Cylchgronau Cymru

OUTLOOK The Editor does not necessarily identify himself with the opinions of contributors to 46 The Welsh Outlook." Editorial responsibility is limited to the views expressed in the Notes of the Month," and in the unsigned article immediately following. NOTES OF THE MONTH The Revelations concerning the origin and Bickerings the progress of the War are forthcoming of Peace month by month, and it is idle to com- plain that they are being dished up to us with an abundance of the sauce of personalities. We are now witnessing the great debate and it is only by the betrayal of personality that we and future generations can arrive at the complete truth which history demands. The actions of men of action are not complete evidence from which to sum up the situation in which they are involved. And when men of action write about their doings it is as important to the observer that they should betray themselves as that they should tell the truth For the betrayal gives away the truth of themselves, and this knowledge is neces- sary also when we come to judge the value of the truth which they have deliberately set out to tell. It is in this spirit that we welcome all public debates on the part ot the men of action. It is idle to deprecate the pettiness of the French-Asquith controversy. They were our leaders in the days of our action. We obeyed them more or less blindly. We knew their public commands and their public utterances. We now have the opportunity to know not only the private difficulties and the secret facts, but also the self-revealed character of the chief directors of the event, and knowing this we are the more able to under- stand not only their achievement but also their failure, which is perhaps even more important for us to know. We do not therefore agree with many of our contemporaries who condemn these acrimonies as the bickerings of peace, and who wish the revelations to remain in their secret places. It does not decrease our capacity for faith in leadership. It increases our sympathy for their dim- culties, and in so many instances the chief of these are not the complexity of external events but the mystery of the inner man. OCTOBER, 1919. Loreburn It is in this respect that we welcome the and Grey Loreburn-Grey debate which finds its one side expressed at interesting length in the former's book How the War came." We are really in the dark about the war until we read such books as this, and further it is essential that we should know not only more facts about the beginnings of the war, but also that we should know more about Lord Loreburn and Viscount Grey, and particularly that we should know what Lord Loreburn has to say about Viscount Grey and vice versa. The value of the indictment lies, as we have said, in its self-revelatory quality, and also in the fact that it provides definite observations with which to review the general situation. Lord Loreburn recognises the im- mense effort made by the British Cabinet and Lord Grey to keep the peace in the twelve days when Europe tell into ruin. But he contends that the European policy of Lord Grey, in part public in part secret, had placed us in a position which we should never have occupied and thus made war inevitable. It is contended by Lord Loreburn that if we were prepared to enter into European obliga- tions, we should only have done so under European con- ditions of preparedness, with a conscript army, and all the full military equipment of the continental system. Further, it is stated that Lord Grey's policy, secret from the people outside, and in part secret from the bulk of the Cabinet, had as a matter of fact changed a loose under- standing with France into a firm alliance, in which the honour of England was involved in a French quarrel, and therefore in a Russian quarrel. Finally, it is said that it after the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, we had declared ourselves publicly on the side of France and Russia, Germany would have persuaded Austria to climb down, and there would have been no war. This is the basis of Lord Loreburn's criticism, and it is vitally interesting at a