The British Government, after the Armistice and the uncertain Peace,
had behaved for a while as though victory had re-established her old
strength. Superficially, indeed, and in moral prestige, among the
nations of the world, the British Empire had emerged stronger than
before the war. The menace of the German fleet was at the bottom of the
sea. New territories in Africa had come under British dominion. British
spheres of influence had been extended through Palestine, Mesopotamia
and Persia. But those new “mandates” were a source of weakness and not
of power. They were very costly at a time when there was no money to
spend on new adventures in Imperialism. At least the vast sums of money
poured into Mesopotamia and other Eastern territories on extravagant
administration and development could not be justified to British
taxpayers confronted by a staggering bill of costs for war purposes
which drained the old reserves of wealth. British statesmen, not yet
taught the elementary lessons of economic law, behaved with a kind of
splendid madness, as though a new Golden Age had arrived in which
their people would possess an Oriental Empire such as Alexander had
carved out of the old world. They forgot, or did not know, that poverty
and something like industrial ruin was creeping over English life. They
did not realise that after a devastating war they could not call upon
the last reserves of manhood to support military adventures in far
lands. They did not understand that the effects of war in Europe from
the Rhine to the Volga, and beyond, had so lowered the purchasing power
of the defeated peoples, the neutral countries and the new States,
that Great Britain, for a long time to come, would lose many of her
old markets for the export trade upon which her life depended, as well
as the shipping of the world’s merchandise from port to port which
had been so great a source of her old wealth. Winston Churchill, with
his restless imagination and wide-reaching Imperialism dreamed dreams
of British rule extending from the Cape to Cairo and from Tooting to
Tibet. Even Lloyd George, for a little while, was intoxicated with the
magnificence of the victory in which he claimed a chief share, not to
be denied in history in spite of some blunders and a feud with the Army
Chiefs.