328 



The Review of Reviews. 



October I. 1306. 



Our "Ounce 



of 



Example." 



world what is done by the International ■ Postal 

 Bureau, to the no small advantage of all concerned. 

 " Great Britain," said M. Messimy, 

 " has been the first to oppose the 

 steady and dangerous increase of 

 military expenditure. She appeared 

 resolved to give to the world the signal of a new 

 policy." He was too polite to point out that although 

 we are doing this to-day, no other Power has in- 

 creased its armaments with such reckless prodigality 

 since the Hague Conference. We have, however, 

 begun to nibble at the question of reduction. In the 

 Naval estimates the late Government, on the eve of 

 leaving office, showed a reduction of _;^3, 000,000, 

 and Mr. Robertson has now announced a reduction 

 in the shipbuilding vote of ^^2, 500, 000. Mr. Hal- 

 dane has reduced the Army to the tune of 

 ;^i,50o,ooo, so that in the last twelve months we 

 have reduced our expenditure by _^7,ooo,ooo. That 

 is only an ounce of example, but it is a beginning, 

 and if anv other Power will follow it, there may be 

 some chance of getting something done. As Count 

 D'Alviella pointed out in a very plain-spoken 

 speech, it all depends upon Germany: — 



If Germany refused to follow, nobody would follow. He 

 was convinced that Germany wished for peace, that the 

 German Emperor was sincerely on the side of peace, but 

 they must take account of facts. It was not enough that 

 Prance, the United States, Russia. Italy, and England 

 should be in agreement in acclaiming peace if a single 

 Power resisted and kept a force which would make it the 

 Great Power in Europe. 



Most people scoffed in 1899 at the 

 ofThe'"" Russian suggestion of putting an 

 " Dreadnoughts." international interdict upon new 

 weapons of war. Few people 

 to-day will deny that it would have been a 

 good thing for us if some international authority had 

 placed a veto upon the construction of the " Dread- 

 nought." We had by immense expenditure created 

 a fleet which was easily superior to any two or three 

 existing fleets. If we had only rested there all would 

 have been well. But nothing would satisfy our able 

 Chief Constructors and Sea Lords but they must 

 set to work and build a huge Behemoth of a new 

 turbine-driven ironclad with the speed of a cruiser, 

 whose advent at once renders all our enormous plant 

 of ironclads little better than scrap iron. ^1,800,000 

 must be spent on the building of one such monster, 

 and Sir John Fisher declares that one is of no use 

 unless he has four. One " Dreadnought " is like a 

 chair with one leg. Thereupon Germany, America, 

 and the other Powers at once set about building 

 " Dreadnoughts " of their own, to the ruin of their 

 taxpayers. As for us, we are worse off than we v.ere 

 before. For our old ascendency in other battleships 

 no longer counts against the new monsters, in build- 

 ing which we ha\e only one year's start and one ship 

 to the good. If this kind of thing goes on we shall 

 have to get all mankind to pass a law dooming to 

 instant death any miscreant who invents a new and 

 more expensive type of battleship. 



WestminsteT Gazette.^ 



The Blue-Water School. 



able-Seaman Fishee : " Well, suppose there are ten mil- 

 lions of 'em a«ro83 the water! Isn't this an island? and 

 isn't an island surrounded by sea? and isn't our Fleet on 

 the sea? And what's the matter with the Navy? " 



Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, 



, 7^ . - who has been steadily rising in the 

 Apotheosis of r .. ^ . ° 



C.-B. opinion of his countrymen ever 



since he took office, sprang at a 

 bound last month into the unprecedented position of 

 a Palmerston of Peace. His speech to the Inter- 

 parliamentary Conference for thorough-going advo- 

 cacy of Arbitration, Limitation of Armaments, and 

 Peace, amazed and astounded those who heard it. 

 Since the Tsar's Rescript there has been no such dis- 

 ccurse in favour of peace. Mr. Gladstone himself 

 never did anything better. But I have called him 

 the Palmerston rather than the Gladstone of Peace, 

 because of the dashing audacity with which he 

 plunged into the midst of the internal politics of a 

 foreign country in order to express the universal 

 opinion of his countrymen. His declaration " The 

 Duma is dead. Long live the Duma!" startled the 

 world. It fell upon Europe much as his famous 

 phrase about the methods of barbarism fell upon 

 South Africa. Everyone, even among the employers 

 of those methods, admits that he was right in the 

 latter case — see the third volume of " The Times' 

 History of the War " passim. And those who most 

 condemn the calculated impulsiveness of his " Long 

 live the Duma!" will live to see that no statesman 

 e\'er spoke a truer word or one more useful for Rus 

 sians and their rulers to hear. 



[\ Historical 

 Parallel. 



I am sorry that the Tsar dissolved 

 the Duma. I fear that he may cr-^ 

 further and fare worse. But t. 

 way in which most of our paper- 

 have been writing about it is simple nonsense. In 

 stead of going back to the French Revolution they 

 had much better go back to the early eighties, when 

 Mr. Gladstone found himself confronted in Ireland 

 with a situation which verv closelv resembles that of 



