On Tuesday a failure was indeed announced—­a failure which must involve the Bank of England and most of the great banking and trading corporations of this country.  But no one seems to have taken action upon it, and I see no visible sign of general alarm.  The Prime Minister, speaking in his place in the House of Lords and on behalf of the National Government, said:  “I do not believe in the perfection of the British Constitution as an instrument of war ...it is evident there is something in your machinery that is wrong.”  That was Lord Salisbury’s explanation and defence of the failure of his Government in the diplomacy which preceded the war, in the preparations for the war, and in the conduct of the war.  It was a declaration of bankruptcy—­a plain statement by the Government that it cannot govern.  The announcement was not made to Parliament with closed doors and the reporters excluded.  It was made to the whole world, to the British Nation, and to all the rivals of Great Britain.  Parliament did not take any action upon the declaration.  No committee of both Houses was formed to consider how without delay to make a Government that can govern.  The ordinary normal routine of public and private life goes on.  Thus in the crisis of the Nation’s fate we are ungoverned and unled, and to all appearance we are content to be so, and the leader-writers trained in the tradition of respectable formalism interpret the Nation’s apathy as fortitude.

Lord Salisbury’s confession of impotence was true.  From the beginning to the end of this business the Government has lacked the manliness to do its plain duty.  In the first half of July, before the official reports of the Bloemfontein conference were published, everyone but the disciples of Mr. Morley knew that the only honourable course, after the Government’s declaration prior to the conference and after what there took place, was to insist on the acceptance by the South African Republic of the Bloemfontein proposals and to back up that insistence by adequate military preparations.  It is admitted that this was not done, and what is the excuse now made?  Mr. Balfour told the House of Commons on Tuesday, January 30th, that if in August a vote of credit had been demanded “we should not have been able to persuade the House that the necessity for the vote was pressing and urgent.”  The Government charged with the defence of the Empire excuses itself for not having made preparations for that task on the ground that perhaps the House of Commons would not have given its approval.  Yet the Government had a great majority at its back, and there is no instance in recent times of a vote of credit having been rejected by the House of Commons.  This shameful cowardice was exhibited although, as we now know but could not then have imagined, the Government had in its possession the protest of the Government of Natal against the intention of the Imperial Government to abandon the northern portion of that colony.  The Natal Ministers on July 25th confidentially communicated their extreme surprise at learning that in case of sudden hostilities it would not be possible with the garrison and colonial forces available to defend the northern portion of the colony.