On a summer Sunday evening of last year the inhabitants of Somerset were startled by the sight, low overhead, of the Hindenburg back from New York. It flew low: one could read the name and see the swastika without any difficulty; it was a superb sight, a magnificent demonstration of German craftsmanship—and a great German mistake. For it evoked memories all over England of the days when Zeppelins came on warlike errands; it reminded the man in the street (and still more the woman in the home) of what he and she would like to forget—that Britain is no longer an island And when the Basque city of Guernica was bombed there was genuine and abundant moral indignation in England; there was also resentment at the fresh realization' that this old inviolate island was no better off and might well be worse off than her Continental neighbours.
Can we wonder, then, that British policy seems uncertain, timid, inconsistent; that the government gives the impression of a nervous duellist. warning his opponent not to provoke him beyond the boundaries of endurance, and yet revealing that the last boundaries of endurance are not merely remote but elastic?
The mass of the British people accepts this prudence with an unusual. calm. It may regret the necessity of the caution but it does not deny its existence; and any government that forgets the great changes in Britain's position that now so deeply influence British policy will have a short lease of- life. good cricket captain refuse to play on a learns to do— soaking-wet wicket, Nor was this disillusionment confined tp the Government, which had as full information on the point as military trade-union spirit would allow. We know from Mr. Lloyd George's memoirs how deep was his scepticism of the competence of the British military mind and machine.
But the scepticism spread far wider than the War Cabinet. It spread by word of mouth from soldiers on leave, from soldier to soldier, each arguing that his show had been the greatest and most sanguinary mess of the year.
The British soldier, like the British man in the street, is too good-tempered to bear malice, but he is not such a fool as he sometimes looks; he knew that there had been muddling on a vast scale and the heirs of the unbeatable soldiery of Wellington (who themselves did not hesitate to criticize the Duke) if they still did not know when they were beaten, did know when they had not won. Passchendaele might be a victory in Haig's despatches or in his official life, but it was no victory in the eyes of the survivors.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.