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of Russia. From every position which he takes up he retreats with indecent haste. Commerce, he once assured us, did not imply the recognition of Lenin; and as it was his intention to permit trade only with the Co-operative Societies of Russia, our dealings would be unstained by blood: nor should we accept in payment the stolen gold of the Bolsheviks. And then it turned out that the Bolsheviks were masters of the Co-operative Societies, and any gold, no matter what its provenance, was welcome. It is a sorry story of deception and tergiversation; and while the twists and turns of Mr George's agile unknowing mind must vastly amuse the unspeakable Lenin and Trotsky, they should bring the blush of shame to the cheeks of honest Englishmen. In the same spirit of bad faith, with the same lack of candour, Mr George tackled the Polish question. On 11th July he demanded that the Soviet should make an immediate armistice with Poland. Ten days later Lord Curzon, who of course takes his orders from Mr George, threatened the Russians with the severest pains and penalties if they continued their march upon Poland. The Russians laughed at the warning, and went on marching. We did nothing more than repeat a futile threat. And then suddenly Labour intervened with their policy of direct action, and shrieked aloud, "Hands off Russia!"

VOL. CCIX.-NO. MCCLXIII.

as though Mr George had dared to lay a finger upon Russia or upon any other country. Poland took the matter into her own hands and drove the Russians back, and thus by a single blow exposed the impotence of Mr George and the folly of Labour. And so the futile game is played. Great Britain protests in vain to Russia and to Poland; the Prime Minister listens in terror to the strident voice of Mr Bevin; and the Bolsheviks persist with their baleful work of propaganda in light-hearted contempt of Mr George and his words.

The profound distrust of Mr George, which is evident in France, cannot surprise us. It is impossible to trust a man who has neither knowledge nor fixity of purpose. To us his quick changes are familiar. The French are not yet accustomed to them, and it is not wonderful that more than once during the past year they have been compelled to protest against what seemed to them a patent disloyalty. How, indeed, should they welcome as a friend a Minister who, without warning or warrant, seems to espouse the cause of Germany ? That there has not been a dangerous rupture between England and France, the two necessary Allies, is not the fault of Mr George; and it is fortunate that there are still those who can undo some of the harm which our careless, autocratic politician thinks it expedient to inflict

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upon us and upon the French.

Yet in the eyes of his colleagues he can do no wrong. Their adulation of him and his virtues increases with every folly which he commits. The adulation is not always disinterested, and the private judgments which come to our ears -every one is not discreetmake a sad commentary upon the loyal utterances of the politicians. But the politicians are not the men to foul their own nests; and so long as Mr George is there to lead them they are ready to follow him to the death of themselves or their salaries. And the strange thing is that, in public at any rate, they use such language about their revered master as persuades us that they have wholly lost whatever sense of humour they may have possessed. If nobody else has a word of praise for him, they are there to praise Mr George, while Mr George reciprocates the praise as in duty bound. Listen, for instance, to what Mr Bonar Law found it possible to say at the Constitutional Club: "Standing the other day in Westminster Abbey"- these are Mr Law's words-" at the grave of the Unknown Warrior, I saw the noble statue of William Pitt, with arms outstretched as if he were inspiring the nation he did so much to save. To one of my colleagues, as we were leaving the Abbey, I said: 'One hundred years hence will Lloyd George occupy

in the minds of our descendants the position held by William Pitt to-day!' 'I cannot tell,' was the reply, but I think it is quite possible.' It is indeed quite possible." Was ever such nonsense spoken in the world before? William Pitt and Mr George mentioned in the same breath! If the burial of the Unknown Warrior suggested no wiser speculation to the politicians than this, it would have been better that they should have stayed away and left the ceremony to the soldiers, who know how to bear themselves with dignity. William Pitt and Mr George! William Pitt, the pilot who weathered the storm, knew what should be done to save England, and did it unflinchingly. He was no empiric, guessing at policies. He had profoundly studied Europe and her affairs. He understood the problem which confronted him

how to defeat Napoleonwith the clearness which comes of diligently acquired knowledge. Before his death he foresaw what only a statesman could foresee that Napoleon would be beaten by a nation in arms, probably in Spain. The strenuous opposition which his resolution to save England met with he countered without fear and without favour. He was not afraid of suspending the liberties of treacherous citizens, or of locking up those who hoped to frustrate his efforts by sedition. He depended upon idle rhetoric as little as he depended upon hid

ing the truth. He could deliver a King's Speech offhand, said Windham, thus making plain how little he owed to a florid eloquence. A simple man and a patriot, with no thought of self and with no suspicion of trickery-such he was until the last day, when he gave his life for his country. How shall we compare Mr George with this our hero? Mr George has ever his ear to the ground, that he may catch the whisperings of popularity. While Pitt consulted his own wisdom, Mr George runs for advice to Mr Bevin or Mr Henderson or Mr Smillie, or anybody else whom he thinks capable of influencing the bogey, Labour. While Pitt had ever a settled policy, Mr George lives hungrily from hand to mouth, and hopes that the better luck of tomorrow may extricate him from the misfortune of to-day. In brief, Pitt was a statesman, and Mr George is a politician. They share no common factor, and not even a pious colleague should divest himself so rashly of a sense of proportion and a sense of history as to make the futile comparison.

Not long since Colonel Amery made the brilliant discovery that "the standard of efficiency of the House of Commons had never been so high as now." A marvellous utterance truly, made at a time when the voice of criticism at Westminster was solemnly hushed, and when members of the House waited for the Prime Minister to speak before they

opened their mouths. The reason he gave for his hazardous opinion was that "they had got rid of the two-party system." What they have got rid of, as we have said, is political principle. And then, as though to clinch any argument, Colonel Amery declares that " our salvation lies more than ever before in being able to think imperially." Indeed it does, and it is just this of which Mr George and his colleagues and his obedient followers are incapable. They are rarely asked to think at all. They have been deprived of the right of private judgment. And to think imperially is very far beyond their reach. Take a swift survey of our Empire, and ask yourself in which corner of it there is any trace of imperial thought. Have we thought imperially in Ireland, which we have handed over a free gift to a gang of assassins ? Have we thought imperially in India? Ask Mr Montagu, who, in spite of his gross failure in act and speech, in spite of his declared friendship for Mr Gandhi, is still Secretary of State. So little has he thought imperially that he has stirred up the flame of rebellion in India in order to awake what his Bolshevist tongue calls "divine discontent," and to enfranchise one per cent of a population which, happily for itself, cares not a jot about politics. Have we thought imperially in Egypt? Ask Lord Milner, under whose auspices we shall presently surrender all

control of a country which Bismarck wisely called the nape of England's neck. Where, indeed, have we thought imperially? In Mesopotamia, into which we blundered without purpose and without result In Palestine, where we have replaced the industrious Jews, who wing their way to America, by a horde of indiscriminate Bolshevists, and where we have inflicted a gross injustice upon the friendly and honourable Arabs ? Truly it would be wiser at this moment of our disgrace, at this closing of a disastrous year, to leave imperial thought out of the question.

It is not only in politics that the charlatan makes an aggressive appearance. The charlatan delights also to claim as his own the province of literary criticism, a province which lies far beyond his ken, and which he is never likely to explore. For many years this particular kind of charlatan followed the lead of Lombroso, and thought that he was getting nearer to the understanding of literature when he mumbled commonplaces about genius and the criminal. The method set before him was simple enough. He wanted no more than a biographical dictionary and a taste for gossip. His information need not be accurate. He was free to believe with Lombroso that Henry VIII. murdered all his wives. But if

only he filled the rag-bag of his mind with enough "facts" and got by heart the foolish jargon employed by Lombroso, he could prove that there was no difference between the madman and the man of genius. The poet had given him and his master the clue, "Great wits to madness closely are allied "; and imbecility and a love of scandal did the rest. Nor did it ever occur to these fanatics that, in their haste to prove others "mattoids," they were convicting themselves one and all of an obvious insanity.

Lombroso's method is as dead as Lombroso. And the need exists for a new species of sham science, a fresh kind of criticism, which is called "literary," and has not the remotest touch with literature. With a commendable amiability Herr Freud has supplied the need, and given to the busybodies a system which is not beyond the reach of the wholly illiterate. Psychoanalysis it is called, and we are informed by an obedient pupil of Herr Freud that "it will show us the direction that literature will take, and will explain why it proceeds in a particular path." So says Mr Mordell,1 who has written a book which, for obvious silliness, cannot be matched even by the worst excesses of the pupils of Lombroso. After all, there is not much difference between Lombroso and Herr Freud. Lombroso believed that all literary

1 'The Erotic Motive in Literature,' by Albert Mordell. London: K. Paul.

men were mad; Herr Freud seems to believe them incestuous. Herr Freud does not use the same jargon as Lombroso, and his conclusion is not quite the same. But gossip, of doubtful accuracy, is the foundation of both methods, and for folly there isn't a pin to choose between them.

glory, wrote against it." No wonder Herr Freud hails the disciple who has made these profound discoveries, and congratulates him on having done "for the English - American literature something similar to what Rank has done for the German in his book on Incest-Motive."

We have noted the common- "Incest-Motive"! That is place thought which underlies the pith of the whole matter. Lombroso's argument. Herr Herr Freud and his scholars Freud's argument, common- are obsessed by perversity. place also, is that a writer, They detect vice, unconscious when he takes his pen in his if you will, in all the decent hand, does not wholly rid him- relations of life. To Mr Morself of character and experi- dell, for instance, Cowper's ence. We do not need a library poem, "On the receipt of of books, unscientific in all my Mother's Picture," is "the things except in a preposterous best example of the Edipusjargon, to illustrate this truism Complex to be found in English for us. But Mr Mordell and literature." Thus, to serve his kind must find some use for no decent purpose, the pupils the irrelevant facts which they of Herr Freud crawl like slugs, have collected, and so psycho- leaving a filthy trail behind analysis is thrust upon the them, over whatever is noble world. The facts are chosen and comely in poetry and with an irrelevance which the prose. But even they are not pupils of Lombroso must envy. without a question. Mr MorWhat do you think of the dell, having established to his statement which follows: own satisfaction the insane "Alexander Pope, the poet, theory that a child's love for was also a spoiled child, though his mother resembles that of he had a half-sister"? There Edipus for Jocasta, seems to is charming inconsequence in think that some sort of an the "though," which proves apology is necessary. "It of Mr Mordell a born critic. A course displeases people," says still further surprise awaits us he, "to have any association in another gem of erudition. made between the noblest sen"Thackeray, who was hope- timent, mother love, and so lessly in love with a married repulsive a feature as incest." woman, and was rejected by It would indeed displease us her, affected to be very cynical if the nonsensical doctrine of at disappointed lovers, and Messrs Freud and his friends ridiculed them in his 'Pen- were taken seriously. And dennis.' Cicero, who loved when so wanton an explana

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