Mr. Arthur Ponsonby and Mr. Ramsay MacDonald have inadvertently done signal service to their country's cause. By raising—on Empire Day, too!—the question of peace, and urging the Government to initiate negotiations with Germany, they furnished Sir Edward Grey with an opportunity of dealing faithfully with the recent insidious man[oe]uvres of Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg. The only terms of peace that the German Government had ever put forward were terms of victory for Germany, and we could not reason with the German people so long as they were fed with lies. The Foreign Secretary spoke without a note, and carried away the House by his spontaneous indignation. The House had previously passed the Lords' amendments, strengthening the Military Service Bill. Altogether it was a bad day for the pro-Bosches.
Thursday, May 25th.—There was a big attendance in the House of Commons to hear Mr. Asquith unfold his new plan for the regeneration of Ireland. In the Peers' Gallery were Lord Wimborne, still in a state of suspended animation; Lord MacDonnell, wondering whether Mr. Asquith would succeed where he and Mr. Wyndham failed; and Lord Bryce, ex-Chief Secretary, to whom the Sinn Feiners are indebted for the repeal of the Arms Act. On the benches below were the leaders of all the Irish groups, including Mr. Ginnell. Even Mr. Birrell crept in unobtrusively to learn how his chief had solved in nine days the problem that had baffled him for as many years. An Irish debate on the old heroic scale was looked upon as a certainty.
In half-an-hour all was over. The Prime Minister had no panacea of his own to prescribe. All he could say was that Mr. Lloyd George had been deputed by the Cabinet to confer with the various Irish leaders, and that he hoped the House would assist the negotiations by deferring debate on the Irish situation.
His selection of a peacemaker is generally approved. If anyone knows how to handle high explosives without causing a premature concussion, or to unite heterogeneous materials by electrical welding, or to utilise a high temperature in dealing with refractory ores it should be the Minister of Munitions. Everybody wishes him success in his new rôle of Harmonious Blacksmith.
Nevertheless some little disappointment was felt by those who had hoped for a prompter solution. As an Irish Member expressed it, "This has been the dickens of a day. We began with 'Great Expectations' and ended with 'Our Mutual Friend.'"
'I've seen it—'tain't no good.'
"'E gets 'ung, don't 'e?"