As to our engagements under the Fourteen Points he was always silent. On November 30, Mr. Barnes, a member of the War Cabinet, in which he was supposed to represent Labor, shouted from a platform, "I am for hanging the Kaiser." On December 6, the Prime Minister issued a statement of policy and aims in which he stated, with significant emphasis on the word _European_, that "All the European Allies have accepted the principle that the Central Powers must pay the cost of the war up to the limit of their capacity." But it was now little more than a week to Polling Day, and still he had not said enough to satisfy the appetites of the moment. On December 8, the _Times_, providing as usual a cloak of ostensible decorum for the lesser restraint of its associates, declared in a leader entitled "Making Germany Pay," that "The public mind was still bewildered by the Prime Minister's various statements." "There is too much suspicion," they added, "of influences concerned to let the Germans off lightly, whereas the only possible motive in determining their capacity to pay must be the interests of the Allies." "It is the candidate who deals with the issues of to-day," wrote their Political Correspondent, "who adopts Mr. Barnes's phrase about 'hanging the Kaiser' and plumps for the payment of the cost of the war by Germany, who rouses his audience and strikes the notes to which they are most responsive." On December 9, at the Queen's Hall, the Prime Minister avoided the subject. But from now on, the debauchery of thought and speech progressed hour by hour. The grossest spectacle was provided by Sir Eric Geddes in the Guildhall at Cambridge. An earlier speech in which, in a moment of injudicious candor, he had cast doubts on the possibility of extracting from Germany the whole cost of the war had been the object of serious suspicion, and he had therefore a reputation to regain. "We will get out of her all you can squeeze out of a lemon and a bit more," the penitent shouted, "I will squeeze her until you can hear the pips squeak"; his policy was to take every bit of property belonging to Germans in neutral and Allied countries, and all her gold and silver and her jewels, and the contents of her picture-galleries and libraries, to sell the proceeds for the Allies' benefit. "I would strip Germany," he cried, "as she has stripped Belgium." By December 11 the Prime Minister had capitulated. His Final Manifesto of Six Points issued on that day to the electorate furnishes a melancholy comparison with his program of three weeks earlier. I quote it in full: "1. Trial of the Kaiser. 2. Punishment of those responsible for atrocities. 3. Fullest Indemnities from Germany. 4. Britain for the British, socially and industrially. 5. Rehabilitation of those broken in the war. 6. A happier country for all."