff reformers suspected this acceptance as a concession to free trade. unionists and resented it as an evasion of their attempts to pin their leader down to what they regarded as the most important and popular plank in their platform. nor was it made at all clear in what form the referendum could be applied to such a question, nor how it could be reconciled with the financial control of the house of commons; the more general opinion among tariff reformers was that finance must be excepted from its operation. meanwhile the parliament bill demanded the lords’ atten- tion. tactical reasons dictated a second reading without a division on may 29, and then the preparations for the coronation of the king and queen (june 22) and the prolonged festivities connected therewith interposed a truce. parliament reassem- bled on june 26 and lord lansdowne produced his amendments; if successful they would not only have wrecked the bill, but have made it impossible for the government to carry any other principal item in its programme without either a second, if not 984 english a third, gencral election, or the adoption of the referendum for any bill proposing a change in the constitution; the adoption of this change in the constitution would obviously itself have to be submitted to a referendum. on july 5 the principal amendment was accepted by 253 votes to 40, and of that minority 27 had been created peers by the existing liberal government. ‘‘ the referendum,” said lord selborne, ‘“ had come to stay.” on july 20 the lords completed their remodelling of the parliament bill and sent it back to the commons. on the same day mr. asquith wrote to mr. balfour informing him that “should the necessity arise, the government will advise the king to exercise his prerogative to secure the passing into law of the bill in substantially the same form in which it left the house of commons, and his majesty has been pleased to signify that he will consider it his duty to accept and act on that ad- vice.”” this intimation produced a sharp division in a meeting of unionist peers held on july 21 and in the party generally. the advocates of resistance, “ die-hards,”’ as they were called, were in a minority, but were very determined; their figure-head was lord halsbury, but they were led by lord milner, mr. austen chamberlain (with the full support of his father) and sir e. carson. they included the duke of bedford, the marquess of salisbury, the ear] of selborne, lord willoughby de broke, sir edward carson and mr. george wyndham. the younger cecils were more dubious in their attitude, while the responsible leaders of the party, mr. balfour, lord lansdowne, the duke of devonshire, lord curzon and viscount st. aldwyn, thought discretion the better part of valour. the ‘“‘ die-hards ” them- selves were firm in their convictions, but many believed that the threat to create 500 peers was little more than bluff. the dis- covery that the government was in earnest and possessed the means to carry out its policy provoked a furious resentment; and when on july 24 the prime minister rose in the house of commons to amplify and justify his communication to mr. balfour, he was greeted with 4o minutes’ organised and pre- meditated uproar which even the speaker was unable to check. next day lord lansdowne and mr. balfour appealed to their respective followers in the two houses to desist from further resistance to the parliament bill, but their advice was rejected by the “ dic-hards’’. i on aug. 8 the lords passed, by 282 votes to 68, a vote of cen- sure on the government which the commons had rejected by 365 to 246 votes on aug. 7; and on aug. 9 and 10 they debated what they should do with the parliament bill once more sent up by the commons with the lords’ amendments deleted. the division was taken on aug. 10: 37 unionist peers, the two arch- bishops and 11 bishops voted for the bill, while the majority abstained; it was carried by 131 to 114 votes, but eight “ die- hards ”’ were accidentally prevented from reducing the majority of 17 to even more exiguous dimensions. the position analyscd—probably the moderate conservatives, by their action and inaction, conserved a good deal more than their extremer colleagues would have done had their resistance succeeded. yet it 1s not so easy as it appears on the surface to strike a balance of ultimate advantage between the rival tactics. the rejection of the parliament bill would undoubtedly have been followed, as lord crewe had intimated, by the creation of enough peers to outnumber any possible opposition; but that vast creation would surely have hastened the reform of the house. no doubt the government would see to it that the new peers were also sound on home rule, if not on welsh dis- establishment as well; and that would have meant home rule in 1912 and disestablishment in 1913 instead of two years later. home rule in 1912 might have involved a rebellion in ulster, but it would surely in that case have prevented a sinn fein rebellion in 1916 and the civil war of 1920-2; the home rule bill which was frustrated in 1913-4 was conservative compared with the irish treaty adopted by the coalition in 1922; and the imple- menting of the preamble to the parliament act, which the creation of 500 peers would have made feasible within the life- time of the 1910 parliament would, whatever its details, have seemed a conservative measure 10 years later. history national insurance.—the parliament act was only the most striking legislative incident in a year singularly fertile in political sensations; and during the intervals in which the lords were perpending the parliament bill, the commons were engaged upon a vast and novel scheme of national insurance. it was introduced by mr. lloyd george on may 4 amid a chorus of approval which might well have reminded him of the warning of woe when men speak well of apostles and prophets. the scheme touched many interests and classes, and the sections pro- ceeded to discuss it in the light of how much each would put in and how little each would get out of the common welfare. the british medical association seemed to be the most class con- scious; doctors, it said, would be ruined, or at least inadequately paid. the friendly societies took the view that they would be the principal sufferers. the chancellor of the exchequer at times implied that he was giving the people od. for 4d.; labour thought it should get the od. for nothing; other friends of the people contended that they would be paying od. for 4d.; and the daily afail collected 10,000 mistresses and maid servants in the albert hall, london, to protest ‘against the prospect of ‘licking stamps ” for the sake of mr. lloyd george. the bill was taken in intermittent stages between may and dec., by which time unionist approval had turned mostly into violent condemnation, tempered mostly by conviction that the enormous burden the act would put upon industry would create an imperious demand for tariff reform. attempts were made to separate the parts dealing with invalidity from that dealing with unemployment, and a good many details were altered by mr. lloyd george himsclf as a result of his numerous conferences with the rival interests. the result showed a remarkable triumph of common sense over sectional clamour and political faction. only 21 members voted against the third reading in the commons; the lords adopted the bill without protest, and its main principles have been universally accepted as sound and beneficent, capable of modification and extension but not of repudiation. payment of members—another change, almost equally resented in certain quarters but easily effected because it did not require legislation, was the adoption of payment of members by resolution of the house of commons. members had been paid from the days of edward i. to the end of the 17th century; but while the government fixed the rates, the wages were levied by the constituencies, which often paid less and sometimes more than the standard rates. the stipend was now made uniform and paid out of the national exchequer; the £400 a year at which each member’s salary was fixed was, considering the greater length of sessions and the fall in the value of money, far below the rates which obtained in the middle ages. the commons also rejected the old standing order which denied the right of peers to vote, or otherwise participate in elections to the house of commons; it was not for the commons to maintain, in the year of the parliament act, that any class should be unrepre- sented therein. other enactments affecting very different sections of the com- munity were the shops act, restricting the hours of attendance of employees to 60 a week, and the copyright act extending protection for that form of property to 50 years after the author’s death. a trade unions bill designed to modify the effects of the osborne judgment and to enable unions to raise voluntary levies for political purposes passed its second reading on may 30 by 219 to 18 votes. a limited women’s enfranchisement bill also passed its second reading in may by 255 to 88 votes. but enthusiasts for women’s suffrage were infuriated by mr. as- quith’s announcement in nov. of a bill to be introduced embody- ing the principle of adult male suffrage, and the close of the year was marked by an outburst of window breaking and other mani- festations of suffragist militancy. resignation of mr. balfour.—these were the pin pricks of politics. more serious anxiety was caused by a series of railway and other strikes during the summer, for which its excessive heat and unusual length, the rise in prices and the unbending temper of employers were variously blamed. the strength of english the government’s position seemed, however, hardly to be affected except by one or two by-election losses attributed to the insurance act, while on the other hand the opposition was deeply divided by the die-hard schism and dissatisfied with its leader- ship. tariff reformers resented mr. balfour’s pledge to submit their policy to a referendum, and on nov. 8 mr. austen cham- berlain said that a unionist government would embody it in a statutory form “ without any further mandate, sanction or approbation.” mr. balfour had resigned a few hours before, pleading advancing years and insufficient vigour to manage another administration. the two most obvious candidates for the leadership were mr. austen chamberlain and mr. waltcr long, one represent- ing the commercial and industrial elements in the party, the other its landed and aristocratic traditions. a contest was, however, avoided by the withdrawal of both in favour of mr. bonar law, a glasgow ironmaster whose membership of parlia- ment only went back to 1900 and whose experience of office was limited to the under-secretaryship to the board of trade from 1902 to 1906. apart from his personal qualities, he probably owed his choice largely to his canadian birth and education and to the fact that canada’s emphatic rejection of laurier’s liberal government and its tariff reciprocity with the united states at the general election in sept. had given british tariff reformers greater cause to rejoice than any recent event in domestic politics. | their other principal cause for satisfaction was the refusal of the house of lords, by 145 to 53 votes, to give a second reading to the naval prize bill, based on the declaration of london. it had only passed the house of commons by less than half the government’s normal majority (172 to 125), and although the imperial conference then sitting had, australia dissenting, approved its principles, the proposal created great alarm as likely to endanger great britain’s food supplies in time of war; and the action of the house of lords saved the government three years later from having to revoke a law in addition to acting against its principles. the proposed reference to an international court at the hague was in keeping with the movement towards arbitration expressed in treaties being negotiated with the united states; but these were eventually rejected by the senate, and the omens were beginning in 1ot1 to point less towards the peaceful settlement of disputes than the arbitrament of war. in defending the naval estimates in march, sir edward grey had deplored the increase in armaments which, if it went on, must in the end break down civilisation, though he thought it might be ended, not so much by war as by the revolt of the masses of men against taxation. he welcomed [resident taft’s pronouncements in favour of arbitration, and thought that public opinion might rise to it under the increasing pressure of armaments, that armies and navies might survive only as the police of the world, and that law might take the place of force. but no one nation could stop the race for armaments by simply dropping out, which would give a spurt to expenditure somewhere else. the first lord of the admiralty, mr. r. mckenna, opined that the new naval works at rosyth might be completed by sept. 1914, and the discussion turned on the probable distribution of naval strength about that time. the agadir crisis —the crisis threatened to come earlier. in may the disorder in morocco induced the french to occupy fez and on july 1, germany announced the dispatch of a gun- boat to agadir. after a cabinet mecting on may 5, sir edward grey informed count metternich that the british government could not disinterest itself in morocco, and that until germany’s intentions were made known their attitudle must remain one of reserve. there intervened “ the period of silence ” during which germany said nothing to england but continued to bring great pressure to bear on france. on may 21 mr. lloyd george took the occasion of a speech at the bankers’ annual dinner in lon- don to make it plain, in diplomatic language, that if germany meant war, she would find great britain on the side of france. coming from the leader of the least imperialist section of the history 985 cabinet, the speech produced a great impression. ‘‘ the acces- sion of mr. lloyd george,” writes mr. churchill, “in foreign policy to the opposite wing of the government was decisive. we were able immediately to pursue a firm and coherent policy.” on may 25 sir e. grey received a communication from ger- many “so stiff that the flect might be attacked at any mo- ment;” the german government refused to explain its inten- tions, and the british mr. lloyd george’s speech. on aug. 23, after parliament had risen, the prime minister convened a secret and special meeting of the committee of imperial defence. it sat all day and at its conclusion mr. haldane informed the prime minister that he could not continue to be responsible for the war office without a new board of admiralty which would begin to organise a proper naval war staff and co-operate with the war office. mr. churchill had already on may 13, while home secretary, drafted a sketch of the probable course of a war between germany and austria on the one side and france, russia and great britain on the other which was accurate enough for him to reprint it in sept. 1914; and in oct. mr. asquith invited him to become first lord of the admiralty, mr. mckenna taking his place at the home office. mr. churchill was always a good barometer, though some- times inclined to rise too fast. he subsequently admitted that probably germany had no thought of war at that time; her government made a “ very friendly ”’ communication to sir edward grey on july 27 and considerable concessions to france during the morocco negotiations. the incident, however, reverberated in war preparations, both naval and military, and in war scares throughout the autumn and provoked a good deal of criticism from the labour and radical benches when parlia- ment reassembled. the critics found other, and perhaps more substantial, grounds for complaint in the effects of the anglo-russian agreement in persia, where co-operation seemed to be turning into a dual control, destructive of that “integrity and independence ” of persia to which the two powers were pledged by their agreement of 1907 and fraught with evil influence on the mesopotamian campaigns of the world war. the atmosphere was not im- proved by italy’s sudden attack on turkey and invasion of tripoli which turkey, having no navy, was in no position to defend; more pregnant with future problems was italy’s seizure of islands in the aegean which the outbreak and consequences of the balkan wars accidentally enabled her to retain. mean- while, in july, the anglo-japanese treaty was renewed till 1921, and kitchener was appointed to succeed sir eldon gorst in egypt; and on nov. 11 the king and queen sailed to india to hold their coronation durbar at delhi in dec. and there to announce the transference thither of the capital from calcutta. early events of 1912.—extt annus mirabilis was punch’s legend on its last cartoon of 1911. its first, in 1912, depicted the infant year being dragged into a dark wood haunted by goblins of home rule, welsh disestablishment, and manhood suffrage. it would have needed a more prophetic soul to descry the heroic tragedy of captain r. f. scott’s antarctic expedition, after discovering the south pole on jan. 18, the strike of coal- miners in the spring, the “‘ titanic ”’ disaster in april, the worst summer, from the climatic point of view, on record, and the outbreak of balkan war in the autumn. my. bonar law’s speech—the new unionist leader made his first appearance as such on the platform at the albert hall on jan. 26, and signalised the occasion by what his opponents called ‘‘ the new style” of political debate. his speech was a comprehensive denunciation of the government, all its mem- bers and all its works. mr. churchill and mr. mckenna had, he said, exchanged offices, probably to escape the consequences of failure. mr. haldane’s army policy had been unsuccessful, and mr. lloyd george’s speech on july 21 had roused enduring ill-will in germany; the government as a whole had introduced into england a ‘‘ spoils system ”’ from america, and the shock to public confidence was shown by the flight of capital. uncom- promising as the utterance was on domestic politics, the censure of mr. lloyd george’s warning to germany implied a desire for 986 more friendly relations with that country, and the first few months of 1912 were marked by a reaction against the war talk which followed on agadir. naval rivalry—this feeling was expressed by a meeting on jan. 27, called by the lord provost of glasgow, addressed by sir frank lascelles, late ambassador to germany, and blessed by lord rosebery. similar sentiments were enunciated by the bishop of winchester at a diocesan conference on jan. 31; and on feb. 7 mr. haldane started on a mission to germany on which he published a volume after the war. two days later, mr. churchill, having, in defiance of threats which led to the concentration of 4,000 troops in belfast, addressed a successful meeting in the irish quarter of that city, crossed over to glas- gow and defined anglo-german relations in terms which please his unionist opponents as much as his belfast speech had grati- fied his home rule friends. naval power was, he said, a luxury for them; to us it meant existence, to them it meant expansion. great britain could build ships faster, more cheaply and on a larger scale than any other power. whatever happened abroad there would be no signals of distress in great britain, but she would be the first power to welcome and respond to any slackening of naval rivalry. the speech had not the remotest effect on mr. haldane’s mis- sion; this came to nothing, as he has explained, because the german government demanded as the price of any agreement “a covenant of absolute neutrality ’” in case of war between germany and france, from whatever cause it might arise; and all that he brought back on feb. 12 was a confidential draft of a new german naval law containing a programme of construction and personnel far in excess of the rumours which had reached the british cabinet. the determining cause of this uncompromising attitude had been the german general election on jan. 11, which had resulted in the return of the socialists as by far the largest party in the reichstag and in the first serious threat to the continuance of the form of government established in germany by bismarck. for, in spite of its manhood suffrage, germany’s administrations were responsible to the kaiser and not to the reichstag; and hitherto a bourgeois reichstag had acquiesced in its subordin- ance. the effect of socialist victories on the government was therefore to cause it to react not to but against democratic opinion and to strive in the interests of self-preservation to improve its chances of success in war by which alone it thought it could postpone, if not avert, domestic revolution. there was therefore no response to mr. churchill’s suggestion for a slackening in naval armaments, and in introducing his naval estimates on march 18 while repeating his offer, he insisted upon the danger to the world of one nation adding a predomin- ant fleet to an overwhelming army and upon the necessity to great britain of a fleet adequate for protection against the risk of defeat. his argument came in short to this; no naval supe- riority on the part of great britain could threaten germany with invasion, while a german naval victory would paralyse the british empire and expose great britain itself to conquest. it fell on deaf ears in a germany which was not content with se- curity, but regarded an overseas empire as its place in the sun.! in the same month, march 7, the anglo-american and franco- american treaties of arbitration were rejected by the senate of the united states. sirtke of miners —meanwhile the king and queen had re- turned from india (feb. 4), sir edward grey had received the order of the garter, conferred on only four commoners before feb. 13, and parliament had been opened on the 15th. but it had barely disposed of the address when its attention was diverted from estimates and its legislative programme by a strike of coal miners which began on feb. 27, and lasted for over six weeks. there had been a good deal of labour unrest for some time, due probably to the rise in prices, which itself was partly caused by additional taxation required to finance the govern- 1 cf. b. pascal, pensees xxv., 3.4: ‘ce chien est & moi,” disaient ces pauvres enfants; ‘c'est 1a ma place au soleil. voild le commencement et . ‘ 33 i'image de l’usurpaiion de toute ta terre. english history ment’s social reforms; the chancellor had to budget for over £187,000,000 in 1912, double what it had been 20 years earlier. the demand of the miners, now that hours of labour had been fixed at eight, was that wages should not fall below a minimum fixed by law. the coal owners adhered, on the other hand, to the principle of payment for work done, a principle which does not obtain in the civil service, the clerical and scholastic pro- fessions or even in most fields of labour. by march 4 about 1,000,000 miners had ceased work, and another 1,000,000 in other industries were threatened with consequential unemploy- ment. on feb. 28 the government had proposed acceptance of the principle of minimum rates of wages varying according to districts and conditional upon safeguards against a diminution of output. some of the coal owners still held out, while the in- convenience and, in some localities, distress increased; and on march rg the prime minister introduced a minimum wage bill on the lines he had already indicated. it was opposed as panic jegislation and on a party division the second reading was car- ried by 348 to 225. a new conference failed; by the end of the month the bill got through its remaining stages in both houses without much opposition, and gradually the miners returned to their work. the suffragists—the remedy of any grievance before their own was regarded by the militant suffragists as an additional grievance ani insult; and the government’s acceptance of the minimum wage for miners on feb. 28 was followed on march 1 by a feminine onslaught on the shop windows of the west end of london. arrests and sentences to imprisonment were followed by further raids, and the raids by a weakening of support for the conciliation bill in parliament. this was defeated on its second reading, march 28, by 222 votes to 208. further outrages oc- curred, and on may 22 mr. and mrs. pethick lawrence and mrs. pankhurst were convicted at the central criminal court of conspiracy and sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment in the second division; they were, however, released in little more than a month on the ground of ill-health. the militant cam- paign continued in various forms, personal assaults on ministers, attempts to burn churches and pose as martyrs and hunger strikes in prison; but its effect was to postpone the adoption by parliament of any measure of women suffrage until towards the end of the war. the home rule bill—diverted by these episodes, it was not until after easter that the first item in the government’s legisla- tive programme, the home rule bill, was introduced. inas- much as it never came into operation and, even as a proposal, was entirely superseded by the more radical irish treaty of 1922, the third home rule bill has merely a historical interest. sub- stantially the difference between it and the irish treaty was that its constitutional arrangements were based on the relations between a canadian province and the dominion of canada, whereas the treaty established between southern ireland and the united kingdom the relations existing between the latter and the dominion; in other words the home rule bill treated the whole of ireland as a province, while the treaty recognised part of ireland as a dominion. it was none the less fiercely resisted for that; and nothing would appear more irrational than the two years’ turmoil over the bill contrasted with the ease and rapidity with which the treaty obtained parliamentary sanction. the war and the coalition, bitter experience and increasing wisdom do much to account for the contrast. but there was a further reason inherent in the difference between the proposals. ulster was excluded from the ireland of the treaty, but included in the ireland of the bill; and that attempt to force ulster into a united ireland was as fatal to the bill as it was illogical in a policy based on the impossibility of retaining ireland within the united kingdom. it was incon- sistent with the canadian precedents both for the bill and the treaty; the union of upper and lower canada in 1841 had proved unworkable and had been abandoned, and no canadian province that desired to keep outside the dominion in 1867 was forced within its jurisdiction. the lesson was learnt in the end that ulster, like newfoundland, must be left, if she liked, to contract english out of a dominion; but the refusal to admit the force of the argument in 1912-4 brought a disunited ireland and a dis- united kingdom perilously near the argument of force. other measures.—for eight months, on and off, sterile debate on the bill occupied the time of parliament and the energies of rival demonstrations in the country. introduced on april rt it was read a second time by 372 votes to 271 on may 9. it was not through committee until the second week in dec., and the autumn session had to be prolonged into the new year for the report stage, third reading and rejection by the house of lords. the intervals were partly occupied by discussion of the welsh disestablishment bill,which had, at least, the merit of ultimate- ly becoming law and causing less harm and friction than its critics had foretold. it was introduced by mr. mckenna on april 23 and passed its second reading by 348 to 267 on may 16. the diminution in the government’s normal majority was due to the fact that, outside wales, there was no great enthusiasm for it, and a number of liberals disliked, not so much the dis- establishment as the disendowment, of four dioceses of the church which assuredly were not rich. they had, however, little sympathy with the charge of sacrilege urged most vehe- menily by owners of lands which had once belonged to the church in england. the committce stage was not begun until nov. 29 nor concluded till the following year. similarly, the third government bill of the session, proposing to abolish plural voting and university representation, was, after recelving a second reading on july 12, postponed with its committee stage and women suffrage amendments until 1913. some days in july were also spent over mr. churchill's supplementary naval estimates, the foreign situation, and the causes of the “ titanic” disaster. mr. haldane meanwhile had licft the war office to become lord chancellor in succession to lord loreburn and had been created a viscount, while his under-secretary, colonel j. e. b. seely, succeeded to the headship of the department. outside parliament a fusion was effected of the conservative and liberal unionist organisations in may, and a serious strike of dockers began which lasted until august. protests against the impending coming into force of the insurance act continue. the rank and file of the medical profession threatened to boy- cott it; the albert hall, london, was more than filled for a second time with indignant mistresses and maids on june 27; and the agitation only ceased when the agitators began to realise through practical experience what the act was really like. the house rose on aug. 8, and the vacation was principally marked by denunciation of the tome rule bill, and by the more impressive adoption of the ulster covenant inseptember. mr. bonar law had justified resistance at a unionist demonstration on july 27, and missiles were thrown by members in the house of commons itself in a disorderly scene on nov. 13. the per- tinent comment was contained in a letter from miss christabel pankhurst claiming that members could no longer deny to militant suffragists the right to assault ministers and drown their utterances by vocal protests. _ war in the balkans.—but graver events than speeches or even missiles in the efouse of commons disturbed the peace in the autumn. on oct. 8, montenegro suddenly declared war upon turkey, which was still at war with italy, and in a few days serbia, bulgaria and greece followed suit. (see balkan wars.) there had been careful premeditation, and in a rapid, combined and unexpectedly successful campaign the liberated balkan peoples showed that they were masters of their fate, provided they were masters of their temper. the turks were everywhere defeated until, in nov., the bulgars reached the chatalja lines and confronted the problem of constantinople and a forbidding concert of europe. the great powers had helplessly threatened, before the turks were beaten, to recognise none of the victors’ accomplished facts. they did not now propose to keep their word, but they pro- ceeded, at the conference of london in dec., to inflame enmity among the victors lest their united advance should inflame it among the great powers themselves. none of them, with the possible exception of great britain and france, was prepared to history 987 sce constantinople in the hands of the balkan league and the adriatic dominated by jugoslavs; and the restraint of these ambitions precipitated a conflict among the balkan allies over the remnants of their spoils. it was a dubious credit to british diplomacy that it should, with germany’s hearty co-operation, have in london secured a brief prolongation of peace at the cost which was later paid in the course of the world war. domestic politics again.—new year’s day 1913 found the house of commons engaged on the report stage of the home rule bill. sir edward carson’s motion that ulster be excluded from its operation wa’s rejected by 294 to 197 and the third read- ing was carried on jan. 16 by 367 to 257. on jan. 27 its considera- tion was begun in the house of lords, which rejected the motion forits second reading by 326 to 69 three days later. on the same day, by a singular coincidence, londonderry city was won at a by-election by the home rulers from the unionists, thus giving home rule 17 seats in the province of ulster against 16 held by unionists. meanwhile, the welsh disestablishment bill reached its report stage on i'eb. 3 and passed its third reading by 347 to 240 on feb. 5. it was discussed for three days feb. 11-13 in the lords and then rejected on its second reading by 252 to sr. the lords, however, passed the trade unions bill, which had been for two sessions before the house of commons; and, though the scottish temperance bill was lost, it was rather through inadvertence than deliberate hostility. the franchise bill en- countered a fiasco in the house of commons; undertakings had been given that the government as such would not resist amendments incorporating in the bill some form or other of women suffrage; but, when the first of these amendments came to be moved, the speaker intimated on jan. 27 that he must consider a bill so radically amended as a new measure, which could not be taken without a fresh introduction. the bill was accordingly withdrawn. the commons adjourned on feb. 14, and on march 7, parliament was prorogued, to meet again for another session three days later. outside its walls the principal controversies related to tariff reform, national service and woman’s suffrage. on jan. 2 a lancashire deputation had pressed upon mr. bonar law the unionist objections, in that part of the country, to any taxes upon food, and after consultation with lord lansdowne he announced that it was not now the policy of the unionist party to impose such duties ‘‘ until they have been submitted to the people of this country at a general election.” tactically the decision was wise, but it was deplored by an influential section of the party, led by mr. austen chamberlain, which regarded the taxation of food as the very foundation of anv effective meas- ure of imperial preference, protection or relicf from the burden of direct taxation; from that source, too, they looked for the revenue to promote social reform, which conservatives would not support if it depended upon a heavy income tax. this domestic controversy lasted throughout the year and materially impaired the power of the unionist party to combat effectively the legislative proposals of the government. an- other topic on which unionists were more divided than liberals was national service, in the interests of which earl roberts con- ducted a six months’ campaign. his great services and popu- larity neutralised to some extent the objections to his plan, namely that it contemplated only home defence, which neces- sarily depended upon the navy, and made no provision for ex- peditionary forces; lord roberts’ own belief that an army, com- pulsorily raised for home defence, would volunteer for foreign service, could hardly be used as an argument without provoking the retort that his proposal was really to provide an army for foreign service out of the need for home defence. the suffragists again—the fiasco over the franchise bill not unnaturally infuriated the militant suffragists, who felt that they had been betrayed; and there followed at once a re- newal of the campaign of outrage which grew more intense as time went on. it was logical enough as a retort to the arguments that women should not vote because they could not fight and that government in the last analysis rests on force as its founda- tion. the outrages on property and persons were followed by 988 arrests and imprisonment; to this the militants responded by hunger striking, and the government replied by forcible feeding, an expedient which disgusted a number of its supporters. to meet the difficulty the home office devised what came to be known as the “ cat and mouse ”’ bill; prisoners whose health was impaired by hunger striking might be released on condi- tions by the home secretary, and then rearrested without further warrant or trial if they broke the conditions and resorted to outrage. the bill was passed by overwhelming majorities (296 to 43 on its second reading) in april, but it had apparently little effect in diminishing or even retarding the development of the campaign; and the day after the second reading mrs. pank- hurst was sentenced to three years’ penal servitude for inciting a bomb explosion which wrecked mr. lloyd george’s unfurnished house at walton heath in surrey. a fresh impetus, indeed, was given it by the rejection on may s, by 267 to 219 votes, of the women’s suffrage bill, which had been introduced as a separate measure to repair the fiasco of the amendments to the general franchise billin january. it propos- ed to enfranchise 6,000,000 women, and its liberality was no doubt responsible for the fact that the minority in its favour consisted mainly of liberal and labour members, while the majority against contained twice as many unionists as liberals. the issue was really decided by the 54 nationalists who voted against the bill from motives quite unconnected with its merits. on the following afternoon one of the finest of south london churches, st. catharine’s, hatcham, was destroyed by militant incendiarism, and a bomb was found under the bishop’s throne in st. paul’s cathedral. . important legislation—most of the legislation promoted in the session of 1913, which began on march 10, proved equally abortive. the home rule bill was reintroduced on may 7 and read a second time, by 368 to 270 votes, on june 9. the com- mittee and report stages were, in order to secure the benefit of the parliament act, reduced to mere formalities and the bill passed its third reading on july 7. the lords debated its second reading for two days, and then declined, on july 15 by 302 to 64 votes, to proceed any further with the bill ‘ until it has been submitted to the judgment of the country.”” the welsh dis- establishment bill followed it through the same ritual to the same sacrifice, a week later, july 22. the plural voting bill was slaughtered on a somewhat different plea: afler an attempt to _ preserve a second vote for university graduates had been de- feated the bill was read a third time in the commons on july r4 by 293 to 222 votes. the house of lords on july 24 refused by 166 to 42 votes to proceed with it, not until it was submitted to the judgment of the country, but on the ground that it dealt with only one elec- toral anomaly when there were so many others. the policy, if any, underlying this discrimination was not very obvious unless it implied a claim by the lords to refer to the country whatever bill they thought might thus be defeated, and to defeat by their own authority whatever bill might pass the popular test. the scottish temperance bill, however, which had also been rein- troduced and passed by the commons, was accepted, after some modifications, on july 31 on the ground that it was a local measure and was apparently desired by the scottish people. the budget —the budget was slightly delayed by a judgment obtained from the court of king’s bench to the effect that the resolution of the hlouse of commons, in virtue of which new duties were usually collected pending the passing of the finance act, was not sufficient authority for the collection of income tax; and a provisional collection of taxes bill, which did not, under the parliament act, require the assent of the house of lords, had to be passed to remedy the defect before the budget was introduced. it imposed no fresh taxation although the esti- mates had nsen to {195,c00,000. the past year, claimed mr. lloyd george, had been the most prosperous british trade had ever known, despite the coal strike, the bad harvest and the balkan war; and he looked to a further increase in the revenue to counterbalance the increased expenditure. the marcont episode—the budget provided little material english history for party warfare compared with the marconi episode, which bulked so large in the public eye during the summer of 1913 that one of the most moderate of unionist journals lamented that so much time had been spent over the insurance agitation which should have been devoted to the marconi ‘‘ scandal.” the gist of the charges ‘in some unionist journals was that ministers, notably the attorney-general (sir rufus isaacs) and the chancellor of the exchequer (mr. lloyd george) had been guilty of corrupt practices in connection with the government contract with the british marconi co., the managing director of which was the attorney-general’s brother. the editor of the new witness was condemned in an action for libel, but the legal pro- ceedings covered but part of the ground occupied by the fertile weeds of suspicion; and a committee of the tlouse of commons spent many months examining witnesses and probing the charges, only to produce four more or less discrepant reports and some inconclusive debates in the house. one at least of the ministers had indulged in a “ flutter ’” which was indiscreet in a chancellor of the exchequer, but their dealings had been in the shares of the american marconi co. which had no connec- tion with the british company and no contract with the british government. all the committee’s reports declared that the charges of corruption were false, and none accused the minis- ters of anything worse than indiscretion in act and reticence in speech, which they admitted themselves. the best answer lay perhaps in the subsequent carecrs of sir rufus isaacs as lord chief justice and viceroy of india, and of mr. lloyd george as prime minister and head of a coalition which included oppo- nents who had viewed his conduct unfavourably in 1913. national insurance— both the chancellor of the exchequer and his critics might congratulate themselves on the comparative ease with which his national insurance act was amended before the end of the session. the amendment took the form of extension in two directions: full benefits for employed con- tributors were extended from 50 to 7o years of age and full medical benefits for all insured persons to the end of their lives; and additional grants were provided for medical service. these emollients hastened the decease of the medical boycott, and the amending bill, which had been referred to a standing com- | mittce, passed its report stage on aug. 6 and was accepted by the house of lords before parliament was prorogued on aug. 15. sl proposed naval holtday.—in introducing the naval esti- mates in march mr. churchill had asked why all the powers concerned should not take a “ naval holiday ” in construction for a year, but germany regarded the suggestion as impractic- able since great britain, being able to build a warship in two years while 1t took germany three, could make up arrears a good deal faster; and in july mr. churchill announced an accel- eration in british construction, attributing it, however, to the defeat in may of the canadian naval aid bill by the canadian senate, a liberal second chamber which had not yet been affected by mr. borden’s conservative victory at the canadian general clection in the autumn of 1912. another of mr. churchill’s announcements related to the substitution of oil for coal as the fuel for the british navy, stimulated partly by the coal strike of r912 and the determina- tion of the admiralty to become ultimately the independent owner and producer of its own supplies. for the time being it must rely to a large extent on mexican oil, in which lord cow- dray was largely interested and to which the chief liberal whip (lord murray of elibank), after resigning that office, devoted much of his attention. the policy subsequently had its rever- berations in alesopotamia. foreign relations.—international relations were less strained apart from the balkans, than they had been in 1911-2. in may the king and queen visited germany on the occasion of the reconciliation of the guelph and hohenzollern feud by the marriage of the kaiser’s only daughter to prince ernest augustus of cumberland, and in june president poincare had a notable reception in london. lord haldane’s visit to canada in aug., to address the annual meeting of the american bar association at montreal, necessitated the unusual step of putting the great english seal in commission and illustrated english speaking friendliness; but the visit in nov. of the heir presumptive to the aus- trian empire, the archduke franz ferdinand, and his morga- natic wife, attracted less attention that it would have done had people known what the future had in store. the balkan situation was ominous enough, and it would have seemed more so had it been known that austria sought the con- nivance, if not the co-operation, of italy in an attack upon the too-triumphant serbia. the peace conference of balkan states in london broke down on feb. 1, and the balkan war began again. the crown prince of greece occupied yanina early in march and king george of greece was assassinated at salonika on march 18. the bulgars got to bulair, on the sea of marmora, early in feb. and captured adrianople, with 30,000 prisoners, on march 25. scutari (skodra) alone held out, and that was because it was neither turkish nor yugoslav but albanian, and the powers were bent on applying the doctrine of self- determination to the extent of creating an independent albania. a naval demonstration gave point to their determination, but scutari, nevertheless, capitulated to montenegro on april 22. a second london conference opened on may 20, but it could not restrain the animosities which broke out among the balkan victors. bulgaria, threatened with the loss of much of her spoil, took the offensive against serbia; greece and rumania took the serbian side, and even turkey rejoined the fray in july. bul- garia was hopelessly outmatched and had to submit to a settle- ment by which she lost adrianople and macedonia and acquired a grievance which led her to intervene with disastrous results in a greater war two years later. trouble in ireland.—war seemed to threaten nearer home than the balkans in the autumn of 1913. arms were being stealthily imported from germany into ulster, and a pro- visional government for that province was organised in septem- ber. the intention was not to resist the establishment of a home rule government in dublin, but to resist its authority over ulster, and the leaders of the movement had some grounds for their conviction that in such a conflict no british government could coerce them. lord loreburn, the liberal ex-lord chan- cellor, issued an appeal that month for a conference on home rule, and on dec. 17 sir edward grey said, at alnwick, that the door was still open for a settlement by consent as regarded ulster; behind the appearance of no-compromise on both sides, both parties came down in the following year to disputes over the frontier of the ulster that was to be exempt from the irish parliament. mr. lloyd george meanwhile was concentrating his energies on a fresh land campaign in view of the dissolution, which would normally come not later than the winter of 1914-5, and of the very mild proposals which lord lansdowne had put forward in july. . the session of 1914 did not, however, open until feb. ro and jan. oratory had thrown cold water on the prospects of irish accommodation, mr. redmond declaring that ulster would make no concession and mr. bonar law asserting that the con- versations had come to nothing. the king’s speech, indeed, admitted that they had ‘‘ so far not succeeded.” an identical amendment to the address was accordingly moved in both the houses declaring that it would be disastrous to proceed further with the home rule bill until it had been submitted to the judgment of the people; it was carried in the lords by 243 to 55 and rejected in the commons by 333 to 255. five days later a similar amendment to the address was moved with reference to welsh disestablishment and defeated by 279 to 217. on the second reading of the home rule bill (third time of asking) mr. asquith explained the concessions the government was prepared to make, any ulster county (belfast and london- derry being regarded as counties for this purpose) might, im- mediately after the enactment of home rule and before it came into operation, vote by ballot for its own exemption, such exemp- tion to expire at the end of six years unless the imperial parlia- ment otherwise determined. mr. redmond agreed to this proposal, but mr. bonar law declined unless there were further concessions to follow, and sir edward carson demurred to a history 989 reprieve which might last no longer than six years. neverthe- less, the difference between the two parties seemed to be reduced to a narrowness incommensurate with the agitation, anger and anxiety which followed; and it appeared, from the speeches on the vote of censure moved by mr. bonar law on march 19, that the main concern was less to exclude the ulster counties from a hypothetical future incorporation in a united ireland than to exclude the accumulated legislation of the gov- ernment from the impending benefits of the parliament act, for his suggestion was once more that not only the new proposals but the bill should be submitted to a referendum; and it was obvious that, if this argument and the threat of forcible resis- tance were admitted with reference to home rule, it could and would be applied to the other bills awaiting enactment without the consent of the ilouse of lords. the motion was rejected by 345 to 252 votes; sir edward carson went off to belfast, and on march 21 the chancellor of the exchequer attacked at hudders- field the whole idea of ulster exclusion. the affair at the curragh—two days later it was announced that a number of army officers stationed in ireland at the curragh had tendered their resignations rather than face the duty of executing orders which they feared might be given them. measures, both naval and military, had in fact already been taken to protect military stores against possible raids by ulster volunteers, but the resignations seem to have been tendered under the impression that these measures were designed to initiate military operations against ulster rather than to main- tain order, a duty which the officers were prepared to accept. when they were reassured they returned to their posts. but this reassurance alarmed the civilian mind. the labour party at once pointed the moral by the syndicalist appeal to troops to refuse to obey orders to suppress a strike; and mr. j. h. thomas declared that, if the opposition doctrine held good, it would be his duty to tell railwaymen to organise their forces and spend their capital in the purchase of arms and ammunition. the alarm was increased by the publication of a minute of the army council initialled by col. seely, sir john french and sir spencer ewart, implying a discretion invested in officers as to what orders they should obey. all three resigned, and mr. asquith evoked great enthusiasm from his supporters by taking upon himself the vacant secretaryship for war and vindicating thus the subordination of the military to the civil power. his appointment vacated his seat, but he was returned without a contest by his constituents on april 8. the home rule bill.—the second reading of the home rule bill was taken during mr. asquith’s absence, and sir edward grey, who led in his place, while refusing to go beyond the six years’ exemption, suggested the possibility of a federal solution. the bill was read by 356 to 276 votes on april 6. after the easter adjournment, the second reading of the welsh dis- establishment bill was taken on april 20-21 and carried by 349 to 265. during the next three days the king and queen re- turned president poincare’s visit and had an enthusiastic recep- tion in paris. the plural voting bill was read a second time on april 27, and on april 28 the unionists moved for an enquiry into “ the plot to coerce ulster.” the point of the motion was somewhat blunted by the news that 35,000 rifles and 3,000,000 cartridges had been landed at larne on the night of april 24-25 and distributed by motor lorries and motor cars throughout protestant ulster. in spite of mu- tual recriminations about the rival “ plots,” conciliatory speeches were made by mr. churchill, sir edward carson, mr. bonar law and mr. asquith; but on may 12 mr. asquith announced that any settlement with ulster must take the form of a sep- arate amending bill; for, of course, the home rule bill by amend- ment would lose the benefit of the parliament act; and, further, the idea was to make the government of ulster ‘‘ home rule within home rule,” a subordinate and not a co-ordinate part of their scheme. the bill was reported on may 21 and read a third time by 351 to 274 on may 25. the lords gave it a first reading on june 7, but refused to proceed further until the amending bill was produced. this was 990 introduced by lord crewe on june 23, and, no agreement hav- ing been yet reached, it simply embodied the prime minister’s offer on march 9 of allowing ulster counties to contract out. the lords, however, gave it a second reading on july 2— the day on which mr. joseph chamberlain died—and on july 8 began to amend it by excluding the whole of ulster, without any ballot, from the operation of the home rule bill; other amend- ments transformed the amending bill which was read a third time on the 14th. on july 20 mr. asquith announced that the king had summoned a conference of eight delegates, with the speaker as chairman, at buckingham palace. the locality pro- tected the conference from the intrusion of the press; neverthe- less, after four meetings, the speaker reported that it had been unable to agree either in detail or principle. the further prose- cution of the quarrel was interrupted by austria’s declaration of war upon serbia on july 28, which put into some sort of per- spective the parochial nature of the irish dispute. parliament in july 19%4.—meanwhile, the welsh disestab- lishment bill passed the commons for the third time on may 10, and on june 25 the house of lords delivered its last blow at the measure; it took the interesting form of a refusal to proceed pending the report of a select committee into the historical question whether the constitution of the convocations of the church of england had ever been altered by act of parliament without their own consent; but the implication that parliament was precluded from passing any measure which it had not passed before was not a convincing political argument. on july 15 the plural voting bill came before the lords: its second reading was postponed without any periphrasis, for, unlike the home rule and welsh disestablishment bills, it had not yet come to its third time of asking. the budget of 1914.—the budget was interesting as the last before the world war, and the lightest that generation was likely to see. that did not prevent some of its taxes from being heavier than ever before, nor preclude the taxpayers from la- menting, in punch’s words, that this was “ not milking, but murder.”” the revenue had expanded beyond even the chan- cellor’s expectations, the increase amounting to over £9,000,000; but he had supplementary estimates to meet, and further de- mands would be made by the reforms he proposed. the total required was nearly {206,000,000, and increased taxation would be needed to relieve municipal rates of some of the burden in which municipal authorities were involved by the fresh duties parliament had put upon them; the education grant was to be reconstituted on the principles recommended by the kempe committee which had reported in march. the tax on incomes between £1,000 and £1,500 was therefore to be raised to ro9d., on {1,500 to £2,000 to is., on £2,000 to {£2,500 1s. 2d., and over £3,000, 1s. 4d.; the highest rate of super- tax was also raised to 1s. 4d., though reduced in committee to 1s. 3d. the speaker, however, ruled on june 22 that a finance bill must be limited to the imposition of taxation, and the bill was therefore divided into two parts, with the result that the temporary grants to local authorities were not made that year. the finance bill passed on july 31; the revenue bill was post- poned until the new session. the naval estimates had risen to £51,550,000, an increase of 70% during the government’s eight years’ tenure of office; criticism of this expenditure was effec- tually silenced before the session ended. ii. the war period the great war came as a thief in the night upon the country at large. the murder of the archduke at sarajevo on june 28 had not greatly disturbed men’s minds, and even the cabinet had no thoughts of immediate danger from that source until, at the conclusion of its meeting on friday, july 24, news came o} austria’s ultimatum. sir e. grey’s efforts to promote a pacific settlement of the dispute belong to the history of europe and of the world war (see europe). the precaution was taken during the week-end by mr. churchill and his first sea lord, prince louis of battenberg, of countermanding the dispersal of the fleet assembled for a great naval review at spithead on july 18, english history and on july 27 it proceeded quietly to its war stations in the north sea, the german fleet having withdrawn from the nor- wegian fiords on the previous day. but even after austria’s seizure of belgrade on july 28 there was little idea in the popular mind that anything worse than another balkan war was afoot, and the russo-german declara- tions of war on aug. 1 did not reveal to the british public the western implications of the conflict. that came with the cross- ing of the frontiers of france and luxemburg by german troops on sunday, aug. 2, and the dispatch that afternoon of mobilisation orders to british naval reservists. the cabinet itself was still undecided, a circumstance which might be alleged to prove that england’s hands were still free. in point of fact no country’s hands are free; its action depends upon that of others, and it was germany’s action which made up the mind of the british cabinet and people and determined the issue of the war before it was begun. britain at war.—late that evening germany informed the belgian govt. of her intention to violate belgian neutrality, and at 7 a.m., on monday aug. 3, belgium appealed to great britain. there could be but one reply, and there never has been an answer to king george’s question to mr. w. h. page, the american ambassador: ‘‘ good god, sir, what else could we do?”?’ whether great britain would have intervened in the war had belgium been left at peace is another matter; but there can be little doubt that, had germany confined her attack to russia and stood on the defensive in the west, she would have won the war with comparative ease. ii france had at- tacked her, italy would have been bound by the triple alliance to side with germany and assuredly would not have come into the war on the other side; nor would the united states, while great britain, if she intervened at all, would have done so under another government and with a mind so divided as to destroy her best chance of success. it was germany’s subordination of moral principle to military advantage that set the world against her from the start; and serious division in the british cabinet was solved by her attack on belgian neutrality, which she, as well as great britain, was pledged to observe. lord morley, whose retirement could not have been long delayed in any case, resigned, as did another cabinet minister, mr. john burns and mr. c. p. trevelyan, secretary to the board of education, for different reasons. some radicals and labour m. p.’s remained unconvinced because they hated war in general; but that was no answer to the specific question put by the belgian govt., and sir e. grey, in a speech described by lord lansdowne as one of ‘“‘rare courage,” carried the vast majority of the house with him on aug. 3. the unionist leaders assured the government of their whole-hearted support. germany invaded belgium on aug. 4 and great britain declared war that night. with the outbreak of war, party differences ceased and political history shrank to a tenuous stream. the truce was illustrated by the appointment, amid universal acclaim, of lord kitchener as secretary of state for war; he could not be expected to com- mit himself on such questions as home rule and welsh disestab- lishment, and it would have been more in accordance with the fitness of things had the government refrained from insisting on placing those measures on the statute book under the parliament act in september. their execution was, however, postponed till the end of the war by a suspensory act which simultaneously received the royal assent; and the world war was undisturbed by the domestic dissensions which had marked the war with revolutionary and even napoleonic france a century earlier. early days of the struggle—there was no organised british party pressing throughout for peace, and the pacifists were simply individuals, some of them distinguished, without an organ in the press, or a platform in the country: even mr. ramsay macdonald found little support in the party he had once led. such agitation as arose was not for peace, but over the methods and means of carrying on the war. it might have been different had a gradually waning strength in the enemy produced an accommodating temper and afforded an opening for a nego- english tiated peace. but germany resembled oliver wendell holmes’s ‘ one-hoss shay,” which was so perfectly organised and its parts so equal in strength that none broke down until the whole col- lapsed into a heap of dust; and germany’s position remained imposing and her government intractable until complete ruin overtook them between aug. and nov. in the fifth vear of the war. the military efficiency which betrayed germany into war betrayed her also into ultimate collapse. she, too, learnt that under modern conditions, governments, however auto- cratic, can maintain themselves in war only so long as success commends them to their subjects. the reaction to ill-success was more rapid in more democratic countries, all of which changed their governments once or more during the war, england twice and france half a dozen times. there was a natural tendency to attribute individual mishaps to espionage or treachery and the postponement of victory to the incompetence of the government; and as time went on popular psychology accepted the view expressed by a com- paratively sober journal that in the case of mistakes soldiers were never, generals sometimes, but ministers always, wrong. the first serious criticisms, however, which affected the course of political history related to the inadequacy of munitions and the policy of the dardanelles expedition. men had been the first need of the war, but in the autumn of 1914 they were volun- teering faster than they could be clothed or armed, and the demand for conscription met with little response. nor was it the lack of rifles that produced the crisis over munitions, but a need which arose from the change in the war, after the failure of the german invasion of france, from one of movement to one of positions. on the western front the opposing forces had come to a deadlock of lines stretching from neutral switzerland to the british-commanded sea; and the germans, with a forethought characteristic of them, spent the winter in constructing defences, novel in their intricacy of barbed wire and trenches, which could only be overcome by high explosives and heavy guns. the french took naval guns from their ships to meet the need and even criticised the british for not following their example when every naval gun was needed to maintain that command of the sea on which the fortune of the allies depended. the problem was brought home acutely by the failure at neuve chapelle (march ro—12 1915) of the first deliberately planned offensive by the british, and it was natural, even for the commander-in-chief, to subordinate its other causes to the lack of adequate artillery preparation and that in its turn to inadequacy of munitions. this explanation was communicated to others in england besides the authorities, and by april the first serious political agitation against the government during the war was in full swing. the dardanelles operation—this coincided with another dis- sension of which, however, little was known outside the cabinet, though it had reference to a divergence of opinion which lasted almost throughout the war. the stabilisation of an impregnable front from the alps to the sea inevitably suggested to strategical minds the idea of at least exploring the possibility of turning that front by means of the british command of the sea. lord fisher, whom mr. churchill brought back to the admiralty as first sea lord to replace prince louis, who had been the subject of a campaign of calumny, had ideas of outflanking the land front by a naval incursion into the baltic. the entrance of turkey into the war (oct. 1914) suggested to mr. churchill the feasibility of an attempt on the dardanelles, and in jan. rors he was actively engaged in an effort to convert or commit the cabinet to his point of view. there is now little doubt that, if the allies had put into the dardanelles campaign the forces and the energy they wasted on meffective offensives on the western front during rors, the dardanelles could have been forced, russia relieved, the bal- kans brought solidly into the allied scale, and central europe beleaguered on all sides. but the cabinet was committed inch by inch, first to a naval and then to a military attack without being really converted to either. the real obstacle to, and criticism of, the strategy lay in the fact that the eyes of france history 99oi were naturally glued on a front which lay almost wholly in france and not many leagues from its capital; and nothing . would persuade her to risk her own defence by turning the speculation in the dardanelles into a major operation. the pirst coalifjiowz.—lord kitchener, naturally more in touch with french military opinion than mr. churchill, was impressed by this objection; hut the breach came between the first lord and his expert adviser, lord fisher, who felt that he was being dragged by a politician where as a seaman he did not want to go. ile restgned on may rg, and his resignation, coupled not only with the outcry about munitions and journalistic attacks on kitchener, who was rewarded with the garter, but with the threat of formal opposition censure, convinced mr. asquith that the government could not go on without broadening its foundations. from the party point of view it would have been more prudent to resign and leave to others the conduct of the war, which would not have been materially abbreviated thereby, and the consequent burden of discontent with its leaden progress. but vital interests demanded a coalition, and mr. asquith suc- ceeded in enlisting all parties, save the irish nationalists. he remained prime minister himself, and sir e. grey foreign secretary: but lord lansdowne entered the cabinet without portfolio, mr. balfour succeeded mr. churchill, who was reduced to the civilian sinecure of the chancellorship of the duchy of lancaster, mr. bonar law became secretary for the colonies, mr. chamberlain for india, mr. long president of the local government board, lord curzon lord privy seal, sir edward carson attorney-general and my. f. e. smith, afterwards earl of birkenhead, solicitor-general. labour was represented by mr. arthur henderson at the board of education, and mr. lloyd george took over the new ministry of munitions. lord haldane was sacrificed to popular clamour arising from the conviction that anyone who could speak german could not be an englishman at heart; with the exception of lord fisher, he had done more than any other single man to arm his country. the question of men—the new government, by its compre- hensiveness, disconcerted the making of party capital out of the greater disappointments which followed in the summer and autumn, the rout of russia, the failure of the dardanelles cam- paign and of the french and british offensives on the western front, the entrance of bulgaria into the war on germany’s side and the consequent over-running of serbia; and the principal topic of civil dissension was the question of conscription. the ilea of universal compulsory military foreign service was a complete novelty in english history, medieval military service being limited to those who held land on that condition in lieu of rent or other service, and the more general obligation to assist in keeping the peace and repelling invasion being limited to shires in which men lived. even on the european continent conscrip- tion was supposed to be limited to home defence; in australia, where service at home was compulsory, similar service outside the commonwealth was twice rejected on a referendum during the war, and it remained limited to the same extent in the channel islands. the territorials, whose obligation was simi- larly restricted, had, however, almost all volunteered and been employed for foreign service; and the exigencies of the war led to the use of such arguments as that home defence involved the defence of belgium and france as well as any part of the british empire, and that the obligation could even be read into medieval precedents. the former argument was later on used by the french as a plea for cancelling their debt to england on the ground that they supplied the bulk of the forces fighting in france for england’s defence. it was, however, wisely recognised that the thing, if done at all, must be done by act of parliament, and, before resorting to that, lord derby was employed to obtain the maximum output from voluntary recruiting. his campaign in the autumn left too large a residuum of unrecruited men whose best justification was that they had domestic claims of which they could judge, while only the government could judge the number of men required for service abroad, and therefore it was for the government to take the responsibility by introducing conscription. 992 conscription.—the first bill, which excluded married men, was introduced on jan. 5 1916. sir john simon, the home secre- tary, resigned the day before, the labour ministers also tendered their resignations, and the irish nationalists avowed their opposi- tion, notwithstanding the exclusion of ireland. but on the second reading mr. redmond announced that they would not continue their opposition, the labour ministers withdrew their resignations, and the bill was carried by 431 to 39. it became lawon jan. 27, but did not satisfy military demands, and after a good deal of ministerial disagreement a fresh bill was introduced and discussed in secret sessions of both houses of parliament. it, too, proved unacceptable as a mere instalment, and on may 3 the prime minister introduced a third bill making all men, married or single, between the ages of 18 and 41, subject to com- pulsory enlistment. it was read a second time by 328 to 36 on may 4, and a third by 250 to 35 on may 16 and passed by the house of lords within a week. local tribunals were set up to determine claims for exemption on medical grounds, for family reasons, or on account of the national importance of civil work; most of the exemptions were granted for workers on the land or in munition factories. causes for general uneasiness.—dissatisfaction with the progress of the war soon found other grounds of complaint, and candidates began to appear at by-elections with unofficial news- paper backing against the coalition government. the princi- pal objection to a coalition is that it releases critics from the restraint and responsibility which a front opposition bench nor- mally imposes on its followers, and the principal motive for criticism was the insular pride which could only account for german success by the poor quality of british leadership. hopes for the long-expected offensive on the somme tempered this dis- content for a time; but the irish rebellion at easter, ambiguity about the battle of jutland (may 31), whence the german fleet escaped with losses inferior to those inflicted on the british navy, the loss of the ‘ hampshire” with lord kitchener on board (june 5), disappointment with the apparently meagre effects, in spite of the tanks, of the sanguinary fighting on the somme (july—oct.}, and official reticence about the casualities provoked doubts of ultimate victory, which were reflected in views be- lieved to have been communicated by lord lansdowne to his colleagues but not published until a year later in a letter to the daily telegraph. their existence was presumably responsible for an interview given by mr. lloyd george to an american journalist in oct., in which he declared that britain had only begun and that “ the fight must be to a finish—to a knock-out.”” but the next episode was the ruin of rumania (nov.), the third little ally to be over- run by the enemy. mr. lloyd george termed it a “ blunder ” two months later without specifying whose; but the british pub- lic, having no other government which it could call to account than its own, ascribed to it the failure of russia to help a neigh- bour from which the other allies were completely cut off. the crisis of dec. 1916.—it was not, however, the public nor even the house of commons which precipitated the political crisis in december. on dec. 1 mr. lloyd george, who had suc- ceeded lord kitchener as secretary for war, intimated to mr. asquith that he could not continue unless the supreme direction of the war was entrusted to a new war committee consisting of himself, sir edward carson, mr. bonar law and a labour mem- ber, but excluding the prime minister. mr. asquith demurred; on dec. 5 mr. lloyd george resigned, mr. asquith followed suit, and the king sent for mr. bonar law, who found himself unable to accept the task of forming a ministry. mr. lloyd george as premier.—it therefore fell to mr. lloyd george, who had already secured the co-operation of the unionist leaders, except lord lansdowne, and gained that of most of the labour party and some of the liberals, to undertake the task; none of the liberal members of mr. asquith’s cabinet, however, transferred their allegiance at that time to the new prime min- ister, though all gave a general support to the new government. it was a novelty in various respects, though the prime minister, now changed, remained at the head of the war committee, which english history was reduced in number from seven to four, and all the four were politicians, with the possible exception of lord milner, and one of them, mr. henderson, was selected for purely political reasons. the radical change consisted in the supersession of the cabinet by its war committee, which became the war cabinet without any sort of responsibility to other ministers, and was at times expanded into the imperial war cabinet. the other ministers were reduced to the position of heads of departments. the novel situation was clearly expressed by sir robert borden in a speech delivered in london on april 3 1917, and quoted by the war cabinet in its report for the year 1917 (cd. goo5, p. 8). for the first time, he said, in the empire’s history there are sitting in london two cabinets. over each of them the prime minister of the united kingdom presides. one of them is designated as the “ war cabinet,” which chiefly devotes itself to such questions touching the prosccution of the war as primarily concern the united kingdom. ‘the other is designated as the ‘' imperial war cabinet,” which has a wider purpose, jurisdiction and personnel. ‘to its de- hiberations have been summoned representatives of all the empire's self-governing dominions. this ‘‘ imperial war cabinet’ held fourteen mcetings between march 20 and may 2 1917, but was then reduced to meetings which mr. lloyd george hoped would be “ annual ” in peace as well as in war, and eventually subsided into the imperial confer- ence. the “ war cabinet,” on the other hand, held more than 300 meetings in 1917; and, as it states in its report (no other was issued than that for 1917), “ this fact in itself indicates the great change which has taken place in the work of the cabinet ”: when it refers thenceforth to ‘‘ the cabinet,” it means the war cab- inet, its expanded session being designated as the “‘ imperial war cabinet,” and no other being mentioned. its chart, “ showing the administrative organisation of the british govt.,” represents “the war cabinet sitting as a permanent body, the imperial cabinet mecting periodically and the ministers with portfolios.” lord curzon, the leader of the house of lords, was included, but there was only a sort of liaison officer between this war cab- inet and the house of commons in the person of mr. bonar law, who occasionally attended the war cabinet and led the house, from which mr. lloyd george as a rule absented himself. other important innovations consisted in having a prime minister who was leader of neither house, and heads of great departments who were not members of parliament at all. the old cabinet system ceased in fact to exist; the war cabinet was a dictatorship, other ministers became too numerous for any collective responsibility or activity and had little voice in gencral policy. as heads of departments, some of them achieved con- spicuous success, notably mr. r. e. prothero (afterwards lord ernle) at the board of agriculture, and mr. h. a. l. fisher at the board of education. changes in personnel.—changes in the personnel of the min- istry followed one another with bewildering rapidity. the war cabinet itself was increased to the number (seven) of the war committee under mr. asquith’s regime by the addition of sir edward carson and general smuts and the regular inclusion of mr. bonar law; mr. barnes succeeded mr. henderson in aug. 1917, and mr. chamberlain lord milner in april 1918. in the previous cabinet positions mr. montagu succeeded mr. austen chamberlain at the india office, mr. churchill succeeded dr. ad- dison at the ministry of munitions, and sir eric geddes followed sir edward carson at the admiralty in july. in aug. sir auck- land geddes followed mr. neville chamberlain as director of national service, mr. hodge followed mr. barnes as pensions minister, mr. roberts followed mr. wodge as minister of labour and mr. wardle followed mr. roberts at the board of trade. outside the cabinet, mr. stanley baldwin became joint fi- nancial secretary of the treasury in jan., and other ministerial changes took place in june. in 1918, sir e. carson resigned from the war cabinet in jan. and lord milner left it in april to succeed lord derby at the war office, and there were a dozen other changes among less important ministers before the war came to an end. nor were the soldiers immune. sir william robertson was succeeded as chief of the imperial general staff by sir henry wilson in feb. 1918, general trenchard resigned english from the air staff, and sir douglas haig was none too secure, there was not much stability in the strategy of the war until foch’s appointment as generalissimo of the french and british forces in april. the war narrative again—the public, however, thought, in dec. 1916, that with the new british ministry the allies would not be long in winning the war. an emphatic refusal was given to the german invitation to enter a peace conference, and a victory loan, calculated to last till about aug., was successfully floated in january. for three months or so things went well enough; the fruits of earlier efforts were reaped in the german retreat from the somme and sir stanley maude’s conquest of baghdad in march. but the advance into palestine was held up before gaza; the vimy campaign, after a striking initial success, subsided into trench warfare in april; the french attack on the chemin des dames was a ghastly failure and russia was para- ivsed by the revolution of march. the united states, indeed, declared war in april, but its inter- vention on the field of battle was delayed for more than a year, and the allies were reduced to the defensive, modified by local gains by the french, a well-staged attack on the messines ridge in june, and a pitiless struggle for passchendaele in the mud and the floods of flanders. meanwhile, the battle of jutland had been decisive enough to convince the germans that their hopes lay not on but under the surface of the ocean. they concentrated on their submarines, which in april sank 25% of the merchant shins that put to sea, and bade fair to justify mr. prothero’s anticipation, on taking office, that victory might be lost or won on the cornfields and potato lands of great britain. then followed the italian disaster at caporetto and the bolshevik revolution (nov.); russia went out of the war at the peace of brest-litovsk; ‘‘ defeatism ”’ made its appearance in france, and mr. lloyd george only escaped suspicion of a leaning towards the stockholm peace conference by ejecting mr. henderson from his government. the german offensive—what scemed to some a crowning disaster came with the german offensive in march 1918, which swept away all and more than all the allies had gained on the western front since the autumn of 1914. the british stood, as haig said, with their backs to the wall, and their liaison with the french was nearly broken in front of amiens. things seemed far worse than they had been in dec. 1016, and it looked as though another government might fall. the point of attack was the responsibility for the weakness of the extended front held by the v. army under the command of general hubert gough, who was cashiered for his failure. it had been heli! at versailles, in jan., that the german offensive would fall on that front, and repeated demands for its reinforcement had been made and ignored. mr. lloyd george put the blame for the extension of gough's front on the french premier, m. clemenceau; sir fred- erick maurice, late director of military operations, indicated, in a letter published on may 7, that the responsiiality lay nearer home, and challenged the veracity of ministerial statements. he was placed on haif-pay for his breach of discipline, but the gov- ernment offered a judicial enquiry into his charges. mr. asquith moved, on the other hand, for a select committee of the house of commons, like that which inquired into the dardanelles cam- paign. the government treated this as a vote of censure, and it was defeated by 293 to 106 votes. ‘the liberal sheep who fol- lowed their leader were divided from the goats who supported the coalition, and the party was rent in twain. the united states in the wur—the war meanwhile had been won, not so much by the virtues of any particular british or other ministry, as by the masses of troops which the united states, stirred at last by the threatened disaster to the common cause, poured into the western front during the next few months and by the unification of its command in the person of marshal foch. two million american soldiers sailed before the end of the summer, relieving foch of all anxiety about his reserves and middle-aged britons of the military service imposed on all under st by the last of the conscription acts passed in may. with the prospect of an american army in france, larger than the history 60% british or the french, leadership in the diplomacy, which helped on the german surrender, passed to president wilson, who had already, on jan. 8 enunciated his famous ‘* fourteen points’; and with foch directing the strategy and wilson the policy of the war, the coalition govt. entered smoother waters. electoral reform and education.—it had been far more happy in its projects of reform than in its conduct of the war; and in the spring of 1918 two measures of first-rate importance were placed upon the statute book. one related to electoral reform and the other to education. before the fall of mr. asquith’s govt. the speaker’s conference had been set up in oct. 1916 to deal with the former problem, and on march 28 1917 mr. asquith moved for legislation on the lines of its report, indi- cating incidentally his own conversion to woman suffrage. the prime minister accepted the motion, subject to the qualification that proportional representation and woman suffrage would be left to the judgment of the house. differences between mem- bers and between the two houses turned mainly on these two points. the chief proposals of the representation of the people bill, which was introduced on may 15 by mr. walter long, were that no one should have more than two votes, one for his residence and the other for either his place of business or his university; that women entitled to the municipal franchise should also receive the parliamentary vote on attaining the age of 30; that persons on war service should not be disqualified by non-residence; that all elections should be held on the same day and that there should be a redistribution of constituencies. the second reading was carried by 329 votes to 40; in committee, an amendment to omit the higher age limit for women was rejected by 385 to 55, and the clause adopted by 214 to 17. proportional representation was rejected, except for universities, by 201 to 169 but the “ al- ternative vote” accepted by 125 to 124. the final stages in the commons were deferred till the autumn session and the bill did not reach the lords till dec.; in jan. 1918, an amendment against women suffrage was rejected by 134 to 71 and a proposal to submit it to a referendum by go to 62. the lords then eliminated the “ alternative vote ’’ from the bill by 66 to 9 and inserted proportional representation by 132 to 42; and a brisk interchange of hostilities on these points ensued be- tween the two houses, each insisting on its own projects. a compromise eventually provided for a commission to set up a scheme by which net more than roo members might be elected by proportional representation if constituencies desired it; no such desire has yet (1926) been expressed. the bill became law on feb. 6. the lducation bill—mr. fisher introduced his education sill on aug. 10 1917; but politics are always more urgent than education in the hlouse of commons because children cannot be educated as easily or as quickly as adults can be given votes, and the bill was deferred until march 1918. it proposed to abol- ish all exemptions between the ages of five and 14 and to require attendance at continuation schools until 18; no child under r2 was to be employed at all and none over 12 on school days except after school hours and before 8 p.xt.; no fees were to be charged in public elementary or continuation schools; provision was made for nursery schools and various forms of physical training and recreation. local education authorities were made responsible for the provision of all kinds of education in their areas, were released from the limit of their expenditure for higher education, and were guaranteed half the cost from the national exchequer. the lill was read a second time without a division, and the only hostile ameudment in committee, aimed at the abolition of fees, was defeated by 157 to 51. the bill became law on aug. &. the budget of tors.—most of the time of parliament was, however, devoted to legislation of a temporary character relating to the war, such as raising the military age, providing for the national service of civilians, the production and control of food and shipping, and war pensions; penalising aliens and conscicn- tious objectors; and voting credits and taxation. the last bud- get of the war period was introduced by mr. bonar law on 994 english april 22. he estimated the year’s expenditure at nearly £3,000,- 000,000 (£2,972,197,000) and the revenue at £774,250,000. the standard rate of income tax was raised to 6s./in the pound, the duty on spirits from 14s. od. to 30s. a gal., and on beer from 255. to 508. a bar., on tobacco from 6s. 5d. to ss. 2d. alb., and on sugar by an additional rzs. 8d. on the cwt.; an extra penny was put on cheques. the dead weight of the national debt had risen from {651,000,000 on the eve of the war to nearly £5,000,000,000, and nearly another £1,000,000,060 was added during the year; the cost of its service, £22,000,c00 a year in ror4, had risen to £1809,- 000,000 by april 1918, and rose to £315,000,000 a year during the next 12 months. find of the long parliament—the first parliament electect under george v. met for its last session on oct. 15 roi8. it should, under the parliament act passed by itself, have been dissolved in accordance with the five-year limitation, not later than 1915. but, just as the first parliament of george i., elected under a triennial act, extended its own existence by its own authority to seven years, so this parliament superseded its own parliament act in order to prolong its own existence from five years to eight; as if to atone for this excess it was before long dissolved without its consent in each of three successive years by the royal prerogative at the behest of three different ministers. the autumn session of 1018 lasted for little over a month, and its chief decisions were to pass an act quali- fying women for election to parliament and to reject a resolu- tion moved by the irish nationalists demanding home rule be- fore great britain entered a peace conference to settle europe on a basis of “ self-determination.”” the chief secretary (mr. shortt) resisted the motion, although he warned the house of the probability of another irish rebellion; and mr. bonar law declared that ireland was purely a domestic question for the british empire. mr asquith asked that it might not, “ at this eleventh hour,” be left as a standing reproach, but the resolu- tion was rejected by 196 to 115 votes (nov. 5) and the irish settlement was left until very late in the eleventh hour of the coalition and of the new parliament, for which the election was already being prepared before the armistice on nov. 11. the general election of 1975.—never had a government bet- ter excuses for taking its opponents at a disadvantage. the very fact that they were hardly in opposition, but had supported and served in the war, deprived them of putting before the electors any clear-cut alternative policy and any countcr-attraction to the roseate prospect of homes fit for heroes, woes fit for huns and indemnities to pay taxation, dangled before the popular gaze. the independent libcrals, as they came to be called, de- murred to an immediate general election; but, as the prime minister urged, parliament had long outlasted its term, it had no mandate for peace and it was necessary that british minis- ters should go into the peace conference with the confidence of the country at their back, although france, italy and belgium managed without general elections until peace had been signed. a more acute and legitimate question was whether the coali- tion, formed in and for the war, should prolong its existence for the purpose of peaceful reconstruction. ministers had or ex- pressed no doubts at the time, and mr. lloyd george was appar- ently convinced that ministers who had won the war, or been in office when it ended, were entitled to build the temple and garner the fruits of peace; the ‘‘ old mismanagement,” if any in office were guilty, could be avoided by a general confession that all had made mistakes. the election test, he wrote to mr. bonar law on nov. 2, “ must be not, as in the past, a pledge to support the government in the prosecution of the war, but a definite pledge to support this government.” to what and how far ministers pledged themselves, beyond mutual admiration, was prudently concealed. the resulis—the labour party refused to concur in this napoleonic plebiscite, and to its decision in nov. 1918 it owed its accession to office in jan. 1924; it severed itself from the coa- lition, though some labour ministers continued to support the government and some became coalition liberals and one or two conservatives. the liberal party was incapable of action history as a whole and followed the divergent lines drawn by the schism of dec. 1916 and the division in the house on may 7 1918. the independent liberals refused the coalition pledge, and a number of unionists did the same. parliament was prorogued on nov. 21, dissolved on nov. 25, and the election was fixed for dec. 14, though the votes, for the sake of voters on active service abroad, were not counted till dec. 28. the results exceeded the most optimistic hopes of the coalition: 484 of its supporters were re- turned, made up of 338 unionist, 136 liberal and 10 national democratic, and there were also 51 independent unionists. labour secured 57, against 38 seats in the previous parliament, but the independent liberals were recluced to 26 and all their leaders were defeated. the irish nationalists, however, suffered worst of all: they lost 70 out of 77 seats, while the sinn fein members rose from 7 to 73; but the latter were pledged to ab- stain from taking their seats at westminster and their absence increased the colossal majority for the coalition. excluding them, and also the independent unionists, the coalition had in the ilouse 484 members to 85 labour and independent liberal members combined, a majority of more than 5 to 1. it bore not the remotest relation to voting strength in the country, which gave just over 5,000,000 votes to the coalition, but nearly 3,- 700,000 to labour and the independent liberals, not to mention the independent unionists and sinn feiners. in view of the sub- sequent rise of the labour party in parliament it is well to note that in 1918 it polled almost as many votes as the coalition liberals and independent liberals combined and two-thirds as many as the coalition unionists. the lloyd george programme —it was impracticable to fight a general election on the principle of “ least said, soonest mend- ed,” but rarely have ministers been more embarrassed and im- peded than was the coalition by platform speeches and a pro- gramme which mr. lloyd george summed up on dee. 10 as consisting of (1) trial of the kaiser; (2) punishment of those re- sponsible for atrocities; (3) fullest indemnities from germany; (4) britain for the british, socially and industrially; (5) rehabil- itation of those broken in the war; and (6) a happier country for all (see annual register, 1918, p. 163). there was, however, little novelty in the cabinet burdened with these ambitions, and the arguments for the maintenance of the coalition were not extended to the war cabinet, which abandoned its war exclusiveness and resumed its previous dis- tended size. it consisted of 21 members (jan. 10); mr. chamber- jain became chancellor of the exchequer, mr. churchill went to the war office, mr. long to the admiralty, lord milner to the colonial ofhice and mr. shortt to the home office; mr. bonar law continued to lead the commons as lord privy seal and mr. lloyd george, in view of the peace conference, retained his independence of departmental duties and of regular attendance in the house. of the 77 ministers, all but ten had been in the old government, and the chief novelty was that sir f. e. smith became lord chancellor and baron birkenhead. the labour party, as larger than the liberal, claimed to be the oflicial oppo- sition, and chose as its leader mr. william adamson, who had been a perthshire miner, while the remnant of independent liberals chose sir donald maclean. ill. from the peace conference to the fall of mr. lloyd george the peace conference—the centre of interest, however, .ay not in parliament, which was opened on feb. 11, but at paris, where the peace conference gathered early in jan. and held its first plenary session on jan. 18. the delegates for the united kingdom were mr. lloyd george, mr. balfour, mr. bonar law and mr. g. n. barnes, all representing the coalition, for which not much more than half of an electorate, already beginning to change its mind, had voted. it was felt in some quarters that the responsibility in england, as well as in the united states, might more wisely have been shared with parties not in power, and that there might in that case have been less of a burden to distribute. mr. lloyd george, however, was among the first to react from the mood of 1918, and on april 7 the times, of which english history mr. wickham steed had succeeded mr. geoffrey dawson as editor at the end of feb., accused him at paris of “ thinking of his position at home all the time.”? on march 14 an independ- ent liberal had won a seat from the coalition by over 2,0co votes; another seat was lost by the coalition on april 11 where the coalition majority in dec. had been over 10,000; and a third followed on the 30th. mr. lloyd george was suspected of trimming his sails anc of weakening on the question of german indemnities and the punishment of war criminals; and an indignant protest, origi- nating in lord northclifie’s entourage, was eventually signed by 370 members of parliament. the prime minister replied that he would keep to his pledges, and an interview attributing to him more liberal sentiments was repudiated, but avowed and republished three years later as a vindication of his foresight. for the time he was tied by his immediate past, and the peace that was ultimately made (see paris, conference of) was dic- tated more by the sentiments of dec. than by second thoughts in june. these were best expressed by general smuts, who, while subscribing to the treaty, protested against its spirit and declared that real peace would be found not so much in its terms as in the means it provided for its own amendment when time had toned down the passions and products of war (see league or natrons). in presenting bills on july 3 for carrying out the treaty, mr. lloyd george announced that an inter-allied tri- bunal would sit in london for the trial of the ex-kaiser, and that germany had acknowledged her liability for all the costs of the war—some £30,000,000,000 sterling. russia.—the government was still engaged in wars of sorts in russia and in ireland. in 1918 it was a nice question which of the two the average briton hated more, the germans or the bolsheviks; in 1919 moscow supplanted potsdam as the root of all evil in ultra-british eyes, and forces intended to help russia against germany were perverted to the purpose of collecting british debts from bolsheviks. it was a moot point, which con- tinued to engage the attention of the united states, whether “self determination ” entitles a people to determine how much of its debts it shall pay; but if there is anything that makes in- vasion unpopular it is the conviction that the invader comes in the guise of the sheriff’s officer, and the half-hearted and sur- reptitious assistance given to koltchak, denikin and judenitch did them far more harm than good, and incidentally weakened the coalition in great britain. but only the failure of these successive efforts convinced the government of the futility of attempting to impose upon russia a policy borrowed from the bourbon restoration. treland.—its task was formidable enough in ireland, where on jan. 21 a sinn fein congress adopted a declaration of independ- ence after the fashion of the american colonies and estab- lished a provisional government modelled on that of ulster in 1913; that such would be the result of an attempt to impose con- scription on ireland had been foretold when that act was intro- duced (see the times, april 11 1918). a fortnight later de valera escaped from lincoln gaol, and on april 5 was appointed presi- dent of the sinn fein executive; on may g irish-american dele- gates were received in dublin, and on july 12 sir edward car- son demanded the repeal of the home rule act, which still re- mained an empty form on the statute book, and threatened to call out the irish volunteers. lord birkenhead said that the government had no sympathy with sir edward’s attitude, mr. bonar law that it had no ground for taking legal proceedings and mr. lloyd george that it had not prepared its plan for the settle- ment of ireland; in oct., however, a cabinet committee began to draft a scheme. schemes of reform.—schemes were the order of the day, but great britain, like other countries, had incurred in the war debts too deep to be liquidated by parliamentary bills, to be paid in a generation or to be redeemed by money transactions. ‘“‘ homes fit for heroes ” was but a symbolical expression of an aspiration which had been sincere enough in trenches and in hospitals where war had equalised mankind and almost abolished class distinctions; and millions at least had hoped that peace 995 would no more revive those old inequalities than the old ‘ mis- management ” which the prime minister deplored. the eng- jind for which they had fought was, as mr. kipling wrote of “ the return ” from a smaller war, not ‘‘ what england seems ” but “ the england of our dreams ”’; and the agitations of the first years of peace were elforts to realise dreams by parliamentary statutes or action more direct. neither came up to expectation; ministries of transport and ef hfealth were established by acts passed in 1919; rents were restricted and evictions restrained; hours of labour in coal mines were reduced from eight to seven, and a commission, under mr. justice sankey, was set up to consider nationalisation; a housing act was passed, and another to fix prices and check profiteering. but dreams cost much to realise, and englishmen thought that no one but germans should pay the cost. prices continued to rise, in spite of acts of parliament; the nationalisation of coal was recommended by the casting vote of the chairman of the sankey commission which was equally divided between owners and men, but it was not adopted; and housing bills became hardy annuals which produced few houses but frequent defeats for ministers who proposed them. it was not until two or three years after peace had been signed that the coalition realised the necessity of acting upon the truth that the only way of reducing a nation’s debt is to raise its production above its consumption and to reduce its expenditure below its income. the budget of r919—mr. chamberlain’s first peace budget was introduced on april 30. the national debt had risen during the year from £5,871,000,000 to £7,435,000,000; it had stood at £g00,000,000 at the end of 22 years’ war in 1815, and had been reduced in a century by about £240,000,000. the increase dur- ing 1918-9 had, however, been enhanced by loans to allies and dominions, whose indebtedness to great britain now amounted to £1,739,000,000. on the other hand, to this dead weight of national debt had to be added a floating debt of £1,412,000,000. the cost of its service amounted to {400,000,000 and the total expenditure for 1919-20 was estimated at £1,435,000,000, sub- sequently raised to £1,642,000,000, and the revenue at 1,201,- 000,000, afterwards reduced to £1,168,000,000. the death duties and duties on beer and spirits were largely increased; but the excess profits duty was reduced from 80% to 40%, the proposed luxury tax was not adopted, the duties on land values were abandoned as unworkable, and a beginning was made in imperial preference by reducing the dutics on certain articles of colonial manufacture. with the income tax left at 6s., the deficit was estimated at £234,000,c00 and afterwards raised to £473,000,000, and expenditure in the autumn still averaged over {4,000,000 a day, while it was calculated that the total debt would amount by the end of the financial year to over £8,000,000,000. it was little wonder that even mr. bonar law began to consider the merits of a capital levy, or that opposition was raised to the bill prolonging conscription until april 30 1920. england, declared the prime minister on the eve of the ad- journment in august, was not paying her way: so far from re- ducing her debt, she was producing less and consuming more. nevertheless, when parliament reassembled in oct. its attention was mainly devoted to a bill which provided that every former enemy alien should be deported unless licensed by the home secretary to remain. old age pensions, in view of the rise in prices, were raised from 7s. 6d. to 10s. a week, and a bill estab- lishing industrial courts was passed. the government of india bill, giving effect to the montagu-chelmsford reforms, received the royal assent on dec. 23. dr. addison admitted that the actual amount of building under the recent housing act was trivial, and proposed to stimulate it by a subsidy of £130-£150 a house. lady astor, the first woman m.p., took her seat on dec. c, and a bill to remove the sex disqualification for the bar and the judicial bench was passed, the house of lords debating a clause to open its doors equally wide. no less a novelty was the act establishing a national assembly for the church of england, and enabling it to legislate within limits for itself: hitherto the highest church assemblies had been provincial, and they had possessed no independent right of legislation. the 996 welsh church had earlier in the year received a more extensive independence in the form of disestablishment and disendowment (april 19); lord robert cecil had resigned from the government because of disagreement with the measure on nov. 23 1918. thus passed one of the three measures which had created so much controversy in the years before the war. another, the plural voting bill, had been compromised in the reform act of t9t8. home rule remained, and on dec. 22 1919 the prime minister outlined his proposal for two irish parliaments, one for northeast ulster at belfast, the other forthe rest of ireland at dublin. the bill was not introduced until the new session which began on feb. 10 1920, after the remaining labour min- isters, messrs. barnes, roberts and wardle, had resigned; it was debated for three days at the end of march. mr. clynes moved its rejection, and mr. asquith, who had returned to the house as member for paisley on feb. 25, declared that no one in ireland wanted two irish parliaments, and urged that ireland should be given the status of a dominion—a step that was taken, after infinite troubles, three years later. sir edward carson said that ulster did not want the bill, and before it was passed the government was asking for emergency powers to supersede the civil courts in ireland and deal with a civil war (see ireland). the king’s speech had been optimistic in other respects; it promised bills to acquire mining royalties and reform the house of lords, while the prime minister made the bold assertion that the government was effecting the strictest and most relentless economy in every department of state. another budget.—the budget, however, estimated expendi- ture for the second year of peace at {£1,177,000,000. revenue was, indeed, put at £1,341,000,000, leaving a surplus of £154,- 000,000 for the reduction of debt. this mr. chamberlain con- sidered insufficient; and, the land taxes being definitely repealed as unproductive, the minimum cost of letters was raised to 2d. and of telegrams to rs., the duty on spirits by a further 22s. 6d. a gallon, and that on becr by 3os. a barrel. the excess profits duty, which had been reduced in 1919 from 80% to 40°, was raised again to 60%; and a corporation tax was imposed on limited hability companies. mr. clynes’s motion for special taxation on war fortunes was, however, rejected by 244 to 8&r votes on june 8. the finance act passed without difficulty in the house, but the loss of safe unionist seats at by-elections to ‘“‘ anti-waste ”’ candidates showed that electors wanted the re- duction of expenditure rather than the increase of taxation. other measures dealt with rents, attempted to render the profiteering act more efficacious, and made further provision for health insurance. instead of the nationalisation of the mines, sir robert horne proposed a ministry of mines and the estah- lishment of district boards to adjust the remuneration of miners to the profits of the industry in the different areas; the louse of lords reduced the minister to an under-secretary of the board of trade. the indemnity act, necessary after every war, was passed almost automatically. these measures seemed very jn- adequate to a public more impressed by 2d. postage, the increase of railway fares in aug. by 25° % in addition to the 50% of the war period, by the rise of the bank rate, which had been 5% during the war, to 6% in nov. 1919 and 7° in april 1920, and by the steacly mounting of prices which in nov. were 176% above those of july tory. the irish bill—tyhe autumn session was mainly concerned with the government of ireland bill, the problem of unemploy- ment, emergency measures during strikes and agriculture. the condition of ircland was going from bad to worse, and outrages were growing into raids and ambuscades and military operations hardly distinguishable from a state of war, or at least of revolu- tion. speaking in london at the guild hall, mr. lloyd george declared that the government “ had murder by the throat,” and two days later he said in the house of commons that great britain could give to ireland no powers which would endanger the integrity of the united kingdom, of which ireland was part. the latter remark referred to the proposal to give ireland the status of a dominion, which had met with growing support since its suggestion by mr. asquith in march. few seemed to have english history much confidence in the bill before parliament as a solution of the problem; and, considering the size of the coalition, the ma- jorities by which it was passed, 131 in the commons and 86 in the lords, were small. the problem of unemployment, due to demobilisation and trade union resistance to the dilution of labour by “ hands ” which were “ unskilled’ because of their service in war was hardly less disturbing than the irish situation; and on oct. 18 there were riots in downing street, london, which led to its being barricaded against the public. the two bills passed to deal with the subject in dec. only touched the surface of a fraction of the problem. the agriculture bill was more comprehensive; it aimed at guarantecing prices for the farmer by perpetuating the corn production legislation of the war, and at insuring a mini- mum wage for the labourer; a further instalment of protection was effected by a bill to safeguard the manufacture of dyestuffs in the country. weakening of the coalition —the year 1921 marked the turn- ing point in the history of the coalition and the reversal by itself of the policy for which it existed. the first coalition of may 1915 had been created in order that the nation might present an organised and co-ordinated front to the dangers with which it was beset. the second coalition of dec. 1916 had been called into existence to develop that organisation by increasing state activity and control over all the nation’s powers of production, defence and attack; and the result was, in fact, though the phrase was eschewed, a gigantic experiment in state socialism. this was one of the subtle causes which made the labour party more wholchearted as a rule than liberals in support of the coalition. in nov. 1918, the leaders of the coalition came, for various reasons, to the conclusion that reconstruction must be pursued by the methods which, it was thought, had led to success in the war; that is to say by the employment of supermen to exercise supercontrol of national energies, rather than by reliance upon the initiative, energy and productiveness of the individual. there was much to be said for this view; millions of men drilled for military service, trained to look for orders, and accus- tomed to depend upon a sustenance that was provided for them by an industry to which they had never been accustomed, or from which conscription had cut them adrift, would not find it easy, without dircction and assistance, to discover or resume their place in a community dislocated by the consequence of war. ministers themselves found the transition from war to peace as diiiicult as that from peace to war, and the painful stages by which the nation worked up to efliciency in war were reproduced in the lagging steps by which it was brought back to normal conditions of peace. “ business as usual’ had been the cry in the first few months of war; control, if not conscription, as usual, seemed the main business of the first few days of peace. finance and decoxntrel——the tax collector was, as ever, the main factor in the political education of the country, and the cost of control by supermen with napoleonic ideas provoked in ig¢20-1 & movement which convinced even the supermen them- selves of the evils of superiluity and converted them to the vir- tues of the economical axe. decontrol became the order of the day; and railways, mines, food and drink, prices, agriculture, the civil service and other organised activities were subjected to the processes of pruning or liberation. in some the reversal of policy was distinctly precipitate, and the minister, who in dec. 1920 had secured an act for guaranteeing prices for farmers and wages for agricultural labourers, obtained its repeal and the abandonment of its principles in july 1921. the railways were decontrolled by another bill introduced by sir eric geddes, and resisted by mr. clynes on the ground that it failed to provide for public ownership and control. the bill to decontrol mines was introduced on march 4 and passed with great rapidity three weeks later. the labour protest against it took the form of a miners’ strike at easter, which provoked the powers granted by the emergency act of the previous session. the reserves were called out and a defence force was established in april; but on june 28 mr. lloyd george announced terms of settlement, which he claimed with inveterate optimism would english history - open a new era of co-operation in the industry. peace was bought by a subsidy of £10,000,000 out of the public purse. on the other hand, decontrol coincided with a steady fall in prices and a reduction in the bank rate from 7% to 64° on april 28, to 6% on june 23, to 53% on july 21 and to 5% on nov. 3. prices, which had averaged 176 points above the pre-war level in nov. 1920, had fallen to 133 in april 1921, and fell as much again to 92 by the end of december. resignation ef mr. bonar law—the new policy also coin- cided with important ministerial changes. lord milner resigned in feb. 1922; mr. churchill took his place at the colonial office; and sir l. worthington-evans followed mr. churchill at the war office. mr. long simultaneously resigned the admiralty and was created a peer, his place at the admiralty being taken by lord lee of fareham. a greater disturbance was caused on march 17 by the resignation of mr. bonar law on the ground of ill-health. this created a vacancy in the leadership of the unionist party and of the house of commons. mr. chamber- lain was unanimously elected to the leadership of the party, and the prime minister thereupon invited him to lead the house of commons; he also took mr. bonar law’s post as lord privy seal. sir robert horne succeeded to mr. chamberlain as chan- cellor of the exchequer, and mr. baldwin to sir r. horne as president of the board of trade. dr. addison resigned the ministry of health in april because the axe had been laid at the root of his housing policy, and was succeeded by sir alfred mond. in the same month lord french resigned his lord-lieutenancy of ireland and was succeeded by lord edmund talbot, who was created viscount fitzalan; his chief secretary, sir hamar greenwood, was included in the cabinet, to which sir. l. worthington-evans, sir alfred mond and sir <a. griffith boscawen were also admitted in the place of lord milner, lord long and dr. addison. minor ofiicial changes followed, and in oct. sir eric geddes retired from the ministry of transport and from politics. politics, however, had nothing to do with the retirement of mr. lowther from the speaker’s chair in april; he had occupied it for the almost unprecedented period of 16 years. [te was succeeded by mr. j. h. whitley, and was created viscount ullswater. promotion, however, could be earned by other means than resignation, and in june earl curzon was made a marquis and lord birkenhead a viscount. political reasons may have had something to do with the cleva- _ tion may 24 of sir edward carson from irish politics into the serener atmosphere of a judicial seat in the house of lords. the substitution of lord fitzalan for lord french, interviews between emissaries of the prime minister and sinn fein leaders in mountjoy prison at which dominion home rule was dis- cussed, and between sir james craig and mr. de valera, all indicated that the ideas of the government were getting beyond the grasp of “‘ murder by the throat ” and following the lines of decontrol. the elections, a few days later, to the paper parlia- ment for southern ireland provided a remarkable justification for this intelligent conversion; apart from the university of dublin hardly a candidate, nationalist or unionist, was forth- coming to withstand the nominees of sinn fein, many of whom enjoyed the credentials of imprisonment; out of 128 seats they secured 120 without a contest. the approaching imperial con- ference in london eased the approach to conferences between gencral smuts, mr. de valera, sir james craig and mr. lloyd george. in july a truce was arranged, and conversations led to a conference which, in the autumn, produced the irish treaty and a far more radical solution of the problem than the home rule bills of 1886, 1893 and ro12, which, backed by nothing but argument, had encountered an opposition which disturbed and dominated british politics for a generation. the budget of 1922—meanwhile the budget had been intro- duced on april 25 by mr. chamberlain, because his successor, sir robert horne, was absorbed with the coal strike and indus- trial unrest. comparison with previous budgets was complicated by the distinction now first made between ordinary and extraor- dinary revenue and expenditure. the ordinary revenue for 1921-2 was estimated at £1,058,000,000; the extraordinary, aris- 997 ing from the realisation of war assets, at £158,000,000. the ordi- hary expenditure was put at £974,000,000, and the extraordinary at £65,000,000, thus leaving a combined surplus of £176,000,000. the disconcerting facts were that the national debt stood at £7,831,000,000, and that, while the total expenditure for 1921-2 was put at £138,000,000 less than in 1920-1, the revenue was also £125,000,000 less, even including £158,000,000 accruing from the disposal of war assets. there seemed therefore to be no justification for the abolition of the excess profits duty, ex- cept the assumption (fatal to the policy of its imposition) that the removal of this tax would enable trade to make up the deficiency through more ordinary taxes. the other changes in taxation were unimportant; the income tax was left at 6s., and presumably the government was looking for relief to the pros- pect of extracting fresh revenue out of its plans for safeguarding british industries. resolutions to this effect were moved by mr. baldwin on may 9. duties to the extent of 334% of the value were to be imposed for five years on specified articles in key industries, and also upon imported articles sold below the cost of production in england. other birds, it was hoped, might be killed with the same stone; the exchange with new york, which at the end of 1920 had sunk to $3.54 to the £, might be restored, dumping might be defeated and the figure of unemployment, which rose to 2,044,655—its highest point—on june 21, might be reduced. but food, drink and raw materials were exempt. the bill framed on these resolutions was actively resisted in the house of commons, but was carried by 312 to g2 votes, and the speaker ruled that it was a money bill within the terms of the parliament act and could therefore not be amended by the lords; a motion for its rejection was nevertheless only defeated by 68 to 43. something was also hoped from a bill passed in march to collect german reparations by taxing, up to 50% of their value, im- ported german goods. the autumn session was the shortest in modern times. it began on dec. 14 and ended five days later. its sole purpose was to give parliamentary sanction to the articles of agreement con- cluded between the government and the sinn fein delegation. lord morley emerged from his retirement to move the address in reply to the king’s speech in the house of lords, where the treaty, denounced by lord carson as treachery, was ratified by 166 to 47 votes, having passed the house of commons by qo1 to 53. the treaty, however, no more gave ireland a constitution than the treaty of vereeniging, in 1902, had given one to south africa; and the first business of the new session, which began on feb. 7 1922, was to pass a bill enabling the provisional govern- ment of south ireland to convene a constituent assembly to frame a constitution. in moving the second reading on feb. 16, mr. churchill declared that the government would never recog- nise an irish republic. the bill met with some opposition from a small minority, but passed both houses and received the royal assent by march 31. the final stage of giving the sanction of the imperial parliament to the constitution worked out by the irish assembly was not reached until the end of the year, when it had to be dealt with by a new british govt. and a new british parliament. | troubles of the coalition —the coalition, however, survived the session, and fell, as all british governments in the century had fallen, without any apparent or immediate reference to the confidence of the house of commons. but the rift in the coali- tion lute had produced audible discord from the earliest days of the year, and in jan. the difference was over the date of the general election. ‘the prime minister wanted it soon; the union- ists, or at least their expert tactician sir george younger, wished for delay until reform of the house of lords had been achieved and there was some improvement in the industrial situation; the number of unemployed, after falling to about 1,500,000 in the autumn, had risen again to nearly 2,000,000. there was, moreover, serious doubt whether the two wings of the coalition could present a united front to the enemy at a general election, and the preparations of the unionists for standing alone were by no means complete. 998 another grievance, which came out in public during the summer, created no little resentment. the distribution of rewards for political services was determined solely by the prime minister, though arranged by subordinates, some of whom ex- emplified the wisdom of the serpent even more strikingly than others did the innocence of the dove; and it was alleged, not without cause, that lavish benefactions to public and even to party funds earned little recognition unless they went into the particular party chest which mr. lloyd george controlled. sir george younger’s objections were termed by the lord chan- cellor a mutiny of the cabin boy; but the election was postponed, and in july lord salisbury in the house of lords and another unionist in the commons moved for a select committee of both houses to inquire into the actual methods of distributing honours. lord birkenhead and the prime minister moved and carried, after lively debates, in their respective houses, the circumlocu- tory substitution of a royal commission to advise on the pro- cedure to be adopted in future to assist the prime minister in making his recommendations. the geddes axe.—it was more difficult to evade pressure out- side the tied houses of parliament, and the maintenance of taxes at a higher level in the fourth year of peace than they had reached during the war was producing a clamour for economy which would be fatal if it were side-tracked into mere inquiry. there was, indeed, little point in decontrol unless it led to economy; and in aug. 1921, in response to representations by 170 unionist members, a committee had been appointed, with sir eric geddes as chairman, to assist the treasury to discharge its proper function of containing expenditure within the limits of sound finance. the chairman was criticised on the ground that he had hitherto been concerned rather with spending than saving public money, but the report of his ‘‘ super-axe ”? com- mittee was found too drastic for the departments concerned, all of which resisted the reductions it recommended. on its appointment, sir robert horne, the chancellor, hac put the necessary economies at £130,000,000; the committee recommended {100,000,000; and on may o sir eric geddes complained that the saving actually proposed in the estimates had been cut down to £52,000,000. the difficulty was that, while every one wanted economy, there was no agreement on the economies to be effected; the broad divergence was between those who wanted to cut down expenditure on the army, navy and air forces and those who wanted to reduce it on education and social services. the net result in the budget was an esti- mated revenue for 1922-3 of £910,775,000, against £1,216,000,000 in 1921-2, and an estimated expenditure of {910,069,000 against £1,039,000,000 in 1921-2, leaving a surplus of £706,000. mr. asquith criticised the remission of taxes out of so small a surplus, and sir donald maclean the decision to suspend the reduction of debt. some critics were placated by the reduction of income tax from 6s. to 5s., of letters from 2d. to 13d. and postcards from 14d. to rd., and of the duties on coffee and cocoa. reform of the lords.—the approach of a general election was also indicated by an attempt to reform the house of lords. it was proposed to reduce its membership to 350 and to confine the strictly hereditary seats to peers of the royal family, though other peers could be elected by their fellow peers for a term of years; law lords and bishops were to sit as at present, but a conskler- able element, directly or indirectly elected, was to be introduced from outside. the proposals found little favour in the house of lords, mainly because they assumed the permanence of the parliament act. the root of the difficulty was indicated by lord crawford when, replying for the government, he remarked that there could be no repeal of the parliament act unless their lordships were prepared to accept an elected second chamber and the complete elimination of the hereditary principle, a dilemma which was long to defer the settlement of the question. a amiscellany.—more serious differences of opinion in the coalition cropped up from time to time. the indiscreet publi- cation of a telegram by mr. montagu in march led to his com- pulsory resignation from the india office, and to the revelation of strong unionist dissatisfaction with the indian policy of the english history government. affairs in ireland caused greater disagreement, and mr. bonar law declared in july that he would not now have given the vote he gave in dec. for the irish treaty. lord carson had already in march made a platform speech, for which he was rebuked by the lord chancellor, attacking the coalition and saying it was time to return to the party system, and on april 5, sir w. joynson-hicks moved in the house that in view of the government’s lack of coherent principle a new ministry should be formed upon that basis—he objected to the applica- tion of liberal principles by a government of which he was a supporter while lord hugh cecil declared that no prime minis- ter could be so bad as mr. lloyd george, and that the country had gone from bad to worse ever since the armistice. members and even ministers were at loggerheads over the embargo on canadian cattle, the mandates for palestine and mesopotamia, and the self-government of egypt hardly less than over ireland and india; while the failure in aug. of the london conference on reparations and the increasing friction with france portended grave risk to the stability of european peace. a shock of a different kind was given by the murder of sir henry wilson on his own doorstep near belgrave square, london, in mid-daylight on june 22; but more damaging to the coalition was the buoyant speech of the prime minister at the adjournment of parliament on aug. 4!. greece and turkey—the speech dealt principally with the situation in the near east, which was afterwards described as being one of secret war between england and france openly waged by their respective pawns of greece and turkey. mr. lloyd gebdrge denied that great britain was giving greece pre- ferential treatment, but he said that the greeks could take con- stantinople in a few hours were it not for the allied occupation, and that he did not know of any other army that could have gone as far as the greeks had gone in asia minor. the greeks were wild with delight, and placarded the speech throughout their country. within a month that army had been routed by mustapha kemal and driven helter-skelter to the sea; smyrna was taken and pillaged, and the victorious turks swarmed up to the limits of the neutral zone, where detachments of french and british troops guarded the approaches to the bosporus and the dardanelles. mustapha denied all knowledge of a neutral zone, the french were friendly with the turks, and their detach- ment withdrew across the straits. at the end of september - ministers believed that war was imminent; a semi-official mani- festo was issued insisting on the necessity of defending the straits and preventing a turkish invasion of europe, and the dominions were invited to send contingents to defend interests for which they had already made enormous sacrifices. but france remonstrated against the enunciation of an apparently bellicose policy without previous consultation; the dominions had similar cause for annoyance, and protests against a war which great britain might have to wage almost single-handed came from both the labour and liberal parties. popular opinion was in this respect behind them, and the government was con- strained to rely, not on force, but on diplomatic suasion exerted by lord curzon on m. poincare in paris, and on the tact and firmness employed by sir c. harington at the dardanelles. end of the coalition.—the crisis passed with the convention which mustapha kemal signed at mudania on oct. 11, but it sounded the death knell of the coalition and its government. mr. chamberlain and mr. lloyd george strove manfully against the tide of disruption in speeches at birmingham and manchester on oct. 13 and 14; but on oct. 16 lord salisbury denounced what he called a new method of cabinet government and an exaltation of one-man rule which had proved to be disastrous, and declared that a bolshevist bogey was the only excuse for maintaining the coalition. it foundered at a meeting of con- servatives held at the carlton club three days later. mr. cham- berlain stoutly defended the coalition and its chief, but lord curzon stayed away, and the attack was led by mr. baldwin, ‘settle 2) in weak- 'the total failure of the genoa conference, which was to’ europe,” played a very important part (april may 192 ening mr. luyd george's position. (ed. e. b.) english history president of the board of trade, who said that mr. lloyd george had destroyed the liberal, and was in course of destroying the conservative party. behind him loomed the figure of mr. bonar law, whose retirement 18 months before enabled him to main- tain a sphinx-like attitude until the last. while the meeting was in progress, news arrived of a con- servative victory at newport in a triangular contest with liberalism and labour; mr. bonar law declared his opposition to acombination with either. lord balfour, on whom an earldom had been conferred in april, held that it was a principle of the conservative party to act on the advice of its leaders; but the resolution to fight the general election as an independent party with its own leader and programme was carried by 187 to 87 votes. resignations were at once dispatched to the prime min- ister, and in the afternoon he tendered his own to the king, who sent for mr. bonar law. on oct. 23 the new prime minister was unanimously elected leader of the unionist party at a meet- ing consisting both of peers and members of the house of commons. iv. the course of events since 1922 this was something of an innovation in great britain, where the invitation to form a ministry from the crown and success in forming it had hitherto determined the leadership of parties. only when in opposition had leaders been elected, and then only leaders of the respective oppositions in the lords and commons. but the practice had long been in vogue in the labour party in australia, and the political earthquake which produced a purely conservative admin- istration in oct. was curiously democratic in its operation. the movement came from below. lord salisbury on oct. 16 had expressed a firm belief in the people, and the party repudiated lord balfour’s advice to follow its leaders. nearly all the conservative ex-ministers or ex-conservative ministers, mr. chamberlain, lord balfour, lord birkenhead, sir robert horne, lord lee, sir l. worthington-evans and lord crawford, adhered to the coalition, and lord curzon was the only minister with any cabinet experience worth mentioning who conveyed the benefit of that experience from mr. lloyd george to mr. bonar law in october. sir a. griffith-boscawen had attained cabinet rank in feb., mr. baldwin in april ro21t and lord peel in march 1922, while lord derby had been a minister under mr. lloyd george’s war cabinet in 1917-8. the other members of the new cabinet were all newcomers, largely recruited from the under-secretaries in the old. the general election.—this disability, if any, hardly counted in the general desire to be rid of the coalition, and sir george younger, who was created a viscount for his services, had made a remarkably shrewd forecast of the results of the general elec- tion which followed in november. the conservatives, now united under the leadership of mr. bonar law, secured 347 seats by their independent efforts, against 338 they had won in 1918 with the assistance of the coalition liberals; those liberals were reduced from 136 in 1918 to §9 in 1922, while the independent liberals increased from 26 to 59 or 60, and the labour party from 59 to 142. but the advantages of unity, under the existing electoral system, were most strikingly illustrated by the fact that a single united party with 5,000,coc votes won 347 seats against 268 obtained by the 8,000,000 votes cast for the three sections of the opposition. in the rout of the coalition mr. lloyd george was returned unopposed for the first time in his career; but mr. churchill was heavily defeated at dundee by unconventional labour candidates, and five other coalition liberals who had been cabinet ministers lost their seats elsewhere. sir john simon returned to parliament and mr. asquith retained his seat at paisley; but mr. runciman and sir donald maclean were defeated. so was mr. henderson, but mr. ramsay macdonald and mr. snowden returned to the house, reinforced by mr. sidney webb and other labour leaders. two women alone were elected, lady astor and mrs. wintringham, both of whom had succeeded their husbands at by-elections to the previous parliament. 999 the new parliament met on nov. 20 and mr. ramsay mac- donald was chosen leader of the labour party by a majority of five votes over mr. clynes. the party outnumbered both sec- tions of the liberals combined, and there could be no doubt about its title to the front opposition bench. divided though the opposition was, its combined strength left the government with a majority of only 79, and the return to normal conditions was generally recognised as an improvement upon the last house, in which there could be no effective opposition at all. the irish treaty —it was the first parliament of great britain and northern ireland; its members had been reduced to 615 by the exclusion of southern ireland, and its most urgent task was to implement the constitution of the free state. the king had been moved to impress this duty on mr. bonar law, and he had impressed it upon his party on his election to the leadership before the general election. in these circumstances opposition was almost out of the question; and when on nov. 24 mr. law introduced two bills, one to sanction the constitution of the free state and the other to make consequential alterations in that of northern ireland, the only objections came from the two singular communists in the house; both bills received the royal assent on dec. 5. hardly more serious was the opposition to a bill removing the embargo on canadian cattle, and there was none to another providing a loan of £6,500,000 to set austria on her feet again. there was more searching of heart over the unemployed, the numbers of which had fallen from 1,900,000 in jan. to 1,318,000 in sept., but had risen again to 1,400,000 before the end of the year. a labour amendment to the address was moved on the subject; the minister for labour announced that the govern- ment’s programme included proposals for relief and general work, unemployment insurance, and trade facilities and export credits; and a reduction of 350,000 in the number of unemployed was efiected during the year 1923. foreign affairs —aa crisis of considerable magnitude, how- ever, arose in foreign affairs before parliament met again. mr. bonar law had announced, on his acceptance of office, that his foreign policy would be based on cordial co-operation and friend- ship with france; and on dec. 9 a conference of the british, french, italian and belgian prime ministers began in downing street to resume the discussion of german reparations which had been interrupted by the breakdown of the conference in august. the german govt. had submitted proposals in a note which was laid before the conference and promptly de- nounced as not worth discussing by m. poincare, who declared that nothing would move germany but the occupation of the ruhr or some similar form of coercion. some such measure had been contemplated and threatened by mr. lloyd george on may § 1921. the conference came to no decision in dec., but adjourned the discussion until jan. 2 at paris; and on a debate on the sub- ject in the house of lords lord grey remarked that, if the january conference failed, it might mean a further step towards the collapse of europe and the breach of our friendship with france. he doubted the wisdom of refusing to remit our debts to kuropean allics merely on the ground that the united states declined to remit what great britain owed; he thought, however, that the strong measures recommended by france were more likely to produce the collapse of germany than the payment of reparations. in the house of commons a general who had been stationed in germany expressed the view that the object of french policy was to break up germany into small states, beginning with the separation of the rhineland from the reich. the general situation was rendered all the more difficult by the fact that lord curzon was at lausanne endeavouring to place on a permanent footing the precarious agreement made with the turks at mudania; and a serious difference with france would at least prolong the unrest in the east. the prime minister saw lord curzon in paris before the con- ference opened on jan. 2. no middle course was found between the english desire to give germany, “ purely as a business proposition,” in mr. bonar law’s words, breathing time to toooooo recover, and the french idea of compensating themselves for the absence of reparations and for the failure of the anglo- american guarantee, proposed in 1919, by security through the dismemberment of germany and the establishment of the rhine as its frontier. the entente cordiale gave way to the “ rupture cordiale,”’ whatever that might mean, and france was left with a free hand to deal with a disarmed germany without british assistance. belgium supported france, but italy's co-operation was purely formal. occupation of the ruhr —on jan. 11 the occupation of the ruhr began, many of the troops employed consisting of negroid auxiliaries which france had introduced into the heart of europe to make up for her own declining birth rate. it required no little tact on the part of the british troops at cologne to maintain the excellent relations which were said to exist between them and both the germans and the french. if ever great britain was an arbiter, it was during 1923-4, but the arbitration had to be implemented by patience rather than by force; and it was by a year’s patience and passive resistance that germany convinced the french of the futility and folly of their enterprise. lhe american debt-—meanwhile, mr. baldwin, the chan- cellor of the exchequer, had sailed for new york to negotiate terms for the funding of great britain’s debt to the united states. this stood at some £963,000,000 sterling, all borrowed for the war, and some of it to be passed on to allies to whom the united states had refused advances without a british guarantee. in great britain it was considered hard that she should pay interest, on that part of the debt especially, to the united states, which had profited enormously out of her neu- trality during the greater part of the war, and where taxation was trivial compared with its burden in great britain, while great britain herself was receiving nothing from her european debtors. the ordinary citizen in the united states was, how- ever, unacquainted with these facts, and more responsible per- sons to whom they were known were unfavourably impressed by the huge sums which the european debtors of the united tates continued to spend on armaments. it was idle, they argued, to contend that these countries could not pay their debts while they lavished moncy on objects inconsistent with their professions as a league of nations; and they felt that whatever they remitted as debt would go to increase armaments, which the united states had striven to restrict at the washing- ton conference, and would have restricted further but for the opposition of their european debtors. a partial reply to this reasoning was that european arma- ments were partly due to the refusal of the united states to implement president wilson’s proffered guarantee to france or to take its place in the league of nations. but it was recognised that argument would not reconcile the conilicting points of view, and even british public opinion was fairly unanimous that any reasonable scttlement, however onerous it might seem, would be better than none. nor, regarded from a strictly business point of view, were the terms inequitable, and the city of london was strongly in favour of acceptance. three per cent was to be paid for the first 10 years, and 33°9 for the remainder of a period of 62 years, with an additional half of 1° as a sinking fund. the settlement materially added to mr. baldwin’s repu- tation, and contributed to the restoration of british credit. the baldwin budget—the chancellor’s first budget, which he introduced on the april 16, was also well received. a revenue of £914,000,000 and an expenditure of £812,000,000 had produced a surplus of over £101,000,c00 which went to the reduction of debt. mr. baldwin remarked that nothing would ease the find- ing of capital for industrial purposes so much as the steady re- demption of public debt, and he proposed a sinking fund of £40,000,000, increasing to £45,000,000 the next year and to £50,000,c00. the income tax was reduced from ss. to 4s. 6d. and {1 a barrel was taken off beer. mr. asquith thought it should have been taken off sugar, sir alfred mond preferred the lightening of taxation to the reduction of debt; labour contended that taxation paid by the working classes should have been reduced rather than on income and property. but generally the eenglish history chancellor was thought to have been as wise in the disposal of his surplus as he had been fortunate in its inheritance. the other legislation of the session was of a somewhat modest character. mr. neville chamberlain did rather better than his predecessors with the annual housing bill, but modestly described it as being not a solution but the beginning of a solution of the problem. some relief was also afforded to agri- culture, and the home secretary had to be relieved of the legal responsibilities he had incurred under the habeas corpus acts for deporting to ireland prisoners over whom the free state claimed jurisdiction. death of mr, bonar law.—the great disaster to the govern- ment was the resignation of may 20 of the prime minister, who died on oct. 30 following. it was impossible to fill his place, and the choice of a successor caused his party anxious consideration. lord curzon had great claims and greater expectations; in ability and industry he had few equals and no superior. but his aloofness from the rank and file, his ambiguous attitude in the crisis of oct., his friction with france, and his position in the hlouse of lords were serious obstacles to his selection; he attrib- uted his failure to the last of these circumstances, and there was much significance in the fact that leadership of the house of lords should be considered incompatible with the headship of what was almost a “ die-hard’? government. mr. austen chamberlain, who had been leader of the unionists in the house of commons, was ruled out by a conservative clique for his fidelity to the coalition; and that as well as advancing years and his peerage disqualified lord balfour. mr. baldwin becomes premicr.—this left mr. baldwin prac- tically without a competitor, and no opposition was raised to his election as leader of the party on may 28, six days after he had been entrusted by the king with the duty of forming an admin- istration. he had, it is true, only two years cabinet experience, but mr. bonar law had had none when he was elected leader of the unionists in the commons in torr, and that experiment in novelty had been unusually successful. mr. baldwin had, moreover, taken a decisive part in demolishing the coalition which, as he said in his first speech as prime minister, came only just in time to save the conservative party from the dis- ruption that had overtaken the liberals. other qualifications had been concealed by the absence of showier qualities; a man of sterling character and of more insight than was suspected, he had broad human sympathies not often associated with in- dustrial capitalists, and he was the antithesis of the hard-faced profiteers who had compromised the coalition by the fervour of their support. a certain ambiguity, however, charactcrised the overture of his government. he retained for the moment his chancellor- ship of the exchequer, but was known to be anxious to strengthen his ministry and close the schism which excluded the union- ists, who had belonged to the coalition. mr. chamberlain would have come to his assistance, but was barred from the adminis- tration, as well as from the premiership, and the only accession to the cabinet was lord robert cecil who became lord privy seal. the prime minister, however, still hoped to secure as chancellor of the exchequer either sir robert horne or mr. r. mckenna, one of whom had held the office during the declining days of the coalition while it had compromised the purity of its free trade principles, and the other under mr. asquith. the claims of business and of banking, respectively, given as reasons to the public for the refusal of both, were not exhaustive explana- tions; and it seems clear that mr. baldwin had not yet reached the conclusion that protection afforded the only cure for un- employment. stl, the financial orthodoxy of his budget did not completely conceal or correct his leanings towards fiscal heresy; and it is possible that the alternatives of sir robert horne or mr. mckenna did not imply so much ambiguity as appeared on the surface. conceivably mr. baldwin expected mr. mckenna to take the same view as he did of certain duties which tariff reformers, in gentle retaliation for mr. mckenna’s refusal of office, insisted thenceforth on naming “‘ the mckenna duties.” english those duties had been imposed while mr. mckenna was chancellor, after an allied conference at paris in june 1916, and as an economic aspect of the war with germany which some of their advocates hoped would outlive its other forms; and their idea was to provide for reconstruction and reparation after the war by means of tariffs, and also to provide against future wars by securing economic independence and control of key indus- tries for the allies by something like a zollverein, the quaint assumption being made that enemies in the existing war would necessarily be enemies in the next. the immediate object of the duties was, however, to render great britain independent of enemy products during the war, and had nothing to do with unemployment which the war had practically extinguished; mr. long, indeed, declared in the house on july 11 1916 that it was non-existent. unemployment—unemployment was, however, a serious problem in 1923. the numbers had fallen during 1922 from nearly 2,000,000 on jan. 1 to 1,695,000 at the end of the year, and a further reduction to 1,191,000 was effected by the end of june 1923; but in september they were rising again, and a change in the fiscal system might cure the evil, or alternatively might reap the credit for the amelioration in the industrial situation which some observers were beginning to anticipate as the result of slow but natural causes. while the figure rose to 1,246,000 on oct. 1 it did in fact recede to 1,137,000 just before christmas, its lowest point since demobilisation. imperial conference -—considerations other than the reduction of unemployment affected the imperialistic minds of some of mr. baldwin’s younger colleagues. a tribunal of economists, appointed in dec. 1922, reported in april in favour of “a cau- tious use of the power of the state to obtain for agriculture a somewhat greater measure of security than it had enjoyed for the past half century,” and simultaneously the prime minister announced that, concurrently with the regular imperial con- ference, an imperial economic conference would meet on oct. 1. there was to be a great exhibition of imperial products at wembley in 1924, and the board of education was to tune the schools to this imperial note; a circular was prepared requesting teachers to suspend their ordinary historical instruction in favour of a special six months’ course devoted to the greatness of the british empire. all this would provide an admirable setting while the house of commons would be enacting a policy of imperial preference and protection. the curtain was not to be raised at once; but before the end of july 1923 intelligent forecasts found their way into private conversations, and when mr. baldwin eventually divested himself of the chancellorship it was announced on aug. 28 that mr. mckenna was unable to join the government and that the mantle had fallen on joseph chamberlain’s second son, neville. relations with russia.—foreign affairs claimed attention before the denoucment of this domestic drama. in may lord - curzon threatened a renewed breach with russia, not so much on account of bolshevik propaganda in the west as of its dis- turbing influence in asia. it was dimly beginning to be perceived that marxist communism had proved a fiasco and made little appeal to any industrial community, but that the newer bol- shevik orientation was a far more serious and significant prob- lem. russia was, in fact, destroying the western facgacdle which peter the great had imposed upon the country, and the tartar in the russian reverted to his original type. bolshevik russia lost all her western provinces, but easily recovered the siberian conquests of the t’sars. the ‘ war on heaven ’”’ was russia’s recantation of her whilom championship of the orthodox church against the moslem and the turk, and it paved the way for the bolshevik assumption of the british part in asia, which the kaiser had challenged when he claimed to be the friend of mos- lems all over the world. but anything oriental was fish to the bolshevik net: chinese troops had been the most useful of their mercenaries, and bol- shevik influence overthrew the peace lord curzon dictated to persia in 1919, penetrated into afghanistan, played a large part in chinese civil wars, and fostered discontent in india. but none history of her new friends brought much grist to the economic mill of russian destitution, and the “ new economic policy ” of 1922-3 recognised the need of western trade and capital and implied, perhaps, some doubt of the permanence of the new orientation. krassin travelled by aeroplane to london in may to convey surprising acquiescence in lord curzon’s somewhat dictatorial demands. relations with france.-—with france relations were more and more strained as distrust of the wisdom of her ruhr adventure grew into detestation of the methods employed, not so much to extort reparations as to dismember a disarmed country, to the integrity of which, as restricted by the peaceoi versailles, the allies had pledged themselves. the worst was concealed by the government out of consideration for french susceptibilities, but there was considerable indignation in parliament and outside with the ‘‘ wait and see ” attitude of the government and with the studied deliberation with which m. poincare, confident in his own methods, postponed the consideration of britain’s hy efforts to find a practical solution. the cabinet was in fact divided, and the difference was some- what strikingly illustrated by the discrepancy between lord curzon’s note to france on aug. 11 denying the legality of the occupation of the ruhr, and the prime minister’s statement, after an interview with m. poincare on sept. 19, that there was no divergence between them in purpose or in principle with regard to reparations. french intransigence was commonly attributed to m. poincare’s knowledge of the support he enjoyed within the british cabinet, but mr. baldwin did not expressly extend his approval of french purpose and principle to their methods, and in september there were extraneous reasons for avoiding disputes with france. greece and italy.—a third crisis had been precipitated by m. mussolini’s hasty extension to other countries of the methods of the fascisti. on aug. 27 general tellini and four members of his suite were murdered while engaged on a league of nations commission to delimit the greco-albanian frontier. the out- rage certainly occurred on soil that was claimed by greece; but without waiting to ascertain whether the criminals were greeks, m. mussolini sent an ultimatum to greece, and on aug. 3t bombarded and seizec corfu. it was a repetition of austria’s action over the serajevo murders, copied down to the phraseology used by the disputing parties, with this difference, that tellini’s mission was under the auspices, not of italy, but of the league of nations. the incilent produced a remarkably strong wea unanimous expression of opinion by the league of nations then in session at geneva; but the council of ambassadors, which was still kept up, to temper with diplomatic caution the convictions of indiscreet humanity, intervened to secure the evacuation of corfu, without compensation for its bombardment, and to impose a fine on greece without waiting to ascertain who the murderers were. the credit of the league was thought to have suffered a shock; but corfu was evacuated and it was the con- ference of ambassadors which disappeared. the general effect of the situation upon the prestige of the government was indicated by sir robert horne’s assent to a remark by mr. asquith that great britain had almost ceased to count among the great powers of the world. | mr. baldwin and protectionmmeanwhile, early in oct., the british dominions had met in conference and inspected the progress of the wembley exhibition; and on oct. 9 mr. bruce, the australian premier, pleaded for a thorough protectionist policy for england on the ground that it alone provided adequate scope for colonial preference. the government at once in- dicated that it would go as far as it could within the limits of mr. bonar law’s pledge in oct. 1922 not to introduce general protection «luring the lifetime of the parliament then to be elected; and on oct. 25 at plymouth mr. baldwin announced that the only way of fighting unemployment was by protecting the home market, while his chancellor of the exchequer added that the cabinet would have to seck release from mr. bonar law’s pledge. iooi 1002 the conversion of the ministry and its announcement were hardly bolts from the blue to careful students of political meteorology. but the prime minister himself appears to have been surprised by the rapidity with which he was hustled towards a general election. he gave no hint of it in other speeches five and seven days later, and not until parliament met on nov. 13 did he announce that he had advised the king to dissolve it on nov. 16. the wisdom of dissolution was not apparent, and a confession was read into his remark a year later that it was not often a man was given a second chance. he had an adequate majority over all other parties in the house; parliament had still four years to run; unemployment, while serious enough, had been reduced by 25% or 30% in nine months without heroic measures, and mr. bonar law had pleaded for a period of tranquillity. it seemed as though his successor was bent on throwing away substantial advantages for a delusive policy on which his party were not agreed. to the feud between coalition and anti-coalition unionists were added division between free traders and full protectionists and the alienation of both. mr. austen chamberlain denounced the exclusion of wheat and meat from the proposed duties, and said it was a mistake to fight a great fight on a little issue, while lord derby and lancashire inclined towards the view of the glasgow herald that mr. baldwin’s policy was one in which the unionist party could not succeed without disaster to the coun- try, nor fail without disaster to itself. it succeeded, however, in averting one danger which mr. baldwin feared. he had remarked in his first speech as prime minister that the coalition had been destroyed just in time to prevent the disruption of the conservative party; yet his suc- cession to the premiership had coincided with a vigorous effort, led by mr. churchill and lord birkenhead, to revive the coali- tion under the name of a centre party in order to combat so- cialism. the revival of the free trade issue precipitated liberal reunion, and enlisted the support of mr. churchill, who found his nearest approach to a coalition among the liberals. but while that reunion preserved conservatism from the contamina- tion of coalition, it did not save the country from the experi- ment of a socialist government. the general election the general election took place on dec. 6. most unionists had anticipated a reduced but still com- fortable majority over all other parties. their disappointment was due less to any great alteration in the distribution of the popular vote, than to the co-operation between the two liberal sections and the restriction of contests between liberal and labour candidates to 52 seats. the unionists lost about 75,000 votes, while labour gained about 250,000 and the liberals about 180,000 out of some 14,000,000 polled. but the unionists lost on a balance 88 seats while labour gained 47 and the lib- erals 41. the result was that, instead of 346, there were only 258 unionists in the new parliament; instead of 144 there were 191 labour m.p.’s; and instead of 117 there were 158 liberals. apart from eight independents, labour and liberal members combined had a majority of 91 over the government which had dissolved with a majority of 85. labour had again secured the place of the largest party in opposition, and would assuredly regard it as its duty to oppose; but it was not so clear that the liberals would turn out mr. baldwin in order to install mr. ramsay macdonald, nor, 1n- deed, that the followers of mr. asquith and those of mr. lloyd george would take the same view of their duty in the matter. mr. baldwin, relying upon this ambiguity and upon the fact that he still had a bigger majority over labour than labour had over the liberals, determined to wait in office and see what parliament would do. historical precedent-—~the christmas vacation was mainly occupied by a vigorous discussion of the political situation and its constitutional implications. there was no particular novelty in the existence of three parties in the house of commons, no one of them possessing a majority over the other two combined. daniel o’connell held the balance of power between the whigs and tories in 1835 when his “ lichfield house compact ” with english history the whig opposition turned out peel and set “an evil prece- dent, pregnant with disastrous consequences.” the peelites themselves held the balance a few years later between liberals and conservatives. liberais held office by virtue of irish votes in 1886, 1892-5 and 1910-4, and a conservative government by liberal unionist votes, not represented, save by mr. goschen, in the cabinet, from 1886 to 1892. the difference lay in the relative depth of the dividing lines; the stability of these recent governments reposed upon the fact that one issue, home rule, overrode all others, and divided the government from the opposition more fundamentally than any division within their respective ranks. but in 1924 no two parties were bound together to pursue a specific policy. nor was it easy to discover anything more fundamental in the division between a liberalism, not very clearly defined, and a socialism with many shades of meaning, than in that between liberalism and a tariff reform which might mean anything be- tween a “ whole hog ” and a pork chop. to sir john simon’s argument that the socialist programme of nationalisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange meant the nationalisation of ali these means, it might be replied that liberalism meant the nationalisation of none, and, therefore, implied the abolition of the post office, the repeal of a good deal of liberal legislation, and the abandonment of several items in its programme. free trade was a clearer issue than most, and foreign policy came next; and the two together provided the basis upon which mr. baldwin was turned out and a labour government installed in office for the first time in english history. the position in theory.—the constitutional argument turned on the question how far the leader of a party in a permanent minority could impose on the crown an advice which depended for its authority upon the assumption that he enjoyed the con- fidence of a majority. extreme doctrinaires held that the crown must act on that advice even though it involved a dissolution of parliament against the wishes of the crown, the commons, and the country, and envisaged a ministerial prerogative based on a purely bolshevist theory of executive irresponsibility. but there were clearly practical objections to its adoption; according to it mr. baldwin might, instead of resigning on his defeat in the house, have plunged the country once more into another gen- eral election; mr. macdonald might, remaining in office after the general election of 1924, have done the same in nov. or dec. 1924; and a government might theoretically maintain itself in office by a series of dissolutions. the best practical answer, however, to those who regarded absolute control over dissolutions as the sacred ark of ministerial prerogative, is per- haps the facts that no prime minist-cr in the 2oth century, except mr. asquith, has yet (1926) exorcised it more than once, and that the more eager the claim to control the greater the penalty inflicted by the country for its exercise. the first effect of the election was to provoke from timid minds - an agitated appeal for another coalition of conservatives and liberals, and alternatively, either a liberal agreement to sup- port a conservative govt. or conservative support for a liberal government. mr. asquith hastened to pour scorn upon this in- vocation of him as a saviour of society, and made no concealment of his intention to assist in the downfall of mr. baldwin’s government. mr. baldwin, whose supersession was one of the motives of the movement, could hardly have consented to a coalition in view of his action in oct. 1922, and he somewhat easily weathered the attack on his position as conservative leader. fall of the baldwin minisitry—he met parliament on jan. 8 1924 with a bold front and a programme shorn of protection, but replete with proposals borrowed from labour or the liberals. the question was one of confidence, which a labour amendment to the address denied in simple terms to mr. baldwin’s adminis- tration, the amendment was supported by mr. asquith, who was the arbiter of the situation, and was accordingly heard with a respect which had not for nearly 10 years been paid to his words. some of his nominal supporters did not relish his advice; 10 voted with the government and six ibstained; but the bulk english of the liberals, added to the labour vote, gave a majority of 72 for the amendment on jan. 21, and for the first time since mr. asquith’s own amendment on aug. 11 1892, the house of com- mons enjoyed the sensation of ejecting a ministry from ofhce by a direct vote of censure. labour in office.—mr. baldwin resigned, and mr. macdonald accepted office on the following day. he had already prepared his colleagues. there was necessarily a good deal of inexperience in the cabinet of a party taking office for the first time, and only three of mr. macdonald’s colleagues had been in one before— lord haldane, who returned to the woolsack, mr. henderson, and mr. clynes. but there was a general desire to give the new government a “‘ fair chance;” and one or two ministers, lord chelmsford, and possibly lords olivier and parmoor, accepted office rather on the ground that the king’s govt. must be carried on, than from any particular zeal for labour politics. lord olivier had, however, long been a member of the fabian society; lord parmoor, a prominent churchman and a conserva- tive m.p. from 1895 to 1914, had been attracted by labour’s devotion to peace; and there was particular need at the admir- alty for some one of lord chelmsford’s experience and tact to bridge the hiatus between the senior service and the youngest of political parties. mr. walsh, however, got on excellently at the war office, though finding it a little difficult to be properly superior to his subordinate, the earl of cavan, chief of the imperial general staff. probably the most effective of mr. macdonald’s col- leagues were mr. philip snowden, who became chancellor of the exchequer, and mr. j. h. thomas, who went to the colonial office. mr. macdonald himself took the foreign office, too heavy a burden to combine with the leadership of his party and of the house of commons. he was justified by the success of his dealings with france and germany, and by the very favour- able impression he produced at home and abroad; but overwork and strained nerves had a good deal to do with the abbreviation of his term of office. france and russia. —the european situation had taken a slight turn for the better before mr. baldwin resigned, owing to president coolidge’s intimation, in oct. 1923, of america’s willingness to participate in an inquiry into germany’s capacity to pay reparations and to m. poincare’s consent in dec. to the appointment of committees for the purpose; and by a tactful letter to the french prime minister on jan. 26 mr. macdonald established a friendliness in personal relations which had been impossible under the curzon-baldwin diarchy. in response to this suavity or in intelligent anticipation of the french general election, m. poincare showed himself more accommodating on the rhine. with regard to russia, however, mr. macdonald reversed his predecessor’s policy, recognised the soviet govt. on feb. 1 and invited it to send plenipotentiaries to lon- don to discuss existing treaties and the settlement of exist- ing claims between the two governments and their individual subjects. the liberals warmly supported this policy, and still more warmly the government’s decision to abandon the project of a great naval base at singapore. it was different with mr. macdonald’s acceptance of his predecessor’s plan of laying down five fresh cruisers, albeit his reason was peaceful employ- ment rather than warlike preparation. this did not meet the liberal plea for economy, and the government had to rely on conservative votes to save them from defeat. housing and unemployment.—the most singular failures of labour in office related to those domestic problems for which it was thought to have specific cures, namely housing and un- employment. the number of unemployed, which had risen during the last fortnight in dec. to 1,280,000, had, indeed, been reduced by the end of june to 1,009,500, the lowest point since demobilisation; but at the end of sept. it was up again to 1,215,000, and before the end of the year to practically what it had been at the beginning. this was worse than the modest anticipation of mr. shaw, the minister of labour, in may, that the figure would remain at about 1,000,000 for the next two years and in the third would not sink below 800,000. the most history 1003 plausible defence was that of miss bondheld, the first woman minister, to the effect that tke labour remedy was the nationali- sation of land, mines, railways and main roads, which was impossible till labour obtained power as well as office. mr. wheatley was no happier, as minister of health, with his housing policy, the fundamental trouble both with it and with unemploy- ment being the reluctance of the majority of workers who were employed to risk reduction of wages and dilution of labour for the sake of those who were not. | the labour budget—the labour govt. seemed doomed to prosper by its liberalism rather than its socialism; and mr. snowden came to the rescue on april 29 with a free trade bud- get, which pleased the liberals a great deal more than it did some of his colleagues, including his own prime minister. the internal debt had been substantially reduced, and the ex- ternal, save that to the united states, wiped out; and the chan- cellor estimated his expenditure at £790,000,000 and his revenue at £828,000,000. he proposed, therefore, to halve the duties on tea, coffee, cocoa and chicory, and to reduce that on sugar from 25s. 8d. to 11s. 8d. per cwt., thus taking, he said, “‘ the greatest step ever made towards the near realisation of the cherished radical idea of a free breakfast table.’”’ he also proposed to abolish the inhabited house duty, and, after june 30, the cor- poration profits tax. he announced that the government were unable to endorse the resolutions of the imperial conference in favour of colonial preference, but proposed to retain the exist- ing ones. the mckenna duties, however, were to be abolished after aug. 1. this last proposal provoked the most discussion, but mr. baldwin’s motion regretting it was defeated on may 12 by 317 to 252. the efiect of the budget as a whole was to in- crease the gap between the conservatives and the government and to diminish that between the government and the liberals; and mr. thomas’s interjection during the budget debates to the effect that the government had many more budgets to introduce implied an expectation of continued co-operation between the two parties. the co-operation had to be active because mere abstention by the liberals would insure the defeat of the government. the french election—meanwhile another stroke of good fortune befell the government in the french general election in may. the failure of the ruhr adventure to produce financial fruits, coupled with its cost, had forced upon m. poincare the unpleasant necessities of taxation and retrenchment. these were not at all the results which france had expected, and her obvious reluctance to meet her obligations started the franc on the downward path of the german mark; not till it had fallen to nearly 130 was its progress checked by american and british intervention, dictated by fear of the effects on french external trade. this assistance did not save m. poincare, who had gone so far as to sanction a breach of the french law requiring annual budgets, from electoral resentment; but, as in england during the autumn, the success of the radical and socialist parties was due rather to increased co-operation than to any great turn- over of votes. the result was the same, namely to give a ma- jority to a combination of left centre and left parties, which enforced the retirement (june 11) of the french president, m. millerand, on the ground that he had improperly identified himself with m. poincare’s policy, and substituted m. herriot as premier for m. poincare. a european agreement.—semi-socialist governments in the two countries could now discuss the dawes plan and the ruhr with greater cordiality and better prospects of agreement. on june 21-2 m. herriot paid a visit to mr. macdonald at chequers and mr. macdonald returned it at paris on july 8-9; as a result invitations were issued to a conference of the allies in london which opened on july 16. mr. macdonald presided with a skill which materially contributed to its striking success; and on aug. 16 a settlement was reached, embodying the dawes plan and an agreement between french and german delegates for the liquidation of the ruhr adventure, which was ratified by the french chambers and the german reichstag. this, claimed mr. macdonald with some justification, was the first real treaty 1004 of peace since the war, because it was made by agreement and not dictated by force. . difficulties of the government.—this was the climax of the government’s success, and already ominous signs were appear- ing of trouble in other: directions. one was the refusal of north- ern ireland to appoint, as provided by the irish treaty, a com- missioner to assist in the delimitation of the free state frontier; but this only caused a conservative outburst, which the govern- ment could afford to ignore so long as it retained liberal support. it was, however, sore over the number of liberal amendments it was forced to incorporate in its housing, unemployment insur- ance and agricultural wages bills; and on one occasion the prime minister angrily refused to “ feed out of mr. asquith’s hand.” the final breach, however, was imposed upon him by his left wing, inspired by mr. wheatley, whom it would have preferred as prime minister. the negotiations which the government had initiated with soviet russia dragged on from april until aug. 5, when an official announcement was made that the conference had broken down; late that night, however, some four or five members of the extreme labour left succeeded, by secret diplo- macy, in persuading the rival negotiators to meet once more,! and on aug. 6 the under-secretary for foreign affairs informed the house that a treaty had been drafted and would be signed next day. the determining consideration was the suggestion of british capital to communist russia in return for an acknowl- edgment and partial satisfaction of british debts. unofficial intervention of a secret character also determined the with- drawal on aug. 12 of the government’s prosecution for seditious libel of mr. campbell, who was the acting editor of the work- er’s weekly. the first of these incidents caused most of the political dis- cussion in sept., but it was the second on which the gov- ernment fell. the conservatives had at once denounced the russian treaty in the house, and mr. lloyd george joined in the attack on its loan proposal. he renewed his attack during the recess on sept. 10, and defied the government to proceed with its ratification. lord grey took stmilar objection in a milder way on sept. 18, and on sept. 20 mr. asquith followed suit in a letter, but not without a. hint that some modification of the treaty might induce liberals to acquiesce in its ratification. the cabinet met on sept. 22, and seemed not altogether averse from the idea. on sept. 27 the prime minister explained that the government only proposed to guarantee so much to russia as she could raise in the ordinary way in the money market, and that it would guarantee nothing until the conditions were ful- filled. simultaneously there appeared, in the second edition a his socialism, critical and constructive (1924), a denunciation of russian bolshevism and british communism. the path was still open to peace between. labour and enough liberals to avert a defeat of the government. both parties were at one over the irish boundary commission, and all parties concurred in mr. macdonald’s prompt refusal of zaghlul pasha’s demand that great britain should relinquish the sudan to egypt. the ur- gency of the irish question, however, required the reassembly of parliament on sept. 30, instead of four weeks later. ‘the bound- ‘ary bill went through without opposition except from conserva- tives who did not persist therein, but the meeting of parliament provided facilities for a disruption which might have been post- poned or avoided, had the combatants kept apart on their respective platforms instead of coming into contact in the house of commons. defeat of the government.—on oct. 1 the tibarals put down a motion on the russian treaty, but that was not to come up until nov. on sept. 30 mr. baldwin asked for a day to discuss, when parliament met again at the end of oct. the government’s action over the worker’s weekly. it is not easy to apportion the responsibility for the anticipation of the crisis, and it may 1 mr. macdonald stigmatises as a ‘‘common error” the state- nient that “ half a dozen unofficial members of parliament reopened the negotiations and drafted the agreement ”' (7 he observer, (london) march 211925). this does not, contradict the statement in the text. ienglish history have been inadvertence rather than the deliberate choice of an issue which led mr. macdonald, in replying to mr. baldwin, to suggest an immediate discussion of the campbell case. when that motion appeared next day as a vote of censure, constitu- tional propriety required that it should not be left hanging over the government for a month, and it would seem that the con- servatives, who were already convinced that they had most to gain by a dissolution, were least anxious to avoid it. mr. churchill had just come out as a conservative candidate, and, apart from that accession of strength, he was ever the best in- dicator of the quarter from which the wind was going to blow. conservative tactics were certainly on this occasion more skilful than those of other parties. the liberal motion on the campbell case was for a select committee, which need not be treated as a vote of censure any more than were those for the jameson raid committee or the marconi inquiry; and, put as an amendment to mr. baldwin’s vote of censure, it would ensure the defeat of the latter. if mr. baldwin’s contention had been correct that the government wished to defeat his motion by means of liberal votes and the liberal amendment by conservative votes or abstention, it would have absolved mr. macdonald from the charge of precipi- tancy which the conservatives incurred by voting for the lib- eral amendment to their own motion and thus defeating the government on oct. 8 by 364 to 198. it was difficult for mr. macdonald not to regard an amendment as a vote of censure when the majority, who voted for it, had a vote of censure in their minds and on the paper. partly by accident and partly by design, the liberals had been hoist with their own petard and made to appear as willing 10 wound but afraid to strike; and the dilemma in which they found themselves was prophetic of their disaster, another general election —the government naturally pre- ferred dissolution to resignation, though they forfeited the prospect of a year or two of oflice and of budgets by which they could have effected much, as well as the unpopularity of a third dissolution in two years. the conservatives were even more willing, and a windfall helped them in the zinovieff letter inciting british citizens to disorder in’the interests of international com- munism. the foreign office regarded it as genuine, and mr. macdonald demanded an explanation from the russian govt., which denounced the letter as a forgery. the original had not been seen, but a copy had found its way into the offices of the daily mail. after the election a committce of the labour govt. was unable to come to a positive conclusion, but a subsequent committee of its conservative successors thought the evidence for its authenticity conclusive.? the effect of the bomb- shell was more disastrous among half-hearted liberals than whole- hearted labour voters, and the polling revealed a landslide in public opinion. it was a falling away from the libcral party in both directions. it lost 1,250,000 votes: the conservatives gained 2,c00,000 but labour also gained 1,000,000. this result was, as usual, grossly exaggerated in the members returned; less than half the votes cast—7,864,402 out of 16,302,- 455—gave the conservatives more than two-thirds out of the wnole ihlouse—413 out of 615 seats; labour, with just over a third of the votes, obtained 151 seats, less than a quarter of the house; and the liberals with nearly a fifth of the votes obtained 4o, or less than a fifteenth of the seats in the house. mr. asquith lost his seat at paisley and was presently created earl of oxford, the latest, but, with the doubtful exception of harley, easily the most distinguished holder of that historic title; and mr. lloyd george, sir john simon, mr. runciman, mr. fisher and sir alfred mond were the chief survivors of a disaster which seemed to show that liberalism had fulfilled its function in british politics. labour, while driven from office, had succeeded in its more immediate object of defeating its nval for the suc- cession, 2sce the text and comment in a. j. toynbee’s survey for ro24 (1926), pp. 246-50, 492-6; the matter is still involved in obscurity due to the ‘ambiguity of the relations between the third inter- national and the soviet government. english history the second baldwin ministry.—in a sense it had done so by converting both its rivals. the king’s speech, which mr. bald- win had drafted in jan. 1924, marked an enormous advance in conservative thought; the labour party had repudiated its communist wing and definitely committed itself to the cause of orderly progress, and not a few labour and conservative leaders had called themselves liberals and retained much of the faith in which they had been brought up. in the long run it might seem to make little difference to the country whether it took alternate doses of rival prescriptions, or adhered consistently to a compound of both. one thing was certain; the country would not remain always content with the same advisers, and the need for an opposition was only second to that for 2a government. mr. baldwin’s second administration was a great improve- ment on his first; the coalition feud was healed, and the new cabinet included most of the able ministers who had been banned in 1922. mr. austen chamberlain went to the foreign office, from which it was mr. baldwin’s painful duty to exclude lord curzon; lord cave returned to the woolsack, but lord birkenhead was given the india office; lord balfour succeeded lord curzon as president of the council on lord curzon’s death in march 1925; sir l. worthington-evans returned to the war office; and mr. churchill received, in the chancellorship of the exchequer, the reward of intelligent anticipation. but the house was the poorer for the holocaust of liberal critics, and mr. baldwin’s huge majority deprived its procecdings of an essential stimulus to liveliness. the country did not exactly want to rest and be thankful; but it wanted to get along without being over-driven by supermen and without being governed by a perpetual series of general elections. the mecting of parliament—the new parliament met on dec. 2 to find some results of the general election already regis- tered in the government’s repudiation of the russian treaties, the revival of the singapore naval base, and the claim for ex- cessive reparations from egypt for the murder of the sirdar, sir lee stack; the italian press approved of the british demands on the ground that they justified italy’s action the year before over the assassination of general tellini. the government, however, was continuing mr. macdonald’s policy in rejecting zaghlul’s claim to egyptian control of the sudan and in bringing to a successful conclusion the negotiations for a commercial treaty with germany. another reversal of policy, indicated in mr. baldwin’s declaration that in the view of this government the late government’s instructions to the attorney-general to institute no political prosecutions without the sanction of the cabinet was unconstitutional, was modified a few days later by his statement that the attorney-general should in such cases in- form himself of the views of the government or the appropriate minister before coming to any decision. the chief outstanding ambiguity related to the government’s tariff policy. mr. bald- win on dec. 9 renewed his pledge not to introduce protection into the new parliament, but on dec. 17 he announced that a bill would be introduced next year to give any industry which could prove itself to be substantial and efhctent general protec- tion against unfair competition from abroad. how far “efficiency ” in an industry was compatible with failure to meet competition, and how far “‘ unfair ”’ was identical with successful competition were questions demanding careful consideration. mr. churchill’s budget—before parliament reassembled, on feb. 10 1925, the government had determined to drop the idea of a tariff bill, in order, said mr. baldwin, to restore the house of commons to its constitutional position as the taxing author- ity; and the government’s proposals were embodied in the budget which mr. churchill introduced on april 28. there were certain ““sumptuary duties’? on natural and artificial silk, and a “nakedly protective’? duty on imported hops; the mckenna duties were reimposed, and the preferences recommended by the imperial economic conference of 1923 were accorded so far as they did not involve new or additional duties upon food. these sumptuary, protective or preferential duties in the budget were subsequently supplemented by bills, introduced after re- ports by board of trade committees in favour of special meas- 1005 ures of protection; and lace, gloves, gas mantles and certain kinds of cutlery were granted. an application on behalf of the steel aus: was rejected, not apparently on the ground that it was illogical, or that foreign competition was fair, but because steel involved so many particular industries that their sum might infringe the pledge’ against general protection; some of the parts must be left out jest they should make a whole. these concessions to the pro- tective wing of the party were balanced by a new scheme for old age pensions at 65 and pensions for widowed mothers, by six- : pence off the income tax and increased allowances for earned and smaller incomes. the fly in the ointment of the budget was © an estimate of expenditure, amounting to nearly {800,000,000, and soon to be increased, until, at the end of the year, the chan- cellor was faced with the dilemma of revoking his boons or im- posing drastic and comprehensive economy. ; the gold standard restored.—the soundest of mr. churchill’ s achievements was, perhaps, the restoration of the gold standard, though its beneficence was disputed by some economists and it had little apparent effect upon trade or unemployment. most progress was made with housing, but the 150,000 new houses © owed their existence to private rather than to state or municipal enterprise; rent control was continued, and the total number of unemployed was only reduced during the year from 1,307,140 to 1,251,900. coal mining threatened catastrophe, and at the end of june the owners intimated that they could not go on without a reduction in wages, which the men would not even discuss; a disastrous strike was only averted on july 31 by the dubious expedient of a subsidy, put at first by mr. baldwin at - £10,000,000, but more than doubled by the end of the financial year. a commission sat throughout the autumn and into 1926 to deal witha problem for which none of the party creeds - provided a solution. owners could see salvation only in in- creased hours of labour and reduced wages and railway expenses, | while the community paid for german indemnitics by maintain- - ing british miners and spent in the way of subsidies to coal what it saved by using other fuel. the pact of locarno.—the need of petceadhinen at home in- geminated peace abroad, and the spirit of locarno pervaded the political atmosphere of the autumn. the government had, in the spring, rejected the league protocol, conceived on wilsonian lines and supported by the sentiment of labour and america, after it had been accepted by the great majority of the members of the league, and had turned to the more restricted but feasible ideas embodied in the security pact which was initialed at lo- carno in oct., ratified by the relevant parties in nov., and signed in london on dec. t. by it great britain, france, germany, italy and belgium bound themselves, collectively and severally, ' not merely, like the famous “ scrap of paper,” to respect but to guarantee the existing frontiers between germany and france and between germany and belgium. the treaty was only to become effective on the day on which germany entered the league of nations. whether this condition was inspired by fear lest germany should decline to enter, or lest other powers should shut the door, the universal anticipation was that it would be fulfilled. ‘ some ill-grounded apprehension had been ‘felt in m ay over the election of the veteran hindenburg as german president on ebert’s death; but that event belonged to the same harmless national psychology as that which made marshal macmahon president of the french republic in 1873; and just as that was followed by the german evacuation of france, so hindenburg’s election was followed by the french evacuation of the ruhr and the british evacuation of cologne. for his services in the nego- tiations mr. chamberlain received the garter and the gratitude of the world. the decision to proceed with singapore was followed within a year by another to reduce rosyth and pem- broke to a care-and-maintenance basis. the spirit of peace spread to southeastern europe: and after. greece and bulgaria had been constrained by the league to forego a frontier war in oct., even the balkans began to talk of a security pact for their own particular cockpit. the league also 1006 decided at length in dec., mainly in favour of britain, the claim, disputed by turkey, to mosul, though the solatium which would induce the angora turks to acquiesce was left over until 1926 for arrangement between the parties. the irish boundary.—how far peace was induced in ireland by the threat of the free state to refer its frontier problem to the league is a2 matter of speculation. the refusal of ulster to appoint a boundary commissioner in 1924 had been followed by the appointment of a distinguished south african judge, and an unauthorised forecast of the commission’s report in nov. 1925 precipitated at first a revival of contention and then a settlement between the parties without recourse either to the commission’s report or to the league of nations. the existing frontier was maintained and consolation extracted from the british exche- quer in the form of relinquished british claims to indemnities for destruction during the hostilities of rg21-2. whatever the fric- tion between the north and the south, there was, it appeared, an ireland united at least in this: no irishman would obstruct another in any claim he might have against the british treasury, and all would resist a peace enforced in irish homes by intruders from outside. position at the end of r925.—great britain was left at the end of 1925 freer than it had been for 15 years to contemplate its own domestic discontents; and, for the moment, there was even there an uncommon absence of violent disagreement. the evils were admitted, and the remedial principles only disputed on the ground that they did not go far enough. the complaint of the liberals, as of the whigs 60 years before, was that their clothes had been stolen while they were bathing or basking in a setting sun. socialists echoed the refrain with the reservation that it was a rising sun in which they basked; and when a conservative govt., acquiesced in the parliament act and political levies by trade unions, cold-shouldered the reform of the house of lords, maintained state control of rents and prices, proposed to hew a way through city slums, bestowed old age and other pensions on an unexampled scale, and lavished subsidies on coal and protection on efficient industries, it was difficult to discern a basic principle of differentiation between the parties. labour had in sept. repeated and reinforced its repudiation of communism; even mr. wheatley’s left wing was all but ex- cluded from the executive of the party, and mr. macdonald regained his restraining influence. the two major parties were, m fact, suffering or benefiting by a process from which no party and no cause is ever immune, namely a dilution of its principles inherent in the extension of its size and the increase of its popu- larity. intensity is the perquisite of the few, dilution the prop- erty of the mass. dilution had even to be imposed upon the land policy, which mr. lloyd george inaugurated in the autumn, before it commended itself to his party; and such loss of voting power as threatened the government was mainly due to the intensification of its policies of protection and economy. in the first half of 1926, what had been called “ the locarno spirit ’’ was violently disappointed. germany’s expected entry into the league of nations as a permanent member of the coun- cil with the moral status of a great power was vetoed by brazil. that country’s action was disapproved too late by the british and french governments, but earlier they had countenanced opposition by poland and spain to germany’s unconditional ad- mission. this sequel to the locarno pact was widely censured and nowhere more generally than in great britain. (a. f. p.) the coal commission reported in march condemning the sub- sidy, but recommending an extensive reconstruction of the indus- try and some temporary reduction in wages. (see coal.) again negotiations between miners and owners broke down and gov- ernment intervention failed. a general strike was then declared by labour at the beginning of may. it was one of the greatest social crises by which any country had been shaken since the war but it only lasted nine days. volunteers and motor-transport played a chief part in preventing the paralysis of communications by the trade unions. the struggle had been watched with breathless attention by the world. the calm firmness and compe- tence of the british people as a whole raised them accordingly in english literature the world’s respect. the miners stood out alone and the coal strike dragged on into june 1926. in the early days of that month earnest efforts for a settlement were afoot. there were strong hopes that the “ spirit of locarno ”’ would prevail after all, both in the industrial field and in foreign policy. (ep. £.b.) bibliography.—the great bulk of the original material for eng- lish history during these 15 years is contained in hansard’s parlia- mentary debates and the even more numerous volumes of parliamen- tary and official papers, for which see h. b. lees-smith’s useful guide te parliamentary and oficial papers (1924). one of the most important of these is the war cabinet: report for the year 1917, cd. go005, published by h.m.s.0o, (march 1918), which is valuable not only as a record of achievement but of the now forgotten ideas of that body; no other british govt. has published a similar record of its work or revelation of its methods. these official sources have not yet been supplemented to any great extent by personal or private revelations: the interval is too short to have permitted the publication of the confidential papers, correspondence or memoranda of british statesmen, or of their biographies or memoirs. such as have appeared have generally been fragmentary and partial, often eked out with gossip misleading in proportion to its indiscretion. most of these volumes, moreover, relate to the war, and are dealt with elsewhere. pre-eminent among periodical publications are the times for its fullness and general accuracy, and punch for its happy and impartial reflection of the passing mood. a good deal of history can also be made out of or verified by such annuals as the statesman'’s year book and whitaker's almanack, while the annual register provides a valuable half-way house between daily papers and history. the documents it contains, while important, are few, and its usefulness consists, so far as english history is concerned, mainly in the political summaries compiled from zfansard, the times, and other periodical literature. some political history is contained in books dealing primarily with the genesis, history, or consequences of the war, such as lord haldane’s before the war (1920), an account of his mission to ger- many in 1912; mr. w. churchill's the world crisis, 2 vol. (1923), the first volume of which deals with the prelude to the war, and the second with its naval history until mr. churchill's resignation; sir george arthur’s life of lord kitchener, 3 vol. (1920); mr. h. h. asquith’s genests of the war (1923), which is authoritative but scru- pulously reticent; and, weightiest of all, lord grey’s twenty-five years, 2 vol. (1925). for the documents in any complete form we have, however, to wait for the completion of the task with which dr. g. p. gooch and mr. h. w. v. temperley were entrusted in 1925 when the government consented to open its foreign archives for that purpose. political history also intrudes to some extent into j. buchan’s itstory of the war (1921-2), published in 24 volumes during its course and re-written in four volumes after its conclusion, and also into a. f. pollard’s short history of the war (1920). some english political history for the period after the war is to be found in mr. if. w. v. temperley’s six-volume j/tstory of the peace conference, published under the auspices of the british insti- tute of international affairs (1920-4), and in its even more valuable continuation in professor a, j. toynbee’s survey of international affairs 1920-3 (1925), the world after the peace conference (1925), and survey of international affairs, 1924 (1926), all produced under the same auspices. but this 1s mainly international and diplomatic history. for domestic history we have to rely almost exclusively on parliamentary and official papers, periodical literature, and personal recollection or information. 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