Sir

In his important speech in the House of Commons on March 14th, Sir Edward Grey won a Parliamentary victory for the Government on the Navy Estimates. In two years of peace they have been raised by nine millions, and practically the whole of the Government's supporters were alarmed and horrified on learning that nearly four millions more were to be added this year. It is the most serious expansion of armaments that has ever occurred in time of peace, and the strange thing about it is that Germany's additions in the same period have been comparatively small. Edward Grey, however, argued-how different is office to opposition-that this increase of the estimates is not due to foreign policy; our foreign relations are "not strained"; and he further mentioned that these additions are not to be regarded as provocative. He even asked the House of Commons to believe that, if our naval estimates had been reduced instead of being increased, it would have no sedative effect upon the augmentation of naval expenditure by other Powers. Nevertheless, he said that if foreign programmes follow "their normal intended course," the Government can pledge itself to a reduction in the naval estimates next year. As to the competition in naval armaments with Germany, he quoted some sentences from the German Chancellor, who had said last December: "We also meet England in the desire to avoid rivalry with regard to armaments.

We have always advanced the opinion that a frank and sincere interchange of views, followed by an understanding as to the economic and political interest of the two countries, offers the surest means of allaying all distrust." Sir Edward Grey said he entirely re

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ciprocated this attitude; and gather that the long, the unnecessarily long and enormously costly diplomatic quarrel over the comparatively insignificant question of the Bagdad railway is now in the course of settlement.

But the remarkable and satisfactory feature of the speech of our Foreign Secretary lay in his dawning consciousness of the paradox that, while the relations of the Great Powers are rapidly improving, their armaments are rapidly increasing. The taxpayers are bled while the diplomatists embrace. This, as he said, is a paradox, and we must all agree with him further that the growth of civilization ought to have lessened and not increased the cost of naval and military preparations. True, the most highly civilized nations must protect themselves by armaments against the less civilized; but then, as Sir Edward Grey said, the civilized nations are manifestly directing their armaments against one another. Unless, then, "the incongruity and mischief are brought home, not only to men's heads generally, but to their feelings, so that they resent the inconsistency and realize the folly of it-if this tremendous expenditure on armaments goes on, it must in the long run break down civilization." We may translate our own case thus into the concrete. If the recent additions, which have raised our naval estimates from 32 to 44 millions, had not been made, there need have been no increase in the death duties, and no super-tax, and no land-tax; or, again, the whole of the duties on tea, coffee, and cocoa might have been swept away and substantial reductions made in the income-tax; or, again, the money might have been used for destroying the slums in the towns of

Great Britain and Ireland, and erecting model dwellings, or making playgrounds and open spaces. In a few years there would have been no slums left, and the physical strength and happiness of the whole population would have been marvellously improved. We mention these mighthave-beens in order to remind the public that there is a national as well as a world purpose to be served, a patriotic duty as well as a cosmopolitan interest. No doubt, as Sir Edward Grey hints, this increase of expenditure may go on for some time provided the additions fall directly upon the incomes and estates of the rich instead of upon the food, clothing and comforts of the poor. In fact, the prospect of a party revolt, or of a great Socialist upheaval, is much smaller in England under our system of taxation than in Continental countries. be that as it may, we think our readers will agree with us that an increase of the income-tax on large incomes to say 5s in the £, which it has already reached in Japan, or another thumping addition to the death duties ought not to be contemplated with equanimity.

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Passing from the evil to the remedy, Sir Edward Grey neglected altogether the problems of greater economy and more efficient control, and directed attention wholly to the larger possibility of an agreement with other nations, and especially with Germany. But agreement with Germany, he said, requires very careful handling; Germany would not stand the idea of a limit being imposed upon its naval expansion. Hence he avoids "limitations of armaments," and prefers to use the diplomatic expression, "a mutual reduction of expenditure." But even after calling in the aid of that smooth phrase, Sir Edward Grey would have us remember "that in any possible naval agreement with Germany we have been given to under

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stand that the German Naval Law must in the long run be carried out"; and that, when completed, means a navy of 33 battleships. Nevertheless, he thought that an agreement might do something, and possibly even "within the limits of the German Naval Law some retardation of expenditure might be effected." We need not follow Sir Edward Grey from this pacific problem of Anglo-German rivalry to the field of arbitration and to Anglo-American friendship, a scheme which is now being discussed in all parts of the world. For we have now before us the answer of Germany, first that of the Imperial Chancellor, Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg, and secondly that of the Reichstag.

The Imperial Chancellor is, of course, the chief officer of the Kaiser, and the head of the executive. He is not, like our Prime Minister, the leading representative of the majority in the House of Commons and the president of its governing committee, the Cabinet. Nevertheless, the Imperial Chancellor has to govern with the help of the Reichstag, and the speech which he delivered on March 30th to the Reichstag was in answer to a motion of the Socialist party in favor of reducing armaments. He began by discoursing upon the philosophy of war, remarking that wars spring nowadays only from antagonisms that are rooted in popular sentiment. This sentiment, he admitted, is very susceptible to influences, and it is very desirable that a counterpoise to the irresponsible agitation of the yellow Press should be created by international effort. Meanwhile, he poured cold water upon indefinite and hazy proposals for disarmament, and declined either to approve any scheme or to circulate any scheme. England, he said, "is convinced, and has repeatedly declared, that, notwithstanding her wishes for a limitation of armaments and for a

composition of disputes by arbitral procedure, her fleet must be in all circumstances a match for or superior to any possible combination in the world. To aim at this state of things is England's perfect right. In taking the attitude we do about the disarmament question, I should be the last even in any sort of way to call this right in question. But it is quite a different matter to make such a claim the basis of an agreement which, by peaceful assent is to be accepted by the other Powers." He then went on to argue that it is hopeless to expect a Congress of Powers to agree upon a proportional plan for the reduction of armies or navies. He referred, for instance, to Napoleon's attempt to limit the Prussian army to 42,000 men (an act not of mutual consent but of one-sided compulsion), and omitted the fact that for many years, when England and France were chief rivals at sea, there was a more or less friendly understanding that neither party would try to upset the ratio of naval expenditure. We venture to observe that the German Chancellor has done himself a great deal of harm by misrepresenting the aims of England, and by exaggerating the difficulties of an international agreement. In the first place, our Government does not maintain that its Fleet must in all circumstances be a match for any "possible" combination of Powers; the word used has been "probable," which makes a very great difference; and the expression has been further limited by the exclusion of the United States. That the British Navy should be strong enough to defend our islands from the attack of any probable Continental combination is surely a proposition which a reasonable statesman on the Continent might be willing to admit as part of a general understanding for the relief of taxpayers and the promotion of civilization.

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Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg was almost as unfriendly to the idea of excluding war by arbitration as to proposals for limiting armaments by agreement, arguing that when vital antagonisms arise any arbitration treaty would "burn like tinder." condition of peaceableness, he said, is strength; the weak are the prey of the strong; a people that will not spend freely on its armaments will sink, and a stronger will take its place; "we Germans in our exposed position are especially bound to look this rough reality frankly in the face." To put it quite frankly, there is an undisguised brutality of tone in this whole utterance, which has given civilized nations throughout the world a very unpleasant idea of Prussian sentiment and Prussian civilization. Nevertheless, it is worth observing that during the last two or three years the German Government has not been forcing the pace. The great expansion of naval expenditure has been British, and it might fairly be asked whether fair speeches and evil practice are really so much worse than fair practice and evil speeches? Moreover, there was one practical paragraph in the Chancellor's speech in which he accepted the idea that England and Germany, by an exchange of information, should "give security against surprises, and strengthen in both countries the conviction that neither desires secretly to over-trump the other." He hoped that by means of this agreement "the expected calming of public opinion in England would set in." But we are delighted to find that the general tone of the Imperial Chancellor's speech and the idolatry of brute force have not been endorsed by the Reichstag; for on the day following Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg's speech the Reichstag adopted the two resolutions of the Volks-Partei, the first calling upon the Government to co-operate in

the reduction of armaments, and the second advocating a more general recourse to arbitration. By the first of these resolutions the Reichstag asked the German Chancellor "to declare his readiness and willingness to enter into joint negotiations with other great Powers as soon as proposals for the simultaneous and proportionate reduction of expenditure on armaments are made by one great Power." Thus the Reichstag has condemned the whole argument of the head of the Government, and even in a country like Ger

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many, which is still far from enjoying Parliamentary self-government, this action is highly significant and important. It will make the German Chancellor increasingly anxious to enter into some practical arrangement for the reduction of naval expenditure, and, indeed, the strength of German public opinion is proved not only by these votes, but by the furious diatribes of the newspaper which the Krupp firm runs against everybody in its own interests.

The mails that will come in from New Zealand a few weeks hence will probably bring us some further particulars concerning the doings of Captain Scott and the subordinate members of his antarctic expedition, to fill in the blanks which exist in the cabled messages received a few days since. In the meantime this news, the first we have had since the Terra Nova departed from Lyttelton at the end of last November, is satisfactory so far as it goes. There appears to have been a rough season down in the far south, the ship has been knocked about, two ponies and a dog have been washed away, a motor-sledge has fallen through a hole in the ice, but no human lives have been lost, and so far Captain Scott has carried out his intentions according to programme. There appears to be some slight misapprehension about these intentions, and in some quarters a wrong construction has been placed upon some parts of Captain Scott's brief, cabled statement of what he is doing, and the other message about what was done when the Terra Nova left him after his own party, the main body, had been landed near the old base in McMurdo

Sound. The commander mentions that the ship was going east "to put a small party ashore on King Edward VII Land for exploration purposes." Lieutenant Pennell, who was in charge of the Terra Nova after Captain Scott had quitted her, took the ship along in that direction, and, near to the place where it was intended to land the party, discovered the mysterious Norwegian Amundsen expedition, which is clearly out for strong adventure. comments that he has made upon the despatches received Sir Ernest Shackleton professes to be in some state of doubt, from the wording of the cablegrams, whether a British party was landed in this quarter or not; but if he is familiar with Captain Scott's plans he should not be so doubtful.

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Again, the inference lately drawn by a leading newspaper that the party, landed here on King Edward VII Land some four hundred miles to the east of McMurdo Sound, is intended to make a journey southwards as far as it can get and to the pole itself if possible, is not at all in accordance with what the present writer, who has enjoyed the confidence of the commander, knows of the plans of the expedition,