DID LORD HALDANE WARN BRITAIN?

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2676, 24 January 1916, Page 2

DID LORD HALDANE WARN BRITAIN?

EX-MINISTER'S REPLY TO CHARGES. Lord Haldane, in a recent address on "National Education" in Loudon, defended himself against the charge of not having warned the country of the danger of war with Germany. Ho said: I am here to-night to utter to you a warning about the crisis which will arise after the war, and which is almost as grave for us, and I feel it more necessary to be explicit because I have been criticised, as 6ome of you are aware, as not having warned my countrymen and warned the Government about the war itself. lam not sure that my knowledge of what took place was as great as that of many of tho wise people who talk now, but it was substantial, and what I have got to say about it is this, that while we were doubtless all surprised by the enormous magnitude and duration of the struggle which-has developed, still nobody has beeii so much surprised as the General Staff of Germany, who expected to walk the course in about three months. Such information as I got—and I got a good deal —was carefully recorded and communicated without a moment's delay to the Government of which I was a member. Not only did we immediately take counsel over what we ascertained, but we took immediate action on it, and if we had not taken action on it, you would not have commanded tho seas today, and the Germans would have been in Paris and perhaps at Calais. That did not prevent us doing all we could to try to get the ideas of aggressive policy of war out of the heads of other nations on the Continent. I make no hesitation ,in saying that my most earnest desire was to keep peace, and I did everything m my power to keep it. But I was painfully conscious that there was. at least tho chance of a terrible war, and I did all that in me lay, all that seemed to me to be possible, to bring home that information, not to where it would simply lead to mischief, but to tho minds of my colleagues and to those with whom I was working, with the result that, as I say, at least we were not taken unawares, and we were able to mobilise not only the Fleet, but the Army, in. the first moment of the outbreak of -war.

I am far from making a claim that we knew everything or knew as much as we might have known if we had been cleverer and greater people; we did our best, and I repeat to you that there is no Government among the Powers that are at war to-day that has not been wholly surprised and taken aback by the way in which events have developed and the magnitude and duration of the struggle. I make my critics a present of that admission. ' This is only a. preliminary of what I have come here to say to-night, but I do not want again to'leave .even a pretext for it to be said that warning lias not been given. When the time comes and the records are disclosed, warnings' about the war and tho steps that were taken will becomc known to the people. They are all there, and I am not in the least afraid of the ■advent of the day of judgment. Lord Haldane went on to say that there'were matters ahout which he felt

equally responsible if he did not try in a very humble fashion to warn his fel-low-countrymen, and one was about the tremendous significance of national education in the immense struggle which must succeed tho war.