authority.  Nothing but condemnation still hangs round the memory of those hapless ministers who made the world so full of misery.  I repeat, the greatest of all perils is to have a Government composed of men whose brains are full of kinks, and who do not reach beyond the bounds of basing their policy on the idea that some foreigner or other has designs on our national wealth, our trade, or our vast protectorates.  In recent years that view has been dissipated, and the plan of broadening the national goodwill to men has been adopted and encouraged by a body of sound, unpretentious thinkers who have taken pains to train important gifts in the art of good government in all its varied aspects and international complexities.  The whole public have had to pay appalling penalties in the past because an impulsive handful of the population is of opinion that self-advertising, harum-scarum politicians, in and out of office, are the geniuses who make and keep prosperity.  This uncontrolled, emotional trend of thought comes in cycles and is unerringly followed by bitter disillusionment.  It was so during the wars at the beginning of the last century, and it is so now.  We always reflect after the tragedy has been consummated.  Safe and astute administrators are always termed the “old gang” by the political amateurs, and the calamity is that a large public is so often carried away by the flighty delusions of the real cranks who style themselves the saviours of their country.  At the present time we have as sure an example as ever the known world has witnessed of the awful disaster the resignation of the “old gang” has been to the whole of the Powers interested in this world-war, especially to our own country.  We shall realize this more fully by and by when the naked truth presents itself.  The very people who are conspicuously responsible for the destruction of unity always bellow the loudest to maintain it after they have been the high conspirators in breaking it, aided by their guilty followers.  What bitter lessons this land of ours has been subjected to in other days!  For twenty years the country was kept in the vortex of a raging war, with no more justification than giving Mr. Jackson instructions that the one imperative idea to keep in his mind was to take possession of the Danish fleet.  Nothing was to stand in the way of this great adventure, shameless though it might be.

Lord Malmesbury writes in his diary:  “Capture of Danish fleet by surprise on account of most undoubted information received from the Prince Regent of Portugal of Bonaparte’s intention to use the Portuguese and Danish fleets for invasion of England.  First hint of the plan given by the Prince of Wales to the Duke of Portland.  The Portuguese refused the demand, and told the British Government of it; the Danes accepted, kept silence, and afterwards denied it.”  The entry in Malmesbury’s diary has been proved to be a string of pure inventions, for which he or some other informants are responsible.