Those were days of terrible passion and bitterness. No abuse was too strong for the perfidy of Mr. Lloyd George on the one hand or the lethargy of Mr. Asquith on the other. Ingratitude and bad faith were spluttered from one set of lips; incompetence and indifference from the other. A "defeatist" cabal in the cabinet was discovered or invented; and ministers were accused of not winning the war because they did not want to win the war. More than four years have passed since that black week and it is still too early to return an impartial verdict. No one is likely to question that Mr. Asquith's loyalty and generosity to his colleagues are without parallel in our political history: throughout the vulgarity of the Limehouse campaign, the tragi-comedy of Mr. Churchill's Sidney Street offensive and the squalor of the Marconi scandal, the prime minister's wide and indulgent cloak was ever at the disposal of the intemperate youngsters of his cabinet; never was indulgence repaid with blacker treachery. Those who like to fancy the workings of providence in human affairs may think that, as Mr. Asquith neglected and misled his party more thoroughly than any other prime minister, so he was overtaken by a more malignant nemesis. To suggest that he would have lost the war, if he had continued in office, is hardly less fantastic than to believe that Mr. Lloyd George won it. A press-ridden people is liable to exaggerate the difference between one prime minister and another; by 1917 a number of amateurs had learned something of war, and the new prime minister profited by experience as the old would have done; but through the organised clamour and dust of the next two years it is hard to discern a single act of courage or of decision which ranks higher than the day-by-day courage and decision displayed by the government in the first half of the war or which entitled Mr. Lloyd George more than Mr. Asquith to be regarded as a great war-minister. It was under Mr. Asquith's rule that the country was converted from peace to war, that the great armies were raised and all but one of the great alliances concluded. If Mr. Lloyd George can claim credit for the unification of the higher command, he must allow that from no one but Mr. Asquith would conscription have been accepted; his own effort in 1918 to raise the age-limit and to include Ireland was hardly a triumph of practical efficiency or of political honesty. The difficulties of administration had, if anything, decreased by 1917: if Russia was no longer dependable, America--with all her resources of food, money and men--came to redress the balance. While Mr. Lloyd George's buoyant and inspiring optimism deserves all praise, Mr. Asquith's optimism, if more restrained, was no less constant; his determination, even when no longer in office, to prosecute the war with all possible vigour was a cause of perplexity and of offence to those of his party who wished him to lead a movement in favour of a negotiated peace and