LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. London, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras LEONARD SCOTT PUBLICATION COMPANY, New York 1923 Mr. H. G. Wells The Early History of the The Higher Command in 1914 E. S. ROSCOE HELEN CLERGUE The Edinburgh Review JANUARY, 1923 No. 483 FOUR YEARS OF LLOYD-GEORGIAN FOREIGN POLICY To measure the downward course of British foreign policy since the Armistice, one has merely to hold up and compare two pictures bearing date November 1918 and November 1922 respectively. When, at the end of the Great War, an overwhelming vote of confidence from the British electors entrusted once more to Mr. Lloyd George the honour and interests of the British Empire, it had attained to a position of influence and power unparalleled in its history. It had played in the protracted world conflict a magnificent and decisive part on land as well as on sea. No less decisive had been the British Empire's financial and industrial contribution to the common victory. Never once had the fortitude of the British people wavered, and they had felt from the moment when Mr. Lloyd George became Prime Minister in the dark hours of the war that they had found in him a leader who was the embodiment of their determination to win through at whatever cost. None ever made more stirring appeals to their spirit of self-sacrifice, none placed on a loftier plane the purposes for which the Empire was fighting. In his hands the great moral issues involved in the war seemed to be as safe as the more material issues. When the long struggle came all of a sudden to an end with Germany's complete surrender, not only the British people hailed him as 'the man who had won the war,' but all the All rights reserved. VOL. 237. NO. 483. |