and the Premier's spirited, if not
very dignified, retaliation on the newspaper snipers led to an abatement of
unnecessary hostilities, though the pastime of shooting policemen with
comparative impunity still flourished in Ireland, and the numbers and cost
of our "army of inoccupation" still continued to increase. Innumerable
queries were made in Parliament on the subject of the unemployment dole,
but the announcement that the Admiralty did not propose to perpetuate the
title "Grand Fleet" for the principal squadron of His Majesty's Navy passed
without comment. The Grand Fleet is now a part of the History that it did
so much to make.

May and June were "hectic" months, in which the reaction from the fatigues
and restraints of War found vent in an increased disinclination for work,
encouraged by a tropical sun. These were the months of the resumption of
cricket, the Victory Derby, the flood of honours, and the flying of the
Atlantic, with a greater display of popular enthusiasm over the gallant
airmen who failed in that feat than over the generals who had won the War.
They were also the months of the duel between Mr. Smillie and the Dukes,
the discovery of oil in Derbyshire, the privileged excursion into War
polemics of Lord French, unrest in Egypt, renewed trouble with the police,
and a shortage of beer, boots and clothes.

[Illustration: "END OF A PERFECT 'TAG'"]

But though the Big Four had been temporarily reduced to a Big Three by
Italy's withdrawal, and though M. Clemenceau, Mr. Lloyd George, and
President Wilson had all suffered in prestige by the slow progress of the
negotiations, Versailles, with the advent of the German delegates, more
than ever riveted the gaze of an expectant world. To sign or not to sign,
or, in the words of Wilhelm Shakespeare, _Sein oder nicht sein: hier ist
die Frage_--that was the problem which from the moment of his famous
opening speech Count Brockdorff-Rantzau was up against. But, as the days
wore on, in spite of official impenitence and the double breach of the
Armistice terms by the scuttling of the German war-ships at Scapa and the
burning of the French flags at Berlin, the force of "fierce reluctant
truculent delay" was spent against the steadily growing volume of national
acquiescence, culminating in the decision of the Weimar Assembly, the tardy
choice of new delegates, and the final scene in the Hall of Mirrors,
haunted by the ghosts of 1871.

Writing at the moment of the Si