WE have already published in full the report of the debate in connection with the expenses of the Foreign Office, but the opinions of so prominent a politician as Sir Edward Grey, who is sure of ascot in the next Cabinet, if he cares to take it, should the Liberals win the coming election as they confidently hope to do, are of more than passing importance at this juncture. Intervening in the debate during the course of a speech by Viscount Cranborne, he said that he failed to see "the success of the foreign policy which the noble lord had claimed. The ce-operation with Germany in China, so far as he could judge, had been an entire failure," Referring to the egregious Anglo-German agreement, which the Government announced with a fanfare of trumpets, he said, in reply to Lord Granborne's admission that it was not held by the German Government to apply to Manchuria: "Then I think the Anglo-German agreement is a most one-sided instrument." At the first test it had broken down, and, after all that had passed, he thought it evident that "the Government has been pursuing a wrong policy altogether with regard to ce-operation with Germany. They have been relying on the one Power from whom they have got nothing in return."
Probably Mr. Stead's criticism on this passage would be that the Government did get 2 good deal from Germany, viz., neutrality during the Boer War; but then Mr, Stead was a pro-Boer, and so blinded by prejudice as to think that Germany had it in her power to do us serious hurt, which was not the case.
Sir Edward then proceeds to the alternative. This, he says, is "a policy of ce-operation and agreement with Russia." Here we have the old pro-Muscovite leaning of Mr. Gladstone, strengthened, it must be admitted, by the late Lord Salisbury's weighty pronouncement that in the Crimean War we had "put our money on the wrong horse." Doubtless Sir Edward is right when he says that "so long as the key of our policy is ce-operation or agreement with Germany in the first instance, we shall never have a chance of ce-operation and agreement with Russia." No serious attempt appears to have been made to come to such an understanding, We have shillyshallled all these years. Busied in choose between an agreement with South Africa, our people at home had russia or an agreement with Ger-no thought for what was probably of many is matter for debate, but that equal importance in the Far East. we have an agreement with Japan is We cannot agree with Sir Edward in a settled fact, not to be debated buy his estimate of Russian policy, which, to be acted on. he says, "is much more from hand to mouth than we think. I think," he continues, " that she moves like a
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.