pean politics, and if he can enforce this policy, I believe that it will be the solution of the difficulty as regards Germany. (Applause)

Another cause of the prolonged war after the war is to be traced to the Allies' treatment of Russia. The policy of intervention was a profound blunder, as is now generally admitted. It had the effect of encouraging the Bolsheviki, of bringing them recruits and maintaining their spirit of resistance. Had the allies held aloof and allowed the Russians to work out their own salvation, it is more than probable that by this time some kind of ordered government would have been established. Just when things were getting better Poland began an agressive campaign against Russia. It is known that the French policy favours building up a strong Poland as a buffer State between Germany and Russia, and England supplied Poland with munitions for defence. Poland could not have moved a man without the help or the Allies, but so long as the Allies had no military control it was impossible for them to say where a defensive war began. The ambitions of the Poles have been encouraged by the Allies, and more especially by President Wilson. The Poles have given no indication up to now that they are capable of forming a strong compact peaceful nationality.

I have assigned two reasons for the present anarchical condition of the things in Europe and Asia. The first was a thoroughly bad peace. The other was intervention in Russia. The Allies might have succeeded in overcoming some of the difficulties which followed the bad peace, had not President Wilson ceased to support them.

After the magnificent help which the United States gave the Allies, and it was vital in the end, the President withdrew his influence from the councils of Europe. The entrance of the United States in world politics would have been paramount. America was outside all the historical jealousies, suspicions and national animosities of Europe. America was disinterested. It wanted no territory. It sought no indemnity. Therefore as an

arbiter between clashing interests, and as the benevolent guardian of young democracies, America would have been supreme. But neither as a party to post-war settlement nor as a member of the League of Nations has the great Republic given the world the benefit of its help.

The withdrawal of President Wilson has thrown a much heavier burden on the British Government, and more especially on the Prime Minister. The Old Country is going through a time of trial which is testing the ability of its statesmen and its powers of endurance. The events are proving too great for the men, but I believe that Great Britain will fight her way through, and in doing so will, I hope, drop some of the new burdens which she has picked up, and lessen her foreign responsibilities, so that she can devote more time and energy to the development of her own Empire. England is only just recovering from the stupendous sacrifices of the war. I doubt whether you in Canada fully realize the part which England played in the world war, and what it cost her in service, treasure, sacrifice and life. Great Britain is the one country which has not received full credit for what she did. (Hear, hear and applause)

A great deal of mischief was done in the early days. of the war by attempts that were made to depreciate British effort. Probably it was intended by so doing to stimulate the Government and the War Office, but the effect abroad was to create misunderstandings, particularly between France and England, which have reappeared after the war. The British press was handicapped when it desired to counteract this propaganda, as it could get no information. Many months went past before permits were obtained to take photographs at the front, and cinematograph pictures. The Canadian army obtained those means of publicity long before the War Office extended the same facilities to correspondents with the British Army.

I would like to tell you a few home truths about what England did. In the first place the only country that was well prepared for war was Great Britain, though it was

the last country that wanted war. That statement may surprise you. You will admit, I think that the fleet was always ready-(applause); but so was the army. (Applause) The French military experts asked England to send to France an expeditionary force of 160,000 men. They knew what they wanted. As they considered that the war would be over in three months they thought that that help would be sufficient. This expeditionary force was despatched, and its conveyance to France was one of the greatest military achievements of the war; greater than Von Kluck's march to Paris or than the evacuation of Gallipoli. It was in France before the Germans knew that it had started. It went into line fully equipped to the last button, without the loss of a single man or any material.

This work was done by the military, but the part which Sir William Robertson did as head of the Commissary Department was one of the finest pieces of organization that we ever saw in the country. Nothing went wrong; everything went like clock-work; therefore we fulfilled that part of the contract.

All the belligerents had miscalculated how the war would go and what forces would be required, and had not foreseen what methods would have to be adopted. The British government acted on the advice of the French and English military experts, and to that extent was fully prepared. It was often said that we might have had a bigger army by establishing national service. There are three reasons why we could not have done so. In the first place, military experts did not favour any change in our military organization. In the next place, no House of Commons would ever have voted more money for the army, and even if we had succeeded in getting over these two difficulties, the Germans would not have waited to declare war until our new army was in being. They would have caught us while we were in a transition state.

In the early days of the war I played a good deal of golf with Mr. Lloyd George (he was then Chancellor of

the Exchequer) and he was thinking more of the war than he was thinking of the game, but it was necessary for him to take some exercise. The first thing that got on to his mind was our serious shortage in rifles; he did not know how a rifle was made but he soon picked up information. He said, "We are searching the whole world for rifles and we can't get them, and we won't get rifles for a year”—but he got the rifles. Someone came from America and said that that country could supply rifles and munitions, and Lloyd George went to the War Office, which had turned the whole thing down, and said, "We must get rifles," and it was due to Lloyd George that the Americans were brought in to supply munitions. America had tremendous industrial establishments, and they could go to work quite as quickly as we could. In any case, we had not got adequate facilities. The first things we needed were the rifles. We had the men for Kitchener's army. There was no difficulty about the men; the difficulty was about the equipment.

The man of vision was Kitchener. Kitchener was a great man. (Applause) Kitchener has been very much depreciated, because he was entirely out of his element. You must think of Kitchener not as an Englishman but as an Oriental, coming to England as a country almost foreign to him; he did not know its psychology. I remember a member of the Cabinet telling me one day that they told Kitchener, “Oh, you must have chaplains, you know; you must have other chaplains than those of the Church of England and Catholics." Kitchener asked "What are they?" The minister replied, "Oh, you must have Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists and others, otherwise we won't get the soldiers." Kitchener said, "What did you say those fellows are, Baptists, Methodists? I don't know anything about them, but if a chaplain will help to get soldiers let us have chaplains." He was a dictator in the Cabinet for a while but he began to argue with politicians-and then it was all up with him. (Laughter) He could not argue with politicians; but after all, though Kitchener would have been better if he

was ten years younger, he was a man of vision, and saw from the first that this was going to be a long warnot a three years' war, but longer than that. If you read his life by Sir George Arthur you will find that Kitchener believed it was to be a longer war than that. Then, it was Kitchener who held off conscription in England. He didn't want conscription till he was ready for it and the people were ready for it. It was Kitchener who advocated the dilution of labour. He was the only one in the British Government who called for labour to produce the war machinery. He said, "You want to dilute labour," and he asked Lloyd George to take up that campaign, which he did magnificently, to get the British workman to give him the munitions. In many other ways, Kitchener was a man of vision. He really saw that this was going to be a big job and that it would take years to finish.

Now, I said that all the French required of us to do was to supply an army of 160,000 men. That is why I say we were ready, because we fulfilled that contract absolutely. How many did we raise? While we undertook to send only 160,000 men to France, to help France while she won the war in three months, we raised an army in the British Isles numbering 5,704,416 men; and the total men employed in the war, raised within the British Empire including India, and also including coloured troops, was 8,654,467. We were not by any means exhausted when the war ended. Our combatant strength in France when the great German offensive began in March, 1918, was 1,293,000 men. Our rifle strength-that is, men at the front-was 616,000. We kept those numbers fairly well maintained until the armistice. In addition to that, we had an army of 80,000 fighting in Italy, an army of 400,000 in Mesopotamia and the East, and smaller arınies in Russia and elsewhere.

During the great offensive, in the summer and autumn of 1918, which ended with the defeat of the Germans, the the British armies captured no fewer than 200.000 prisoners and 2,540 guns, much more than did all the other armies of the Allies. When the critical days of March,