their attitude towards them. The Geneva Protocol was also a line of progress towards the goal of security, and he hoped the Government, if it could not come to any decided conclusion with regard to the Protocol, would, at any rate, not meet Geneva with a "blank and sterile negative." In conclusion, Mr. Fisher animadverted upon the conduct of France in the Saar and of Poland in Danzig, and expressed his doubts on the wisdom of transferring the control of German armaments to a Commission appointed by the League of Nations, especially as its president was to be a Frenchman.

Mr. Chamberlain replied at considerable length, dealing first with the points raised last by Mr. Fisher. He maintained that there had been a great improvement in the Saar administration during the past two years, and that the French president of the governing body, whatever might be his faults, was still the best man for the post, and could be trusted to use his power in the right spirit. With regard to Danzig, Mr. Chamberlain did not commit himself further than to say that he thought Poland was likely now to take a calmer view of the situation than in the hour of her national re-birth. As to the transfer of the control of German armaments to the League, that, said Mr. Chamberlain, arose out of the original constitution of the League, and might remove a source of friction between Britain and her enemies in the war. On the question of the Cologne evacuation, Mr. Chamberlain followed the same line as Lord Curzon in his reply to Lord Oxford.

Coming to the question of security, Mr. Chamberlain took as his text some words used by Earl Grey in an address on the international situation which he had delivered the previous evening: "Security is the master-key to the difficult problems of Western Europe." No one, he said, could occupy the position which he had done for the last few months and not feel that a dominant enemy in Europe was the sense of insecurity that reigned everywhere, and that there could be no progress in human affairs, no recovery of national life, no commercial and economic prosperity, until the question of security was dealt with. It was, he said, quite true that, as reported in the papers, proposals on this matter had been made to the Allied Governments by Germany. At first they had been offered to him under pledge of secrecy, and he had refused to receive them, but he was then assured that the same communications would be made to Brussels, Paris, and Rome, as had actually been done. At the very first sight he had welcomed this new move on the part of the German Government; now that they had repeated their proposals to the other Allies, he attached great importance to it. The exchange of views between the Allied Governments had so far been of the slightest, and it was too soon to gauge the possibilities of the proposals. But it was not too soon for him to say that the Government

attached the highest importance to them, and meant to give them the most serious consideration in the hope that in this voluntary movement of the German Government there might be found a passage which would lead them away from the unhappy past to a better and more friendly future. Lord Grey in his speech had emphasised the part that Britain might play in pacifying Europe, by making some offer to promote European security in which the British Empire might join. It was too early for him to have formed in his own mind an idea of the shape which their cooperation should take, but it was in the spirit of Lord Grey's remark that the Government approached the whole consideration of the subject.

Liberal speakers who followed pointed out that Mr. Chamberlain had said nothing about the Protocol. In replying to the debate, Mr. Chamberlain said that he expected to make an announcement on the Protocol at the League meeting. He went so far as to add, however, that all the indications he had been able to obtain as to the state of feeling in other countries led him to the conclusion that if Britain signed the Protocol to-morrow they would not settle the question of security as it presented itself to those who were most anxious about the dangers surrounding them. With or without the Protocol, however, the Government would continue to work for the principles of arbitration and disarmament, which that document was supposed .to represent.

While Mr. Chamberlain was delivering his speech an incident occurred which for some time seriously disturbed the harmony of the House of Commons. While the Foreign Secretary was dealing with the subject of security, he was interrupted so persistently by Mr. Kirkwood that at length the Chairman of Committees, Mr. Hope, who was in the Chair, called that member somewhat sharply to order. Mr. Kirkwood thereupon rose as if to speak, but the Chairman, without waiting for a word of explanation, called on him to leave the House. Mr. Kirkwood refused, and Mr. Hope thereupon sent for the Speaker, and informed him that Mr. Kirkwood had disregarded the authority of the Chair. The Speaker named him, and Mr. A. Chamberlain, who was leading the House in the absence of the Prime Minister, moved "that Mr. Kirkwood, the member for Dumbarton Burghs, be suspended from the service of the House." Mr. MacDonald sought to make an explanation, but the Speaker ruled that it would be out of order for him to do so. The House then divided on the motion, which was carried by 245 votes to 119. As soon as the figures were announced, Mr. MacDonald, accompanied by all the Labour members present, rose and walked out of the House-an unprecedented manner of showing disapproval with the Chairman's ruling. Mr. Chamberlain then resumed his speech, after a break of twenty minutes. The Labour Party were in high dudgeon for

some days over what they termed the " peremptory and arbitrary action" of the Chairman of Committees, and Mr. MacDonald tabled a vote of censure. Before it could be discussed, however, Mr. Hope wrote a letter to Mr. Baldwin explaining that his apparent harshness had been due to his anxiety to protect the Foreign Secretary from any interruption which might have disconcerted him, and so led him to make a slip in the midst of a speech of exceptional gravity and importance. Mr. Baldwin, on March 9, read this letter to the House of Commons, and Mr. MacDonald thereupon undertook to withdraw his motion of censure, and a few days afterwards the House, on the Premier's recommendation, rescinded the motion suspending Mr. Kirkwood.

In spite of Mr. Chamberlain's reserve, it was already known on good authority that the Protocol had been severely criticised by the military and naval advisers of the Government, and that it had on the whole found little approval in the eyes of that body. The French Government, on the other hand, had declared itself warmly in favour of the Protocol, and desirous of seeing it ratified. It fell to Mr. Chamberlain, therefore, as the British delegate to Geneva, to convey a message which he knew could be little to the taste of his French colleagues. His well-known friendship for France did not lead him to shirk the task; on the contrary, the rejection of the Protocol contained in his speech was almost brusque in its outspokenness.

He began by pointing out that in regard to the three main themes of the Protocol, arbitration, disarmament, and security, the British Empire had shown by deeds as well as by words that it was in the fullest accord with the ideals of the League of Nations. Nevertheless, the British Government, after discussing the subject with the self-governing Dominions and with India, saw insuperable objections to signing and ratifying the Protocol in its present shape. Amendment or interpretation might in themselves be desirable; but the Government could not believe that the Protocol as it stood provided the most suitable method of attempting this task.

Mr. Chamberlain then proceeded to state in detail the objections to the scheme. The non-adhesion of the United States to the League had upset the calculation of the framers of the Covenant, and made it unwise to add to the liabilities already incurred under that document, as the Protocol undoubtedly proposed to do. The value of the "economic sanctions" was entirely changed by the existence of powerful economic communities outside the limits of the League. In regard to the military measures contemplated, Mr. Chamberlain pointed out that a State threatened with attack might be put at a disadvantage by having to maintain the peace distribution of its forces; this was especially the case at sea, where mobility and concentration were of the essence of defensive power. The provisions requiring the aggressor State

to pay all the costs of the war for which it was responsible, and protecting it from any alteration of frontiers or interference in its domestic affairs, also seemed to the British Government too rigid and inflexible, and calculated to deprive the League of a discretion which other tribunals were free to exercise.

From these specific objections, Mr. Chamberlain went on to a criticism of a more general nature. The additions made by the Protocol to the Covenant did something quite different from clarifying obscurities and filling in omissions. They destroyed its balance and altered its spirit. The fresh emphasis laid upon. sanctions, the new occasions discovered for their employment, the elaboration of military procedure, insensibly suggested that the vital business of the League was not so much to promote friendly co-operation and reasoned harmony in the management of international affairs, as to preserve peace by organising war, and, it might be, war on the largest scale. In the opinion of the British Government, anything which fostered the idea that the main business of the League was with war rather than with peace was likely to weaken it in its fundamental task of diminishing the cause of war, without making it in every respect a suitable instrument for organising great military operations, should the necessity for them be forced upon the world. The Government failed to see how the Protocol would promote disarmament any more than the Covenant; and as between the Covenant unamended and the Covenant amended by the Protocol, they preferred the former.

In order not to end on a purely critical note, Mr. Chamberlain added some positive suggestions which had commended themselves to the British Government. While they did not agree that without sanctions the League was powerless and treaties no better than waste paper, they recognised that there were extreme cases about which it was not possible to speak with the same assurance, and the possibility of which fostered international suspicion and kept the world on edge. Since, in the opinion of the Government, the general provisions of the Covenant could not be stiffened with advantage, and since the "extreme cases" were likely to affect certain nations or groups of nations more nearly than others, His Majesty's Government concluded that the best way of dealing with the situation was, with the co-operation of the League, to supplement the Covenant by making special arrangements in order to meet special needs. That these arrangements should be purely defensive in character and framed in the spirit of the Covenant was manifest. And in the opinion of the Government, these objects could best be attained by knitting together the nations most immediately concerned, and whose differences might lead to a renewal of strife, by means of treaties framed with the sole object of maintaining an unbroken peace.

Mr. Chamberlain's speech made a painful impression on the delegates, who were hardly prepared for so complete a rejection

of the Protocol on the part of Britain. It was immediately recognised by France that the Protocol had been killed, and that some new means would have to be devised of finding security. Accordingly, when Mr. Chamberlain passed through Paris on his way back from Geneva, M. Herriot discussed with him the new situation that had been created. The conversations were most amicable, but they did not lead to any result beyond bringing into clearer relief the problems that had to be solved. The German proposals were discussed, but Mr. Chamberlain was of opinion that nothing could be done unless Germany was prepared to come into the League, and on an equality with the other members. In the House of Commons, on March 18, Mr. Chamberlain stated that the objections of the Government to the Protocol were so fundamental that it did not seem to them to afford the best basis for future negotiation, although they were fully aware of the unanimous decision of the French Government, taken before they defined their own attitude, to support the Protocol.

The Labour Party at this juncture took occasion to manifest the deep mistrust with which it regarded the Foreign Office in the Conservative Government. On March 11, Mr. Trevelyan moved that no treaty should be ratified, and no arrangements involving national obligations made, without the consent of Parliament, and that no preparations for co-operation in war with a foreign State should be lawful unless consequent upon such arrangements. The Labour Party, he said, believed that peace could only be secured by the deliberate and overt determination of the mass of the people to resist all policies which led to war. The first requisite of this new security was that the House of Commons should no longer have nominally the last voice in deciding about foreign policy, but that actually, ordinarily, and by established practice, its control should be as much in the hands of the House as the control of domestic policy had been for over a century. One of the first declarations of the Foreign Secretary had been that the Government did not consider themselves bound to adopt the procedure laid down by Mr. Ponsonby when in office of informing the House "of all agreements, commitments, and understandings which may in any way bind the nation to specific action in certain circumstances." Until they knew better, they were forced to assume from that announcement that they had reverted to the old traditions, and that secret diplomacy had again become possible. That was why the Labour Party had taken immediate steps to raise the question.

Mr. R. MacNeill, the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, replied that it was absurd to say that, as things existed, the country could be committed to far-reaching foreign conclusions without Parliament or the people knowing anything about it. Legislation by Parliament was required before a treaty could come into operation. But the real safeguard was that under the