British Foreign Policy

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 300, 15 September 1936, Page 11

British Foreign Policy

Sir,—With all due respect, may 1 suggest that Mr. P. J. O’Regan should try to be just to Britain? He is a prominent member of the League of Nations Union, and one may reasonably require that members of that body shall be judicial. I have seen several, letters on British policy written by Mr. O’Regan, and never have I found the slightest credit given to British statesmen. He has an obsession on the subject Not even Britain’s record in Ireland justifies anyone in regarding generation after generation of British statesmen as fools and rogues, or both. Mr. O’Regan’s latest letter i s a. gratuitous bombardment with a few odd bricks. He attaches importance to: — Mr. Lloyd George’s comment that Edward Grey led Britain into the war. That was no new charge; it was made immediately the war broke out. Mr. Lloyd George,' however, is a poor witness. In his Agadir speech in 1911 he backed Grey’s policy; if he and others had stood behind Grey in the critical week of 1914 there might have been no war. Grey could not take a firm stand, for the very simple reason that the Cabinet was at sixes and sevens, and was united (with one or two defections) only by the invasion of Belgium. The English people have judged between Grey and Mr. Lldyd George. Ungenerous, unreliable and egotistical, Mr. Lloyd George is discredited to-day. And surely the less said about Mr. Lloyd George and peace the better, seeing what a peace he did make when he had the power. (I am sure Mr.' O’Regan thinks much worse of that peace than I do.) Grey and Asquith had their faults, but they would have made a better peace than the Versailles Treaty. Asquith offered to serve as a delegate, but was not wanted. —I am, etc.. IRISH LIBERAL. Wellington, September 14..