When my uncle arrived, his mood was made apparent by the sombre opening statement that nations got the governments they deserved. He added, with fine public spirit, that the worst result of the election was the lack of an effective opposition. Then less impersonal feelings broke through: he charged ministers with treating the fourteen points as ‘a scrap of paper’ and recommended a strait-waistcoat for all who escaped the lamp-post. Sitting in a half-circle round his chair, with Lucien’s international parliament huddled on our fringe, we were castigated with a fury that would have been better deserved if we had in fact uttered the vain things with which we were charged: _we_ had promised that there should be no punitive damages and now _we_ were threatening to squeeze Germany like an orange; _we_ were pledged to try the kaiser, if not to execute him without trial; _we_ were to restore our trade by destroying our best customer. “If I’d asked for the kaiser’s head on a charger,” Bertrand thundered, “you’d have promised me _two_ heads on _two_ chargers.” When the first fury had abated, Lucien fanned it to life by a reference to the peace of Brest-Litovsk, demanding why Germany should be treated more tenderly in defeat than she had treated others in victory. “If England had been _invaded_ . . .” he went on with a kindling eye. “The mistake your prime minister made was that he didn’t say enough.” “You should have thought of all that before you agreed to the armistice,” Bertrand retorted. “Well, say, the terms of the armistice . . .” began Clifford van Oss. I have no doubt he was going to say that, if the French quoted one set of undertakings against us, then America, which had drawn the terms, would speedily quote another. My uncle, however, who detested what he called “the American habit of making speeches instead of conversing”, broke in with a speech of his own: “Not that it matters whether he said too little or too much! The speeches have served their turn. I tell you, Lloyd-George is a better journalist than Northcliffe in knowing what the public will want the day after to-morrow! _He_ knew that, when the troops came home to find no job waiting for them, people would forget they’d ever called him ‘the man who won the war’. Before they forgot him for high taxation, high prices, falling wages and a creeping paralysis of unemployment, he had to make himself snug. _And he has!_ Five years of autocratic power with the certainty that something _must_ turn up; five years’ support from the Curzons and Milners who’d never have seen the back-door of office without him; five years’ support from the Monds and Greenwoods of the liberal second-eleven; five years’ support from every man who’s lost a son, every woman who can’t make both ends meet. You need only promise to hang the kaiser and make Germany pay: England was worth a general election.”