side Europe; as to Belgium, the British reply to the pathetic appeal of the King of the Belgians would have been that "without her knowledge, we should have bartered away to the Power that was threatening her our obligation to keep our plighted word." He characterised the German proposal as infamous; and in return Great Britain was to get a promise-nothing more -from a Power "which was at that very moment announcing its intention to violate its own treaty obligations and inviting us to do the same. Had we even dallied or temporised with such an offer, we, as a Government, should have covered ourselves with dishonour." He quoted at length from Sir E. Grey's reply, which showed that the Foreign Secretary, who had already earned the title of the peacemaker of Europe, persisted to the last in his efforts for peace. "The war has been forced upon us." Every member of the Government had had before him throughout the vision of the almost unequalled suffering entailed by war, not only to the present generation, but to posterity and the whole prospects of European civilisation. Nevertheless, they had thought it to be the duty as well as the interest of Great Britain to go to war. They were fighting, first, to fulfil a solemn international obligation; secondly, to vindicate the principle that small nationalities were not to be crushed, in defiance of international good faith, by the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power. He believed no nation ever entered into a great struggle-and this was one of the greatest in history-with a clearer conscience and stronger conviction that it was fighting, not for aggression or the maintenance of its own interest, but for principles whose maintenance was vital to the civilised world. With the full conviction not only of the wisdom and justice, but of the obligation to challenge this great issue," and in order to ensure that the whole resources of the Empire should be thrown into the scale, he asked for a Vote of Credit of 100,000,000l. not only for naval and military operations, but to assist the food supplies, promote the continuance of trade, industry, business, and communications, relieve distress, and generally for all expenses arising out of the state of war. This gave the Government a free hand, and the expenditure would be subject to the approval of the House. He asked also, as War Secretary, for a Supplementary Estimate for men for the Army. He had taken that office in order that the unfortunate conditions existing should be ended and complete confidence reestablished; and he believed and knew that it had been. There was no more loyal and united body, none in which the spirit and habit of discipline were more deeply ingrained and cherished, than the British Army. It was unfair that his own attention should be divided, and Lord Kitchener, with great public spirit and patriotism, had undertaken the office. He was not a politician, and his acceptance did not identify him with any set of political opinions. On his behalf, the Prime Minister continued, he him

self was asking for power to increase the Army by 500,000. India was proposing to send two divisions; every one of the Dominions had already tendered unasked the utmost help, in men and in money, that it could afford to the Empire in time of need. The mother country must set the example, while responding to these filial overtures with gratitude and affection. "We have a great duty to perform, a great trust to fulfil, and confidently we believe Parliament and the country will enable us to do it."

Mr. Bonar Law, speaking for the whole Opposition, gave their whole-hearted support to the Government. He had said in his first speech on foreign policy as Opposition leader (Nov. 27, 1911) that an Anglo-German war would be due to human folly; it was due to human folly and wickedness; but neither were in Great Britain. Though she was under no formal obligations to take part, the Triple Entente was understood to mean that, if any of its members were attacked aggressively, the others would be expected to aid. Berlin might have prevented war, but a miscalculation had been made about Russia and Great Britain. He endorsed entirely the Prime Minister's view of the position. The struggle was Napoleonism once again. "Thank Heaven, so far as we know, there is no Napoleon.' There was danger, not of a scarcity of food, but of a fear of scarcity, and he warned the country against panic. With the command of the sea Great Britain would have freedom of trade with the colonies and the whole of the American Continent, without the competition of her enemies or her allies. He offered the Government the full services of any member of the Opposition.

After further debate, which exhibited the progress of the Liberal conversion to the necessity of the war, the motion was agreed to, and also the increase of the Army by 500,000 men and the Navy and Coastguard by 67,000.

Subsequently, on the second reading of the Appropriation Bill, the President of the Local Government Board summarised the measures to be taken to prevent or relieve distress. For the prevention of unemployment, manufacturers were making patriotic efforts to keep their businesses going, and working short time instead of discharging employees; additional employment would be provided by the Road Board, the Development Commission, and various Government Departments, while Distress Committees and Local Authorities were invited to plan relief works. As to relief, the Prince of Wales's Fund would, it was hoped, supersede local funds; local authorities were being asked to see to the feeding of school children, local representative committees were to be formed for the distribution of the Prince of Wales's Fund, and a Central Advisory Committee had been formed with himself as Chairman, and including Mr. Long, Mr. Burns, and Mr. Ramsay Macdonald. He invited suggestions. The Poor Law was kept in reserve, as a last line of defence,

The Prince of Wales issued his appeal, endorsed by the Queen, on August 6, and the response was immediate. In the first two days the subscriptions amounted to 400,000l.; they ultimately passed 4,000,000l. Queen Alexandra also issued an appeal for soldiers' and sailors' families, and hosts of other appeals followed for Red Cross and hospital work and other matters; to these also response was generous.

Meanwhile the British Navy had achieved its first success and suffered its first disaster. On August 5 the third Destroyer Flotilla, shepherded by H.M.S. Amphion, and patrolling the approaches to the Channel, found the small Hamburg-American converted liner Königin Luise laying mines off the estuary of the Thames. She was chased by a destroyer and sunk by a torpedo, some fifty being saved out of a crew of 130. Early next morning, however, the Amphion herself struck a mine and was sunk, and about 130 of the crew and one officer-a paymaster-were lost, besides twenty German prisoners. In officially announcing the disaster to the House of Commons (Aug. 7) the First Lord of the Admiralty said that this indiscriminate scattering of mines, imperilling even neutral merchantmen, was a new fact calling for the attention of the nations. He added, however, that the strict censorship of the Press permitted the rise of many alarming rumours, and a Press Bureau would therefore be appointed under Mr. F. E. Smith, M.P., which would give out "a steady stream of trustworthy information" from both the War Office and the Admiralty, and he emphatically commended the patriotic reticence as to war preparations shown by the Press. (The Press Bureau, however, hardly fulfilled this forecast.)

The first instalment of emergency war legislation was completed before the adjournment (Aug. 10) of both Houses as follows. The Defence of the Realm Act empowered the King in Council to issue regulations authorising the trial by court-martial and the punishment of persons contravening regulations designed to stop certain specified forms of espionage, such as obtaining information to assist the enemy, tapping wires, or blowing up railway bridges or docks. The Patents, Designs, and Trade Marks (Temporary Rules) Act extended the powers of the Board of Trade to make rules under the Patents and Designs Act, 1907, and the Trade Marks Act, 1908. Its object was essentially to enable the Board to allow the rights in patents or trade marks owned by enemies to be ignored in the United Kingdom during the War. An Electoral Disabilities Removal Act prevented members of the Militia, Reserves, Yeomanry, and Territorial Forces from being disqualified by absence on the military or naval service of the Crown, or by the grant of poor-law relief towards their families during such absence. Another Act enabled the Government to requisition food, forage and stores for the Army; another empowered it to requisition foodstuffs withheld "unreason

ably," i.e. in order to raise their price. Finally, a Housing Act revived for one year, in order to reduce unemployment, the powers conferred on the Government by the dropped clause of the new Housing Act (post, p. 209). The Board of Agriculture in rural districts, the Local Government Board in towns, were authorised to acquire land and buildings and to arrange for housing with local authorities or authorised societies. It was explained that they would proceed by lending money to such societies, and use the other powers given them only in the last resort. This Bill was amended, at the instance of certain Unionists, so as to require the concurrence of the Development Commission-an amendment to which some Liberals reluctantly agreed in order to avoid imperilling the Bill. This done, the Houses adjourned for a fortnight, and it was announced that the leaders would attempt to avert controversial debates.

The efforts to compose the Home Rule conflict were not entirely successful (post, p. 203); but less menacing differences were settled or suspended at once. The contest in the London building trade, which had been somewhat mitigated in July by sectional submissions on the part of several of the Trade Unions concerned, was settled on August 6 by the abandonment of the project of a general lock-out by the masters, and the withdrawal on the part of the men of their refusal to work with non-unionists; and settlements were also effected of a dockers' strike at Liverpool, of various sectional railway disputes, and of a coal strike in South Wales, which for a day or two had seemed likely to interfere with the supply of coal for the Fleet. Political propaganda, too, was formally suspended, notably by the Women's National Liberal Association and the Land Union; and the appointment of Earl Kitchener as a non-political War Minister was followed by rumours of the impending establishment of a coalition Government. The only approach made to this, however, consisted in the invitations to Mr. Austen Chamberlain, Mr. Long, Mr. F. E. Smith, and other Unionist leaders, to give their counsel and assistance in various departments to the Government; and they accepted cordially. A general amnesty was announced (Aug. 11) both for suffragist prisoners and for persons convicted of offences in connexion with industrial disturbances; and both the non-militant and the militant groups of the suffrage societies provisionally abandoned their agitation (though a few of the militants made a scene at the Home Office on August 27), and organised themselves for the relief, in various ways, of the women and children sufferers by the war. Admirable work was done in these directions by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, and by the Women's Emergency Corps; and Miss Christabel Pankhurst, on her return from Paris a little later, repaid the Government by speaking at meetings designed to encourage recruiting for the "new Army."

Earnest appeals had already been issued for recruits; the response was immediate; and on August 9 Earl Kitchener, as War Minister, issued a circular to Lord-Lieutenants of Counties and Chairmen of County Territorial Associations, asking for 100,000 men to form a new Army. Recruits came in for it at the rate, at first, of 3,000 daily; most of the members of the Universities' Officers' Training Corps applied for commissions in the Territorials or Special Reserve; those who asked to be appointed to the latter were offered commissions in this "New Army," and sent (if they accepted) to officers' training camps, whence they were despatched by instalments to join their units elsewhere. Retired officers and non-commissioned officers largely returned to the colours and were used in these units, which formed additional "Service Battalions" of the existing infantry regiments, their numbers following those of the Territorial Battalions. This Army was formed into six (territorial) divisions each of three brigades. By the end of the year there were also a second and a third new Army formed, or in process of formation, on the same lines. The officers' training camps, however, had been given up.

Cruisers were guarding

The Navy, meanwhile, was active. the great trade routes and patrolling the North Sea; a German submarine attack on the First Cruiser Squadron was repulsed, and it was announced on August 10 that the German submarine U 15 had been sunk by H.M. cruiser Birmingham. The German cruiser Karlsruhe had been surprised (Aug. 7) by H.M.S. Bristol 200 miles south of Bermuda while coaling from the Hamburg-American liner Kronprinz Wilhelm and had escaped after a 200 miles' chase; the German battle cruiser Goeben and the light cruiser Breslau, after the latter had shelled Tunis, escaped from a pursuing Allied Fleet through the Straits of Messina, and proceeded to Constantinople, where they were bought by the Porte. (Rear-Admiral Berkeley Milne, commanding the Mediterranean squadron and Rear-Admiral Troubridge, commanding the pursuing fleet, were exonerated from responsibility for their escape.)

Further events were reassuring for the British public. The German wireless station at Dar-es-Salaam, the only good harbour in German East Africa, was destroyed (Aug. 9) by a British force; another British force occupied Togoland in West Africa (Aug. 7); and Japan (Aug. 5) and Portugal (Aug. 10) formally announced that they recognised the obligations imposed by their respective alliances with Great Britain.

Help was tendered lavishly from the Dominions and Crown Colonies; at home private houses and other buildings were freely offered for hospital purposes, yachts were converted by their owners into hospital ships, and the great London hospitals allotted beds for the wounded. Great activity-sometimes marked by zeal rather than knowledge-was shown in preparing for Red Cross work, and in making clothes for soldiers and others. The Queen