_May, 1916_.
Verdun still holds out: that is the best news of the month. The French with
inexorable logic continue to exact the highest price for the smallest gain
of ground. If the Germans are ready to give 100,000 men for a hill or part
of a hill they may have it. If they will give a million men they may
perhaps have Verdun itself. But so far their Pyrrhic victories have stopped
short of this limit, and Verdun, like Ypres, battered, ruined and evacuated
by civilians, remains a symbol of Allied tenacity and the will to resist.
The months in war-time sometimes belie their traditions, but it is fitting
that in May we should have enlisted a new Ally--the Sun. The Daylight
Saving Bill became Law on May 17. Here is a true economy, and our only
regret is that Mr. Willett, the chief promoter of a scheme complacently
discussed during his lifetime as ingenious but impracticable, should not
have lived to witness its swift and unmurmuring acceptance under stress of
war.
The official _communiqués_ from the Irish Front in the earlier stages
of the Dublin rebellion did not long maintain their roseate complexion.
Even before the end of April a Secret Session--the second in a week--was
held to discuss the Irish situation. By a strange coincidence this Secret
Session immediately followed the grant by the Commons of a Return relating
to Irish Lunacy accounts. From the meagre official summary we gather that
the absence of reporters has at least the negative advantage of shortening
speeches. In a very few days, however, the Prime Minister discarded
reticence, admitting the gravity of the situation, the prevalence of street
fighting, the spread of the insurrection in the West, the appointment of
Sir John Maxwell to the supreme command, and the placing of the Irish
Government under his orders. The inevitable sequel--the execution of the
responsible insurrectionist leaders--has led to vehement protests from
Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien against militarist brutality. The House of
Commons is a strange place. When Mr. Birrell rose on May 3 to give an
account of his nine years' stewardship, the Unionists, and not the
Unionists alone, were thinking of a lamp-post in Whitehall. When he had
concluded his pathetic apologia and confessed his failure to estimate
accurately the strength of Sinn Fein, members were almost ready to fall on
his neck, but they no longer wanted his head.
[Illustration: HELD:]
[Illustration: WANTED--A ST. PATRICK
ST. AUGUSTINE BIRRELL: "I'm afraid I'm not so smart as my brother-saint at
dealing with this kind of thing. I'm apt to take reptiles too lightly."]
Even Sir Edward Carson admitted that Mr. Birrell had been well intentioned
and had done his best. By the middle of the month Mr. Asquith had gone to
Ireland, in the hope of discovering some arrangement for the future which
would commend itself to all parties. By the 25th he was back in his place
after nine days in Dublin. But he had no panacea of his own to prescribe;
no cut-and-dried plan for the regeneration of Ireland. All he could say was
that Mr. Lloyd George had been deputed by the Cabinet to confer with the
various Irish leaders, and the choice is generally approved. If anyone
knows how to handle high explosives without causing a premature concussion
it should be the Minister of Munitions.
Ireland has dominated the political scene at home, for it is impossible not
to connect our new commitments across St. George's Channel with the
introduction and passing of the new Military Service Bill establishing
compulsion for all men, married or single--always excepting Ireland. The
question of man-power is paramount. Mr. Asquith is at last convinced that
"Wait and See" must yield to "Do it Now": that the nation won't have the
sword of Damocles hanging over its head any longer, but will have
compulsion in its hand at once. On the progress of the War Mr. Asquith has
said little in Open Session, but any omission on his part has been made
good by Mr. Churchill, now home on unlimited leave, who has spoken at great
length on the proper use of armies.
Mr. Arthur Ponsonby and Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, who raised the question of
Peace on Empire Day, urging the Government to open negotiations with
Germany, have elicited from the Foreign Secretary the deliberate statement
that the only terms of peace which the German Government had ever put
forward were the terms of victory for Germany, and that we could not reason
with the German people so long as they were fed with lies.
Mr. Henry James, who so nobly repaid the hospitality England was proud to
show him by adopting her nationality in her hour of greatest need, said
shortly before his death that nothing grieved him more than the constant
loss of England's "best blood, seed and breed." The mothers of England
"give their sons," but they know that the choice did not rest with them:
We did not give you--all unasked you went,
Sons of a greater motherhood than ours;
To our proud hearts your young brief lives were lent,
Then swept beyond us by resistless powers.
Only we hear, when we have lost our all,
That far clear call.