more clearly understood to-day than it was in 1913. Had Lord Reading (he was Sir Rufus Isaacs then) and Mr Lloyd George shown signs of repentance, had they honourably expressed regret for what they had done, it might have been fair to overlook their speculation. They did not repent; they expressed no regret. The white sheet was not for them. They were content instead with the crude white-wash ladled out of a bucket by Mr Falconer. And so their offence is still unpurged. What Lord Robert Cecil wrote at the time of the inquiry is true to-day. "The acceptance by a public servant," said Lord Robert, of a favour of any kind from a Government contractor involves so great and obvious a danger, that if the AttorneyGeneral's action is to be condoned by Parliament, we feel that a wide door will be open to corruption in future." The Attorney-General of 1913 is today the Viceroy of India, and Mr Lloyd George is the Prime Minister who sent him thither. Nor has Lord Reading shown in the past any qualities which should fit him for the high office which has been thrust upon him. He was a successful barrister, but success at the Bar is no guarantee of administrative ability. He was a failure in the House of Commons, which suggests that even as an advocate he breathed easily but in the atmosphere of the courts. And what should a mere advocate do in a posi tion which requires neither arguments nor precedents, a position which exacts intuitive judgments and quick decisions? The very success which Lord Reading achieved at the Bar will stand in his way in India, and the habit of the Judge of looking all round a question and balancing laboriously what is true and what is false in the evidence will be a dangerous impediment in his exercise of a Viceroy's authority. That he has proved himself a sound Judge we have been told and are content to believe, though it should not be forgotten that he was indiscreet enough to remain upon the Bench after he had become part and parcel of the executive. There remains what he did in America during the War. Time alone can give us a proper measure of his service there. But it may be safely said that so far as his functions were ambassadorial, they were superfluous, since Great Britain was admirably served by Sir C. Spring Rice, and that so far as they were financial they were a poor preparation for the task of governing India. A wise country does not hastily change a financier into a proconsul. But the real danger of Lord Reading's appointment is that another Jew is added to the many Jews who are taking part in the government of our Empire. Now the British Empire will not survive if it be handed over to men of alien race. The qualities which By a strange irony, at the very moment when Bolshevism has revealed the sinister character of the Jews, men of the same race as Lenin and Trotsky are becoming supreme in England. A group of four Jews now hold in fee." have built it up are British empires, and crumble in the qualities-the power of quick dust. action, unhampered by tardy thought; the quiet endurance, which is the highest form of courage; the divine stupidity, which takes impossible risks and overlooks in contemplating the end the difficulties of the means. A study of the past proves to us that the pioneers were Britons all. They left their homes in England and Scotland to find new homes overseas. They have worked and they have fought for their country in India and Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, and in Africa. Sometimes the Jews have followed in their train, and turned the fruit of their labours into limited companies. And to-day the Jews have climbed a step higher. With the help of Mr Lloyd George they are filling many of the highest offices in the State. For these offices they are wholly unfit. They are clever, glib, and adroit. But in the governing of an Empire cleverness and glibness and adroitness are not virtues but vices. They cannot understand the and purpose of our imperial policy, because they belong to other worlds than ours; they were tanned by other suns; they were shaped by other creeds. The mere fact that Jewish blood flows in a man's veins should exclude him from the holding of high office in a land wherein he sojourns. And if our ministers cannot grasp this elementary truth, then shall our Empire follow other aim the gorgeous East We do not know how long Mr Edwin Samuel Montagu will survive the disgrace which his conduct of General Dyer's case brought upon him. But it is certain that his failure will not go unrewarded, and until a comfortable post be found for him he will doubtless remain at the India Office. Meanwhile, Lord Reading, Mr Montagu, Sir Herbert Samuel, and Sir W. Meyer have a complete unbroken control of India and Palestine, and it will be good news in Jewry that Sir Alfred Moritz Mond himself has gone to Jerusalem to spy out the possibilities of the land. politics be the mere sport of those who play the political game, it may not matter to the members of the Coalition that Mr Lloyd George is withdrawing gradually all power from the hands of the Christians and placing it in the hands of the Jews. But there are still some who believe that the Government of the British Empire is a serious enterprise, an enterprise of far greater importance than the comfort of Mr Lloyd George. And they will be indifferent to the fact that our Prime Minister finds it easier to deal If with Jews than with Christians. They will still resent the increasing number of Hebrews who have found a place in the present Government. They will tear away ruthlessly the cloak from those politicians of Hebrew descent, who use good old English names, and so hope to escape detection. They will take no pride in reflecting that behind all Mr George's actions is the hidden hand of Sir Philip Sassoon. And some day they will efface the inscription, now conspicuous over the door of 10 Downing Street: "None but Hebrews need apply," and replace it by the ancient and worthier legend: "Great Britain for the Britons." Nor will the Jews themselves profit by their insistent usurpation of authority. With Mr Lloyd George's help, they are doing their best to provoke a passion of anti-Semitism in England. We are a patient people, but we will not long endure the usurpation of the foreigner. If political intrigue were not omnipotent in our midst, there would be no lack of honest able Englishmen to do the work of the Empire. But the Jew, facile in management and eager to advance his own kind, is more than a match for the Englishman, untrained in the conduct of the machine and desirous only to do his best for the Empire. At present Great Britain is ground to powder between the upper and nether millstones. On the upper side are Lord Reading, and all the tribe of the Mon VOL, COIX.-NO. MCCLXIV. tagus, the Samuels, and the Monds. On the nether side lurk the Jewish Bolsheviks, who sedulously spread discontent among the working classes, and who hope to get some profit for themselves out of a general revolution. Is it strange, then, that the Jews are not looked on favourably by the English, whom they would oust and govern? And would not Mr Lloyd George more wisely serve the cause of his Hebraic friends if he permitted them to pursue their lucrative professions in peace, and let Great Britain administer, in accordance with her own traditions, the great Empire which her sons have built up? While the Jews are strengthening their hold upon the country, the leaders of Labour have wholly overreached themselves. Ambitious always of playing a grand rôle in politics, to which their scanty influence in the House of Commons and the country does not entitle them, they have of late proved themselves both restless and incompetent. They are busybodies who would have a finger in everybody's pie. Forgetting that their duty was to control trade unions, they have professed a desire to govern the whole country. Their foolish experiment in what they called direct action not only showed that their ambition outran their sense, but ranked them with the lawless followers of Lenin. And not content with this obvious failure, they covered 8 themselves more thickly with ridicule when they presumed to present the world with a report upon reprisals in Ireland. Their report might have been written in Brixton, and it says little for their sense of humour that they drew it up after a solemn visit paid to Ireland. It is, of course, of no value whatever, though it was duly acclaimed as an important State paper by our Sinn Fein press. The representatives of Labour who wrote the report waste little time in condemning the cruel murder and mutilation of British officers, with whom they are not likely to have the smallest sympathy. Besides, it is always the simplest plan for the enlightened demagogue to denounce the English wherever they may be and whatever they do. They are kind enough to admit that "the murder of individuals, unable to defend themselves, is murder, whether committed by members of the British Crown forces or by Irish volunteers." And they discount this immense concession by throwing all the burden of provocation upon those who have avenged the deaths of their comrades. Thus, thoughtlessly, they put the cart before the horse, and pretend that the reprisals, which they bitterly condemn, were the authentic cause of the murders which they punish. So might the judge and jury be held guilty of bloodshed when a criminal is hanged. Here their pompous pronouncement, as fine a specimen of confused is thought as even Labour can provide us : "So great has been the provocation by forces of the Crown that eighty per cent of Irish men and women now regard the shooting of policemen and throwing bombs at lorries with the same philosophic resignation that Mr Lloyd George displays towards arson, pillage, and the shooting of civilians at sight in the presence of their wives and children." This is sheer nonsense, and the members of the Labour Commission should have reflected before they set it upon paper. They overlook the fact that the shooting of policemen and the throwing of bombs preceded the reprisals, and never for an hour stood in need of any provocation. The report, in brief, is merely the expression of the bitter prejudice which its framers cherish against England and the English. And it is not worth the paper upon which it is written, because the demagogues who composed it confess that "in some cases they found it difficult or impossible to obtain sufficient reliable evidence, either through the absence of important witnesses who were perhaps on the run,' or through the fear of possible consequences if facts were disclosed." Then why did the members of the Labour Commission go through the farce of an inquiry when the essential evidence was denied them? It is not by such means as these that the Irish question will be settled, nor will it bring peace any nearer to assert that crime is condoned by the revenge taken by its victims. Moreover, if only the leaders of Labour would mind their own business, and not let their prejudices masquerade as facts, they would find plenty of work to do. They have let their own affairs sink into utter confusion while they have taken a purposeless trip to Ireland. The coal trade, for instance, has been utterly ruined by the miners and their leaders. When they were asked to increase production, they chattered of nationalisation and the high cost of living. Having wasted many months, they got to work at last, and now blame the Government because there is more coal in the market than can be disposed of. It is not the fault of the Government that the miners set to work too late, and that owing to their dilatoriness the export trade has left these shores. They had their chance and refused to take it, and now they are faced by the misery of unemployment and a falling market. It is possible that in time we shall recover the trade which we have lost. In the meantime it would be prudent if the leaders of Labour, instead of babbling of what they do not understand, undertook to expound the elements of political economy to their duped followers. And at the very time when Labour by its own ignorance and arrogance is falling into discredit, we find Mr Barnes 66 deploring the fact that a distinction had been drawn between manual and intellectual labour at all, for the line between the two was tending to disappear." Is it? We do not think it is, and we should grieve to see those who work with their heads following the path of bitter egoism and gross materialism which serves the manual workers as the road of life. It is clear that Mr Barnes knows little of what he talks about. He would not be a Labour leader if he did. He congratulates journalists on having "rescued themselves from subservience and dependence," and then gravely announces that " many men of letters were getting away from the old idea of patronage." Poor man ! He thinks that he is a "progressive," and he has not yet emerged from the eighteenth century. He has not heard of the equal combat between Samuel Johnson and Lord Chesterfield, which is said to have given literary patronage its deathblow; and we should like to know from him what man of letters, now living, has not got away from the old idea of patronage." On the other hand, he may learn from us why those who work with their heads draw a sharper distinction than ever between their craft and manual toil. In the first place, they have no faith whatever in the leaders of Labour. With equal determination they would refuse to trust Messrs Webb and Cole or Messrs Smillie and Thomas. 66 |