ment Committee when we are spending six millions a day.

One other feature has to be introduced. The predominant partner-by which, of course, I mean Ireland-has deliberately shut itself out as a field of operations for the Retrenchment Committee, which is a little disheartening to that body, because it is notorious the best field for economy in the United Kingdom is Ireland, with its numerous boards and highly paid officials. There is the real field for economy, but from that the Retrenchment Committee is debarred, so, I suppose, it will have to scrape a few flints in poor old Scotland to make its savings here.

One other thing I wanted to say. I do insist upon this-that on the part of every individual among us some private economy, at any rate, may be promoted, and it is our duty, our bounden duty, to find out where any public economy may be promoted. There are all sorts of stories going about the enormous waste of our war expenditures. War expenditures must necessarily be wasteful, but there is a figure beyond which it need not go. I can allude to one point because there is a correspondence about it in Punch this week. I mean the purchase of horses. That was a scandal in the Boer war. It has, I believe, been a scandal in this-that horses that have been purchased for the full price of £50 or more have been obliged to be scrapped when they came to the regiment as lame, unsound, and useless. The horses would furnish a chapter not without admonition in the history of the war; and in other quarters we hear about other such wastage.

We have the right to expect that the utmost vigilance should be exercised with regard to this vast expenditure, and that the taxpayers, who do not grudge these heavy taxes so long as they know that they are usefully spent, should have a guarantee that they are indeed usefully spent.

But, after all, there is only one subject which is in all our minds, which blackens every day from morning to evening, which occupies all our thoughts in business or in pleasure, and that is the

great war in which we are engaged. I do not think the present war aspect is particularly encouraging from what I may call the pins point of view, which is the pins fixed in the map which shows the advance or retreat of our troops. We see Germany in occupation of a great part of France, of Belgium, and of Russia, and there has been no real advance, no substantial advance, to repel them.

Our diplomacy has certainly not, judging by the fruits, been particularly successful. But I may say that diplomacy in this war and on most other occasions depends in the last resort on force, and where diplomacy may have been exercised successfully, perhaps when the Russians were advancing, it was not possible for it to make any great triumph when the Russians were retreating. However, the history of our diplomacy we shall never know till after the war, but I, for one, at any rate, have full confidence that all that could have been done was done by Sir Edward Grey, and if the results have not justified our expectations, at any rate he was not to blame.

Then, again, with regard to our armies, I think there is one thing we are apt to lose sight of, which is that no party to this war, with the exception of perhaps Austria, of which I do not know much-no party with regard to this war was prepared for a war of this size and ramifications except Prussia. Russia was not prepared, France was not prepared-I mean for a war of this scope -and certainly Great Britain was not prepared, because she never is prepared. It is not the fault of the Ministry; it is the fault of the nation. We will not prepare for exigencies of this kind, and, therefore, we must always begin with a great arrear to make up.

Just think what we were expected to do at the beginning of the war. We were expected to land 150,000 men in Flanders and keep the seas with our fleets; and now we have kept the seas with our fleets and we have raised millions of men employed in Mesopotamia, East Africa, and especially in France and the Balkans. Well, that was never expected. No one was prepared for a war of this kind, and so we have to

In the course of his address at the opening of Parliament Feb. 15, 1916, Mr. Asquith presented this serious survey of the military and financial situation:

D

URING the last three months I think the most outstanding feature of the general European situation has been the growingly intimate relations, co-ordination, and concentration of unity of directions and control among the allied powers. That change, or development as I should prefer to call it, applies to diplomacy just as much as it does to strategy. The distinguished Prime Minister of France, M. Briand, did us the honor to pay us a visit earlier in the year. He has since been to Rome, where he met, as might be expected, with a most cordial reception, and these two visits are to be followed, I hope at an early date, by a general conference of the allied powers in Paris, at which both the political and strategic aspects of the war will be reviewed.

Here at home the Government has thought the commencement of the new year a fitting occasion for taking a complete stock of our own resources in men, in munitions, in our industrial resources, and in our financial capacity, both actual and prospective. That survey has been undertaken by us with the object of our being able in the coming months to contribute our maximum effort to the common cause. In some ways our responsibilities here are more varied and more complex than any of our allies. In the first place, look at the position and functions of our navy. Over an area vast

and almost immeasurable in extent we have to meet and keep in being against all possible sources and wastage the most powerful and at the same time the most diverse fleet, or combination of fleets, which has ever sailed on the ocean.

WORK OF THE NAVY

The work of the navy during this war

has been to a very large extent silent, inconspicuous, and unobtrusive, and there have been few of the daring and spectacular adventures which light up the naval annals of the past. Our navy during that time has performed, is performing, and will continue to perform with unexampled efficiency and success our supreme and capital duties which the war cast upon it. In the first place the defense of our own shores against the possibility of invasion. Next the complete neutralization of the aggressive power of the hostile fleet which has never tried conclusions with

us.

Thirdly, the clearance of the high seas from the menace which in the early days of the war was of the most serious and formidable character to the free influx of necessary goods both for ourselves and for our allies. And lastly, the vigilant and continuous stoppage of enemy supplies and enemy trade, which is one of the most important factors in the final successful prosecution of the war. I think we may say without undue complaisancy or boasting that the navy in performing these functions under vastly altered and in many ways more trying conditions than have ever prevailed at any time in the past has shown itself worthy of the best traditions of a great service. This is a function which is almost peculiarly our own.

ARMY TEN TIMES LARGER

I come back to the army. In the actual theatres of war, where fighting is going on, without counting those who are for the time being in these islands for home defense, for reserves, for training, and for the necessary expansion in the future, in the fighting areas we have at this moment ten times our original expeditionary force. I am not including India or the garrisoning of Gibraltar or Malta or anything of that sort. I am speaking of the actual theatres of war, and I am speaking of troops sent from this coun