ENGLAND TO-DAY

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 23, 26 January 1918, Page 10

ENGLAND TO-DAY

LETTERS OP THE REFORMATION

NORTHOLIFFK.

(MOM OUB OWN CORMSPONDBHT.) LONDON, 30th November. During the past fortnight prophets lave seen a ray of light shining through ihe clouds and indicating great events for ihe future. And in their rude way they trnve put two and two together to make ive.

On a day in November Lord Northcliffe, dead of the British Mission to America, returned to England bursting with, energy and down right statements, of what he believed. Within a few days there was a resignation from the 'Ministry and__a manufactured political "crisis," and the Northcliffe press fell in and declared the crisie non-existent and the head of the Government deserving of the full confidence of the country.

What Mr, Lloyd George said in Paris and after he returned to England does not matter a great deal. It has been patent for monthi that the Allies have been pulling against each other by having two cttvthree separate front*, and that if the Italian disaster has welded them into one single front, all'the better for everybody but the Germans. What troubled the manufacturers of tie crisis was the suggestion that .Great Birtain would give away come of her autonomy by agreeing to the appointment of a generalissimo or a supreme war council which might order the.British armies to do this that and the other thing in defiance of the judgment of pur;own Field-marshal.

So much' for the crisis. Then Lord Northcliffe, on the eve of being elevated to a Viscountcy, wrote to the Prime Minister or the 15th, and published the letter in The Times on the 16th, declining politely his invitation tt» become Air Minister, and thus for the first time informing the occupant of the chair that he was not wanted. Lord Cowdray resigned accordingly the following day, protesting that he should not have been left to learn from The Times that Mr. Lloyd George desired to make a change. The whole incident, of course, wag distinctly bad form. 'But we have just been told by' an American critic—and most of ne believe it—that Lord Northcliffe's chief value to the Allies is that he is so frequently guilty of the "bad form" of saying unpleasant things when they require to be said. How much have we suffered by leaving them unsaid. The |tew Viecount declined the Ministry of the Air because, inter alia, "I find that men in various positions' of authority who Should have been punished have been retained and in some cases elevated;" because "I feel I can do better work if I maintain my independence and am not gagged by a loyalty that I do not feel towards the. whole of your administration."

In fact, coming back fresh 1 from the United States, he said' in his fearless manner: "I know that, -unless there is swift improvement in our methods here, the United States will rightly take into it* own hands the entire management of ft great part of the waT. It will not sacrifice its blood and treasure to incompetent handling of affairs in Europe." HANDS OFF LLOYD 1 GEOB/GE. Nevertheless, through the artificial crisis the Northcliffe papers strongly supported Mr. Lloyd George, and' the new vieconnt himself was good enough to declare his own personal confidence in the Prime Minister. This means a good deal for anyone in England to-day; but the whole affair leaves an jinpjeasant taste in the mouth. As a matter of fact, the suspicion is Hawning that Mr. Lloyd George himself is now something of a puppet in the hands of the Northcliffe system. He has tone steadily into the background since c took office as Prime Minister. He lias sought the limelight less and less. He has even «hunned publicity at times when, aa when Mr. Henderson resigned, it -was due to himself to make matters llook fairer before the country. England, like moafc other countries, is hot large enough to have two great men on the stage at the same time. The question to-day, for the firet time since the war began, is: Which is the man of the day? Mr. Lloyd George is probably more (busy now than -ever he was, but in the public eye he is going along to-day on !hiß own prestige as an orator and his past achievements in social legislation and in war- organisation. That ought to be enough for any man. But there are certain strong counter influences. He has alienated the support of a great body of I/iberal sentiment. He has no more bitter critics than those men and those ip'apers which supported him through thick and thin in the strenuous old days of 1908 to 1914. Why it is Ido not iknow, but he is described in *he most Outspoken terms as having betrayed the p liberal cause. As a result, there is no promote disaster to one of our Allies or to an Allied interest in any part of the ■world which is not traced with iSfallible iwsight to the inalpractico of Mr. Lloyd George... .. ... ... j-'That is ba<i enongh, but 3t is infinitely ■worse that the Northcliffe press has been so lavish in support of the Prime Minister. ENTEE NORTHCLIFFE. The other figure in the public eye— 1 will not say it is the chief one—is that of Lord Northcliffe himself. To be quite candid, the public does not like Lord Northcliffe. Almost all sections have been converted to admiring Kirn for what he has done or compelled Others to do in the war. His restless energy amounts to genius, and over and over again he has appeared as the sheepdog driving the unwilling aheep of the Jfinistry in the right direction. But. almost everyone says they would like to ace him in power himself. A candid biographer of Lord Northcliffe once said that he had a craze for doing things, arid that it was much more satisfaction to him to be able to say that he did a thing than that the particular thing was right. The public has a short memory, but it.doe 3 not forget the Insurance Act campaign of the Daily Mail. And it has yet fresh in its recollection the unprincipled campaign against th# Home Office at the time of the Gotha raids, the effect of which was to produce the only panic which London has experienced during the war. 1 When Lord Northcliffe declined the Air Ministry, there were some people small enough to read hidden meanings into liia words—viz. 4 that he would pnly join the Ministry as its head. Of couiie, that was quite wrong of some people.. Nevertheless, there is a feelijig abroad that Lord Northcliffe does now consider himself to be in the running for the Prime Ministership. And, alter all, why should he not ? He i« admitted throughout the country to be the one man who has consistently compelled to be done thingß which urgently required doing. It is very wrong to Sidd the general comment that he is not the sort of man for the Prime Ministership These days have made a demand for quite different sorts of men from ■what we used to think the proper sort. iPre»eminently they have made a demand for men with the prescience, the fearlessness, the unbounded energy of jthe creator of the Daily Mail. #, is chiefly a question of when Lord TJorthcliffe himself shall decide that theie is a demand for him. Will he ever defcfele? I am not a prophet, but I jwould not! be surprised'if he did. And fchen he does decide, there is no. guar<

antee at all in recent history that he can be prevented from putting his decision into effect.

PUBLIC OPINION BORN, Tin. war has left the old political tenets high and dry. Above all things it has produced, or is producing, a public opinion in England, a public consciousness apart altogether from the party shibboleths which the bourgeoisie hurled at each other morning after morning as they travelled from the suburbs to the city. Within recent years public opinion as we know it in the Dominions, has been starved almost to extinctior by party opinion. To-day it is re-born out of tho revolution which is going on on around us. All grades of society have come to admit—in the face of the innumerable blunders of this tragical war —that all classes have a claim to intelligence and to a voice in their destiny. No magician could possibly divide England to-da.y on the old cries and hatreds of 1913.

Unfortunately, as the press is the only expression of public opinion when there are bo few elections, public opinion in England to-day must appear to be largely what Lord Northcliffe wants it to be. in ten cases out of twelve he has picked a winner. He has backed as ofter. as that the view which a great majority of the public is backing. But of course there are the other two cases.

The point is that when Lord Northcliffe decides on a. thing he has remarkable machinery for compelling the authorities to accept it and the pnblic to believe it is the right thing. That is why his candidature for the Rime Ministership, if it should ever happen, would be a very serious matter. He is not the sort of man to ba^k things that cannot conceivably win through—though he hae done that in his day. Sir Edward Carson scored a distinct hit from a Parliamentary point of view when he threw this jibe at Lord Northcliffe a few days ago: "If a. man has a seat in Parliament and he thinks things are going wrong, why does he not go to his seat in Parliament and tell us what we ought to do to set them right? There he could be answered." But that is just where Lord Northcliffe shows his understanding of the new times in which we live. The public has lost all faith in. Parliament and in Parliamentary men. It would have been just as pleased if Sir Eric Geddes could have got on with his work as First Lord without ever entering the House of Commons. It wants to get on with the war.

NOBTHCLIFFEI v. LLOYD GEOEGE,

It is very wrong to suggest such a tiling as a contest between the two most compelling figures in the commonwealth to-day. But somehow or other it is a psychological fact. Mr. Llyod George has been too much patronised and upheld by the Northcliffe prees. It is going to be his undoing. Already there are signs that the public suspects' that he is being "run" by the Napoleon of the newspaper world. In spite of the abuse and epithets which the Northcliffe press hurled at the little Welsh lawyer any time up to 1914, it wag Lord Northcliffe who made the atmosphere iii which Mr. Lloyd George came to power and Mr. Asquitb went out. It was Lord Northcliffe who ushered out Mr. Henderson with so much decorum, loading him with the obloquy of the incident, which now, strangely enough, rests almost entirely with Mr. Lloyd George. It was Lord Northcliffe who gave away the confidence of hie offer of the Air Ministry and so forced the retirement of Lord Cowdray, which, by the way, the country need not regret, and it is Lord Northcliffe's brother who takes the post. Is it not possible that one day there may be the same, creation of an atmosphere by the Northcliffe papers in which it will seem to the public, Having no other very articulate organs to guide them, that the only possible way out of the impasse will be the elevation of Lord Northcliffe to the Prime Ministership.

~Vou may ask whether there are any grounds of difference between Mr. Lloyd George and Lord Northcliffe. The answer is that there are. There are radical differences on war policy aff the present moment. And I fancy that if they knew the public would support Lord Northcliffe. But, of course, it will be to some extent a battle of personalities.