It is therefore absurd to suppose that ministers could have failed to realise the extent of the danger, or of our unpreparedness to meet it, unless they had purposely buried their heads in the sand. They knew that they had not a big enough army, and that this fact might ruin their whole policy. Why did they never say so? Why, when Lord Roberts said so, did they treat him with contumely, and make every effort to discredit him? Why was nothing done by them during their whole period of office to increase the Army and thereby diminish the {298} numerical superiority of their adversaries. On the contrary, they actually reduced the Army, assuring the country that they had no use for so many trained soldiers. Moreover, the timidity or secretiveness of the Government prevented England from having, what is worth several army corps, and what proved the salvation of France--a National Policy, fully agreed and appealing to the hearts and consciences of the whole people. The answers to these questions must be sought in another sphere. The political situation was one of great perplexity at home as well as abroad, and its inherent difficulties were immeasurably increased by the character and temperament of Mr. Asquith, by the nature no less of his talents than of his defects. The policy of wait-and-see is not necessarily despicable. There are periods in which it has been the surest wisdom and the truest courage; but this was not one of those periods, nor was there safety in dealing either with Ireland or with Germany upon this principle. When a country is fully prepared it can afford to wait and see if there will be a war; but not otherwise. Sir Edward Grey is a statesman whose integrity and disinterestedness have never been impugned by friend or foe; but from the very beginning of his tenure of office he has appeared to lack that supreme quality of belief in himself which stamps the greatest foreign ministers. He has seemed at times to hesitate, as if in doubt whether the dangers which he foresaw with his mind's eye were realities, or only nightmares produced by his own over-anxiety. We have a feeling also that in the conduct of his office he had {299} played too lonely a part, and that such advice and sympathy as he had received were for the most part of the wrong sort. What he needed in the way of counsel and companionship was simplicity and resolution. What he had to rely on was the very reverse of this. Lord Haldane, as we have learned recently, shared largely in the work of the Foreign Office; a man of prodigious industry, but over-ingenious, and of a self-complacency which too readily beguiled him into the belief that there was no opponent who could not be satisfied, no obstacle which could not be made to vanish--by argument. [Sidenote: SIR EDWARD GREY'S DIFFICULTIES]