THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, MAY 1, 1922. MR LLOYD GEORGE’S WARNING.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18542, 1 May 1922, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, MAY 1, 1922. MR LLOYD GEORGE’S WARNING.

The latest specimen of Mr Lloyd George’s wonderful rhetorical versatility has some unexpected and rather perplexing features. In his speech to the journalists at Genoa the Prime Minister seems to have been bent on frightening people in general; and, though his fundamental sincerity in this and other matters is unquestionable he may have considered that a good purpose justified some degree Of exaggerated emphasis. Certainly it was a highly sensational deliverance, deliberately calculated to cause searchings of heart and perturbations of spirit. Perhaps the Daily Telegraph does not go too far A in describing it as “a terrible utterance, coming from a statesman at the centre of international affairs, who has beeh feeling the pulse of our common civilisation.” The paper adds the challenging question, “Will anypjjjs declare that be is v wrong ?”, Very many people will be instinctively antagonised on noticing that the speech has been received with delight in Germany, but this is not a conclusive test; and the issues involved must- not be decided jn accordance with instinctive prepossessions, even though the Sentiment be based on very solid ground. Undoubtedly • there is a strange and distrustful irony in the thought that within four and fahalf years of the close of the war—the war of the great alliance and the great enmity—the British Prime Minister should feel impelled to propound a policy pleasing to Germany and unacceptable to France,—but who is responsible for this anomaly? We are not imputing merit, to Germany,—far from it,—but can France, great though the wrongs be that she has suffered, be acquitted of offence in respect to her post-war attitude P It is, of course, to France that Mr Lloyd George primarily addresses his warning that “anybody who imagines these two great peoples [Russia and Germany], representing two-thirds of the population of Europe, must bp either blind or blinkered.” For the time being, the policy, of France is the policy of the French Premier, whom Mr J. L. Garvin, the distinguished English journalist, describes as “the Kaiser of Peace”; and it is to be acknowledged that it is a policy which is embarrassing to the majority of the Allied statesmen at the Conference in Genoa and obstructive of the plan for effecting the reconstruction of Europe. Mr Lloyd George remarked that the Russo-German agreement has been a revelation to most people. Presumably, though he takes credit for certain warnings, it has been a revelation, a very disquieting revelation, to himself. It has breught before his imagination the malign spectre of “a hungry Russia equipped by an angry Gel-many” (a .phrase in the authentic Georgian veiii), and the possibility of a re-devastated Europe, the countries weltering again ; in blood “within the lifetime Of people whose hair is now grey.” A pretty picture, in sooth, —and the ink of the Washington resolutions scarcely dry! Some hair grows grey very early, but the Prime Minister apparently had his own agjb in mind—he will be sixty next year—and really, without any inclination to be light-minded in regard to a grave subject, we are rather incredulous as to the likelihood in any circumstances—we are almost disposed to say the possibility—Of another great European conflagration in the course of the next quarter of a Century. Nevertheless, the time might come, and the cogency Of Mr Lloyd George’s arguments and admonitions is not necessarily destroyed by what may have' hied a deliberate touch Of exaggeration. There is ftill warrant for his scornful allusion to people who ignore portentous facts and concentrate'on "Selfish trivialities.”' French and other critics might possibly retort that the British Statesman did not talk quite in this strain during the days immediately succeeding the war, and might suggest that his present attitude is but the latest instance of an inveterately characteristic opportunism. But there is a noble opportunism as well as an unworthy,—an opportunism which is an essential element in high state- ! craft,—and Mr Lloyd George might be ready to admit that the experience of the last four years has modified and enlarged some of his views concerning the trend of European affairs. The voice of Genoa may not be the voice of Versailles, but the question We have to ask is whether it represents the best wisdom of the present hour, and who can doubt the truth of the assertion that “if our victory should degenerate into oppression, if it is tainted or tinctured by selfish interests, if the conscience of mankind feels that have abused the triumph which God placed in our hands, then vengeance Will inevitably follow, jus* as it followed in the wake of the act by Germany which outraged the world’s moral sense?” If it has taken Mr Lloyd George A long time fully to learn this lesson, the Government and people of France have yet to begin to learn it. In his passionate desire for a successful issue to the consultations at Genoa the Prime Minister reverts wistfully to the tragedy, as he regards it, of America’s lost opportunity ; and the President of the United States and his advisers cannot fail to be impressed, though they may not be convinced, by the' earnest expression of regret (implying a liberal compliment) at the non-participation of the great Western Power in a consultative enterprise which the chief British representative

considers to be of more momentous linport than the reoent Conference at Washington. “It is too late, America is not here”; but there is significance in the warning or prediction that America would yet be compelled, willy-nilly, to interest herself in European affairs for the maintenance of peace. On the whole, after allowing for sotne unduly heightened we are disposed to think that this speech to the journalists St Gnlloa, which haS been, perhaps justly, described as “terrible” in one sense, accurately represents, in its main trend, the best and most enlightened thought of Europe, and not of Europe only, respecting the acute situation of the hour. It should serve to quicken the arrival of the true Peace who§e footsteps have tarried too long-