SUPPLEMENTARY VOTE OF CREDIT. (Hansard, 24 July 1916)

§ Mr. LYNCH
At a quarter-past eight I was speaking on the deficiencies of the Prime Minister, and I propose briefly to continue in that direction, which is but another way of exposing the main lines of the present situation. That very remark was greeted with a smile of incredulity, in which I dare say the right hon. Gentleman himself would participate. Having been acquainted for some time with the general tone and traditions of this House, I am not in the least disconcerted by that point of view. It, to my mind, really indicates the general prevalence of false standards. In saying that at this great crisis of a great nation we should have a great leader I will not in any way make an excessive demand. I would compare the qualities of our present leader with those of the great leader of a great nation in a great crisis at another epoch of history, namely, Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln was not a man of genius——

§ Mr. J. SAMUEL
He also was denounced.

§ Mr. LYNCH
Unless experience, foresight, a certain guilelessness of spirit, and the plain directness of an honest man may be called marks of genius. But in the 1471 cause of the North he stood forth as a tower of strength, as one who was able to secure full respect for his almost infallible correctness of judgment, and to inspire and strengthen his country. I ask any Members here who have followed the course of the War whether the Prime Minister has stood like that. Another type of mind which we have a right to demand in a Government leader of a great nation is that which I find typified in the person of, say, Carnot, the great organiser of victory—a man of scientific mind who was able to plan and mark out great strategic lines as an architect marks out his plan, so that victory was but the realisation of a plan which he had already seen in his own mind. Has the Prime Minister, in any respect whatever, come near to the realisation of such a type as that? No! His is not a scientific mind. His is not the mind to foresee. To see and to prepare beforehand, to set forth with judgment, is the sign of the great mind; not that of the man who has no other course for the future except to drift. The Prime Minister is not a man of science, but he is an artist. The great feat of his artistry is to distort the entire prospective of the present situation. In face of manifest exterior disasters of the greatest gravity he comes down to this House in order to paint a picture before the eyes of this House, and of the entire nation, which completely distorts all the features, and by making us see unrealities makes us believe that we are being well led by the Government in this great campaign. That is the work of an artist, but it is a very dangerous gift for the leader of a nation. The greatest of the qualities that we should demand from him is that of judgment. Has the Prime Minister shown judgment in the great crisis of this country? Did he show judgment when in the beginning he was unable to foresee that Conscription was inevitable and, as he afterwards declared, unnecessary? Did he show judgment when he went to Newcastle at one of the critical phases of the War, and, instead of stimulating the country to new effort, to throw back the work of preparation for another few months? Did he show judgment when the question of the aeroplanes was first mooted in this Mouse, and when it was shown that one of the great arms of warfare and possibly of victory was being neglected, and when twelve months after this first warning 1472 there was the fact of the establishment of machinery for taking in hand what he was urged to do at the beginning of the War? Did the Leader of the Cabinet, who at any rate is not a master of strategy, show judgment on the Dardanelles Expedition? Did he show it on the Mesopotamia expedition? or on Serbia? or, recently, has he shown judgment in regard to Ireland?
What is a man of judgment? Is he not a man who, from a certain standpoint of the present, is able to foresee, and to foretell, what will arrive in the future, so as to make the necessary preparation, so that in future days he will be able to point to these preparations as the best sign of his prescience? The Prime Minister, instead of giving us these exploits of judgment, has given us merely a show of judgment! Where a man whose judgment is tested by reality is found again and again to fail, and yet gives us a show of judgment, I say that that man is not a great statesman; he is simply a great comedian! Again and again he has come down to this House to demand huge Votes of Credit, and again and again he has been unable to justify those Votes of Credit by pointing to any real progress in the conduct of the War. Amidst all this hesitation, vacillation, and disaster one truth remains constant, the mighty river of blood which is the tribute to the weakness of the Government, the mountain of corpses which is the monument to their incompetence. This Coalition Government is not a union of Liberal and Tory Members. It has become a Tory Government, the Prime Minister again showing his ignorance and going down in the conflict between those forces. I might utter an aphorism which will become verified again and again, as it has been in the past, that whenever a Liberal party unites with a Tory party the coalition becomes a Tory party.
We have now reached a stage of this War when reasonable men may ask how much longer are we prepared to continue. The financial resources of this country, great as they are, are not inexhaustible. For this tremendous expenditure of treasure and life we are entitled to demand real valid results. We have had nothing so far but a deadlock. How much longer is that deadlock to continue? Is the final result to be a deadlock? Have we reached, or are we about to reach, a stalemate, and is this War to end in a draw? If it is to end in a draw, it 1473 would be better now to east about for reasonable terms of peace. If this War ends in a draw, then that is the beginning and end of the life of this country as a great nation. It is the logical consummation of a policy of drift. It is the Nemesis of the Unready Ethelred. I think it would be the greatest of all disasters if the War ended in a draw, and, therefore, the War should be prosecuted with the utmost vigour, and we should face the question boldly as to whether these men who have two years' experience and have led us into disaster after disaster are to continue to ruin the chances of this country in the end. While I believe a draw would be the greatest of all disasters, I also believe quite sincerely, weighing the matter out as impassionately as I can, that the men who are now leading are not competent to win. They must go. Better men must be found to fill their places. The inquiry so often heard, "Where are these better men?" I will answer at the proper time. And I say if that is all your resources, and that is all your gauge of victory, you have already in your own words sealed the doom of this country if you place as the high-water mark of your energy, intelligence, judgment, and power those men who have had control during the last two years. There are many ways in which the present aspect of circumstances can be changed into a new appearance. One is by an energetic resumption of the Balkan Campaign, and the second is in the development of a great aeroplane fleet. There is a point on which I have insisted from the very beginning, and for verification I go no further than your own Front Bench itself, for after twelve months they attempted to realise it, not by giving us that aeroplane fleet which they then considered necessary, but by giving us a Board—a Board which has become, apparently, affected with the prevailing maladies of incompetence, vacillation, and drift. Even to-day we have had the inspiring example of what it is possible to accomplish in aeroplane warfare. Recently a French aeroplane traversed Berlin, and almost reached the Russian lines. If at the beginning the Government had shown foresight and energy and had begun to build like an engineer, we should now 1474 have had another Army and one of our greatest Armies in the shape of an aeroplane fleet of 20,000 machines. It is possible that this could have been realised, and that it has not been realised is the charge I make against the Government. With an aeroplane fleet of 20,000 this great push would have had another meaning, and the whole aspect of the War might have been changed. These words I utter now. Even if they do not convince all the Members of this House, they will at length find their meaning and echo in the country, and from the country will come a demand to replace these incompetent men by men of energy and power who have faith in ultimate victory, which I am beginning to doubt that the Government possess—not only faith and determination, but the intelligence to foresee and devise the means necessary to carry out their plans; and above all, the power of electrifying the country so that it will believe no effort too great, no sacrifice too great, to secure a glorious victory under the folds of the banner which they have placed in the van in this fight for the progress of humanity.