policy of insufficient means--_petits paquets_--as the
French term it, they allowed our enemies to outstrip us. And to-day in
the air as on land it is the Germans who have the initiative and the
Allies who are condemned to the defensive. Yet experts had pointed out
over and over again what should be done and what avoided. Their advice
was obviously sound and their criticism obviously irrefutable. But the
men in power fumbled and floundered on until we had forfeited our
mastery in the air to our enemies. And ever since then the nation has
been paying the penalty. Yet it is to the men responsible for these
costly blunders that the nation still looks for salvation!

It was the same men who conceived or sanctioned the plan of an
expedition to Mesopotamia. Whether this was a wise or a foolish
project, when once decided upon it should have been carried out with
might and main. All the means requisite to success should have been
taken; all the resources possessed by the Empire should have been
drawn upon and nothing needlessly left to chance. Above all things
else, the views of the man charged with the execution of the plan
should have been elicited and carefully weighed. As a matter of fact,
General Townshend's judgment was decidedly adverse to the expedition
under the conditions in which it was planned. For the forces assigned
to him, amounting to far less than a division, were absurdly
inadequate, and their inadequacy was easily demonstrable. He ought to
have had at least two divisions more. But once again the game of
divided control and diluted responsibility was played, with
consequences which would in any other country suffice to wreck the
Government chargeable with the blunder.

Yet it is to the men who committed that and all the other blunders
that the nation still looks confidently for salvation!

If the British people finally obtain it under those leaders they may
fairly claim to have abrogated the law of cause and effect.

These same men are still the mentors and the spokesmen of a free
nation which can choose its leaders. It is they to whom the people has
entrusted the conduct of the most critical phase of the whole campaign
in which the recurrence of similar errors may foredoom the Empire to
disruption. And it is, humanly speaking, inconceivable that
miscalculations of that kind should be eliminated, in view of the
crucial fact that the Ministers at present in power, if we may judge
by their utterances and the