A PARTIAL PAT ON THE BACK.
(Another Little Lecture on the War, after the style of "The Spectator" (abbreviated).)
It is no time to waste words in praise of anybody. We want to give and mean to give—we may perhaps even say that we hope to give—the Cabinet our countenance and some measure of our approval, but neither adulation nor encomium. The Editor of this journal is quite ready to allot the laurels when they have been earned; he will be found at his post handing them out when the time arrives. But not now.
It will be said, no doubt ... (Deletion of what will no doubt be said).
You may ask a man to put his whole strength into drawing a cork, but unless you are a fool you do not, while the operation is going forward, keep nagging at him because the cork is too firmly jammed, nor do you jeer at him for his lack of prescience in not having selected a bottle with a wider neck. You do not ask him strings of useless questions as to why he doesn't grip the bottle between his feet or get a purchase on it with his teeth. Above all you do not keep handing him tools, such as a pair of scissors or a button-hook or a crowbar. No. You concentrate earnestly upon the provision of an efficient corkscrew, if you ever hope to taste the imprisoned liquor. And meanwhile, "Don't trip him up" should be the order of the day; "Don't catch his eye" should be your watchword; "Don't get into the bowler's arm" should be your motto.
We shall be told, of course ... (Deletion of what we shall of course be told).
But to discountenance nagging is not to encourage laudation, adulation, or encomium, or even praise. These can wait. The cow, to change the metaphor, will generally give her milk all the better if she is not in the act of being stroked or patted or wreathed with buttercups.
We shall perhaps evoke the retort ... (Deletion of the retort, which will perhaps be evoked).
So much for the exact attitude which the Public ought to maintain toward the Government during the War. Unfortunately the Public, or rather a section of them, have done nothing of the sort. And that is the reason why, in spite of good intentions about adulation and all that, it has become absolutely necessary for us to step forward and present the Ministry with this unsolicited testimonial. The Government is not what it appears to be to cross-grained critics seeking for a Rotation of suitable scapegoats. Ministers are full of glaring faults. Most of them before the War were wickedly engaged in doing all sorts of damage to the country, appalling to contemplate. But since the War began they are doing what they can to retrieve a lurid past, and we believe that History (our intimate colleague who waits to endorse at a later stage the views expressed in these columns) will pronounce that they have displayed great qualities.
But stay! We are in danger of adulation after all. Let us freely admit that they are a sorry lot. We have never been blind to the fact. All the same, they have shown the greatest of all qualities in a crisis—dispassion almost amounting to torpor. There has never been about them the slightest trace of hustle or helter-skelter. They have steered with the greatest deliberation a course which they thought was the right one for the ship of state to take. To change the metaphor, having fixed the route of the national 'bus they have refrained from diving down side-streets. (But there we go again, running off into laudation. This will not do at all.)
To speak frankly, all the political tenets of the majority of the Cabinet are such as can never receive anything but bitter hostility from this publication. We can't help it. There is a gulf fixed, that is how it comes about. But on the other hand we must not let this view prevent us—even though, after all, we are guilty of eulogy—from recognising their sterling worth. They are indispensable to the navigation of the ship of state. To change the metaphor, we must be content to let the train be driven by the engine-driver and not insist upon interference by the dining-car attendant.
We are well aware that we lay ourselves open to the charge ... (Deletion of the charge to which we lay ourselves open).
Let us then trust the Government, even blindly. Let our motto be the immortal words in the "Hunting of the Snark": "They had often, the Bellman said, saved them from wreck: though none of the sailors knew how."