Both Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Winston Churchill denounced Socialism, but while Mr. Churchill really meant Socialism by Socialism, Mr. Lloyd George only meant a tendency to vote for Labour instead of for Lloyd George. By nature and tradition Mr. Lloyd George is on the Left side in politics, and his experience of Tories and rich men during the last few years has probably restored his leftward tendencies to their primitive vigour. As his record in the Ministry of Munitions shows, he has no respect for money: he throws it about, he can be careless and rough with it, it is a means to an end, and he has probably accumulated very little. Returned to power and faced by a spectacle of economic débacle, he is capable of taxing, levying upon, and confiscating the property of the rich to an extent that would make Mr. Henderson white with terror and throw Mr. Ramsay MacDonald into convulsions of Scotch caution. (But mark you, it won’t be Socialism. He is against Socialism.)

So Mr. Lloyd George emerges again from his temporary eclipse seated on the back of a united Liberal Party and already leaning a little to the Left. As the world situation develops he will probably lean more and more to the Left. Until he leans right over the Socialist programme. He has with him the affectionate distrust of a great multitude of his countrymen. They like his smile, have a profound sympathy for his tendencies, and wish they knew more of his intentions. He is by far the most vigorous and popular personality in the new House. He may do anything. This election that has reunited the Liberal Party in his interest has cost the country over two million pounds. We trust him to give us a show for our money.

XIV
SPAIN AND ITALY WHISPER TOGETHER

15.12.23

The noise of the British General Election subsides, and we realise that a crisis of supreme insignificance to the world in general is over. The affair has had much the same importance as a wayside epileptic fit. The patient falls into convulsive movements, emits strange noises. Presently it is all over, and the patient seems very little the worse for it. Britain’s herself again, and nobody can tell what it meant at all. One can only hope that there will not be another fit for some time. But there is no knowing. Great Britain is subject to these fits.

The space and attention that long-established custom has directed to these manifestations has a little distracted attention from an event of much greater significance: the coming together of Spain and Italy.

It became inevitable when President Poincaré made his speech about Black France, probably the most stupid speech ever made by a responsible statesman. There were Frenchmen who saw in his policy the certainty of a final isolation face to face with a Germany driven to desperation. He rebuked them for their fears. There were not forty million Frenchmen, he said, but a hundred million. He called in sixty million Africans to redress the balance of the population in Europe. He directed the attention of all the world to the steady progress of the Black French policy. For this the French were building their submarines, to protect their transports on their way from Africa to France. That was admitted even in 1921 at Washington. But now all Europe turns its eyes to the great railway developments of France in Africa, and sees the material confirmation of President Poincaré’s threat. These railways are plainly not development railways; they are strategic railways. They are as surely strategic railways as the lines the German Imperialists made to the Belgian frontier.

That White France that so many Americans and English love like a second motherland, the White France of the Great Revolution, of Lafayette and Mirabeau, of Voltaire and Pasteur and Anatole France, France the propagandist of liberty, equality, and fraternity throughout the world, France the guardian of art and of personal freedom and of the gracious life, passes into eclipse beneath this black shadow. Black France is ousting her from men’s imaginations and sympathies.

It was impossible for Italy and Spain to see this scheme coming into reality under their eyes without an intense repulsion. Response on their part followed almost automatically. The French organisation of North Africa jostles both Italy and Spain intolerably. The fragmentation of Germany, the impoverishment of England, will leave both these countries, if they remain disunited, in a position of helplessness under the domination of what all Europe is coming to regard as the most egoistic of nations. Any reasonably intelligent boy of sixteen who had followed the course of events could have told President Poincaré that the necessary result of his Black French policy and his Black France speech would be an understanding between Italy and Spain for joint preparations to cut the umbilical cord between France in Europe and France in Africa whenever a due occasion might arise.

A glance at a map of Europe will show how comparatively easy it would be to do that. The Balearic Isles of Spain are less than two hundred miles from Italian Sardinia. Across that line the transports bringing the Africans to Europe must go—four hundred miles of open sea. Confronted with the map that stream of transports pouring black troops into France is seen to be the most foolish dream that has ever corrupted the policy of a great nation. Neither Spain nor Italy nor Britain, nor, indeed, mankind at large, can allow it. They cannot afford to allow it.