Here is the root of Parliament's demand to which the Government has agreed, for a Select Committee of MP's to watch over expenditure. There is little doubt that in the first few weeks of the war, officials lost their heads and a great deal of unnecessary expense was incurred Some of this has been pruned away. Newspapers have been accused of nagging at the controls, foodpools and multiplication of departmental staffs. But without the newspapers, and the equal nagging (to repeat a controvert sial word) in Parliament, the abuses would not have been tackled even as much as they have been. Think of the Ministry of Information with its 999 members, now reduced, I believe, to about 130, and that is provably 100 too many.
Yet the poor old M.OJ. did us unconsciously one service. A big newspaper man from America who arrived yesterday said that its persistent obscurantism had done more than anything else to persuade the American public of the justice of the Allies' cause. America he said was sick to death of the German vropaganda with which it was flooded The feebleness of our M.OIL in this respect reminded Americans of the saying that a good wine needs no bush.
"Keep Lecturers at Home"
In this connection a striking article from the "Daily Express's" New York correspondent this week begged us to keep our lecturers at home He mentioned Lord Marley and Mr. Duff Cooper, now in America, neither of whom, one must say, could be reckoned a persuasive speaker. The writer said that nine-tenths of the American people were on the Allies' side, and lectures only made them suspicious.
Who were the best propagandists for Great Britain in the last war? By all consent the N.C.O.'s sent over n 1917 to help train the American army. Their efficiency, simplicity and reticence did more than legions of polished speakers.
There was some difference of opinion at first as to whether the mines scattered by U-boats and aeroplanes really were magnetic or not, some people arguing that they were a practical impossibility. But it is now agreed that they are magnetic, one of the difficulties in countering though how they are worked is still unknown. And that, of course, is one of the difficulties in countering them.
On the other hand, serious danger as they admittedly are, the prominence they have had in the papers during the past week is largely due (1)to their novelty (2) to the fact that the war has hitherto been so dull from a fighting point of view. t What the mines may yet do we cannot of course tell But so far they have not sunk one half of the ton-17 leted "There is no scientific impossibility, or even great difficulty, in fitting Such a magnetic device to a mine (as will cause. it to explode on the approach of a ship) nor is there any great novelty. The Admiralty is well Aware both of the possibility of such devices and of the methods of dealing with them."
But it is something to establish a reputation for ruthlessness and the lack of all sense of decent feeling. One notices that the neutrals have protested angrily to us for our intended retaliation on Germany by seizing her exports, but to Germany though she openly glories in the sowing of mines, they have not hi-thereto ventured to say a word.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.