If we may argue back from public utterances to Cabinet discussions, it would appear that the only assistance--if indeed it deserved such a name--which was forthcoming to these two, proceeded from Mr. Asquith and Lord Haldane. The former was by temperament opposed to clear decisions and vigorous action. The latter--to whom the mind of Germany was as an open book--bemused himself, and seems to have succeeded in bemusing his colleagues to almost as great an extent.
In fancy, we can conjure up a scene which must have been enacted, and re-enacted, very often at Number 10 Downing Street in recent years. We can hear the warnings of the Foreign Minister, the urgent pleas of the First Lord of the Admiralty, the scepticism, indifference, or hostility expressed by the preponderant, though leaderless, majority in the Cabinet. _Simple_ said, _I see no danger_; _Sloth_ said, _Yet a little more sleep_; and _Presumption_ said, _Every Vat must stand upon his own bottom_.... We can almost distinguish the tones of their Right Honourable voices.
The situation was governed by an excessive timidity--by fear of colleagues, of the caucus, of the party, and of public opinion--by fear also of Germany. Mr. Asquith, and the Cabinet of which he was the head, refused to look their policy between the eyes, and realise what it was, and what were its inevitable consequences. They would not admit that the _Balance of Power_ was an English interest, or that they were in any way concerned in maintaining it. They would not admit that our Entente with France and Russia was in fact an alliance. They thought they could send British officers to arrange plans of { 302} campaign with the French General Staff--could learn from this source all the secret hopes and anxieties of France--could also withdraw the greater part of their fleet from the Mediterranean, under arrangement for naval co-operation with our present ally[12]--all without committing this country to any form of understanding! They boasted that they had no engagements with France, which puzzled the French and the Russians, and convinced nobody; save possibly themselves, and a section of their own followers. They had in fact bound the country to a course of action--in certain events which were not at all improbable--just as surely by drifting into a committal, as if they had signed and sealed a parchment. Yet they would not face the imperative condition. They would not place their armaments on a footing to correspond with their policy.