Evening Post. THURSDAY, MAY 27, 1915.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 124, 27 May 1915, Page 6

Evening Post. THURSDAY, MAY 27, 1915.

CABINET RECONSTRUCTION

The new British Ministry is not the least among the wonders of the war. The unifying effect of the great ordeal and the demand which it is making upon all the resources of the nation have combined to give "us a National Government in which the lines of party have been entirely obliterated. - Party differences had been honourably kept in abeyance in Great Britain sin»e the outbreak of the war, but the formal union which has now been celebrated carries this patriotic procedure to its furthest limit, and promises •to restore those I golden days— if, indeed, they ever existed b»vo in the imagination of the poet — "When none was for a party And all were for the State." The i complaint is indeed made that even in the formation of a non-party Ministry too much weight has been allowed to the element of party. The Times regrets that Mr. Asquith's choice has been confined to party leaders, and would have j welcomed "a larger element of men whose services to the Empire have Jain outside \ domestic controversies." In this Ministry, as in its -predecessor, Lord Kitchener is the only man whose qualifications are entirely independent/ of party politics, but Lords Lansdowne, Curzon, and Selborne are all men who, though party leaders, have rendered the Empire brilliant service in a wider sphere. There are not a, few surprises in the new , Cabinet, but in its essentials it fits very well with the public expectation and the public need. Mr. Asquith, of course, remains in charge ; Sir Edward Grey, whose success has been as brilliant inwar as iv peace, of course remains atthe Foreign Office. Lord Kitchener remains at the War Office, and Mr. Churchill has left the Admiralty. The depth of Mr. Churchill's fall is certainly astounding. He might have- covered the humiliation of his ejectment from the Admiralty wi£h glory if he had made it the occasion for the temporary abandonment of politics in favour of service at the front, but from the Admiralty to»j the Duchy of Lancaster is indeed a sad and inglorious drop. The choice of Mr. Balfour as the new First Lord does not j come as a surprise, and was "probably the best available. He has had great official experience ; he has been heTping the late Government on the Imperial Defence Committee and in other capacities, and in the knowledge of his own limitations he has an essential qualification which Nature did not include in her generous endowment of Mr. Churchill. "A little too much," said "Wayfarer"" in tire Nartion last month, "has been' made of that agreeable but rather disembodied spirit, Mr. Balfour." We believe that the agreeablenees and the partial disembodiment of Mr. Balfour* s spirit will combine to save the Empire from tliP danger with which it was threatened by his brilliant but head*

is inevitable because Lord Fisher has not been put in sole charge of the Admiralty, bb Lord Kitchener is of the War Office, but as First Sea Lord lie will dominate the strategy, and it must bo remembered that even in. time of war there &ve> considerable disadvantages in having -the heads of both the services ia the House of Lords. The Daily Mail would have solved this difficulty by removing Lord Kitchener from the War Office. The astonishment with which th© announcement of its advocacy of thia solution was received throughout tho Empire will not be diminished by the summary of its arguments that reaches us from Perth to-day. The Daily Mail not only surpasses itself in this attack, 'but justifies the ridicule of its most extravagant parodists. A brilliant skit called "Hustled History," in which Messrs. Lucas and Gtovos caricatured its methods, attributed to the Daily Mail of 15th March, 1805, a scathing attack on "the cheaply earned reputation of the British Admiral"" -who was then mismanaging naval operations in the Mediterranean. "It is always painful to have to speak severely of a public servant," h» critic was represented as saying, <r bat we should b« untrue to the tmst committed to us if we failed to remind the public that Lord Nelson i» no longer a young man. He is not only very much on the wrong side of forty, but he has only one arm and one eye. And he has been so long at sea that he has quit© lost touch with the best public opinion." How closely the real Daily Mail reproduces the work of its parodists when it now says: "The record of Lord Kitchener in Africa as a fighting general is not brilliant, and his life in India and Egypt has made him unacquainted with British conditions." Lord Kitchener at the War Office, with a special portfolio for Mr. Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions, will seem to most, people) mi ideal combination. With the minor surprises of the Cabinet we have not the space to deal today.