The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER MONDAY, JUNE 12, 1916. CONDUCT OF THE WAR.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXX, Issue 57, 12 June 1916, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER MONDAY, JUNE 12, 1916. CONDUCT OF THE WAR.

Though Lord Kitchener's War Office work was practically done, as the best-; informed authorities now state, it will be hard indeed to iill his great place. Perhaps, in the Nation's heart this can never really be, for despite the carping criticism, of the Little Englanders and the blatant folly ot some Parliamentarians, the real spirit of the British Nation is not what the foreigner would gather from some of the debates that occur in the Mother of Parliaments. Those who were opposed to Lord Kitchener, on whatever grounds, will at least have the opportunity of seeing some other chief in the great soldier's place, for what all their puny shrieking could not do has happened at the hand of Fate. Lord Kitchener, as Secretary for War, may have made mistakes, but he also accomplished miracles in the building up of Britain's Army, and England—real ; England—knows how much she owes i this modern hero. "England in her I heart knows herself; she can rely on i her own steadfastness and integrity, i but," says a rather notable Canadian I writer., "her people have sometimes a curious way of making the stranger think they are a decadent people playing a losing game. Kingslake remarked half a century ago that England had long been an enigma to the political students of the Continent. Half r century before, Sheridan in Parliament predicted that Lord Wellington would tail in the Peninsula not onl> because he was shallow and incompetent, but because the nation did not deserve success. And half a century ' before that, on the eve of the splendid conquests of Canada and India llorao. ', Walpole and his fellow journalists had »I been full of eroakings at England's ''moral and political decadence. Truly, England is always England, and it 1 . will always have its growlers and eri- ' lies and prophets of evil, Aeeording I

to the viow.s of certain patriots, the present Coalition Ministry is one the worst and feeblest of modern times. Names are handied about in club smoking-rooms, in trains and omnibuses, of distinguished men whose whole lives have been passed in the ( service of the State as if they were peitifoggers and blunderers and altogether inadequate to conduct the business of the war. 1 have been privil-j eged to meet some of these statesmen) at close quarters, ami with my personal knowledge of Ministers in France and America I do not hesitate to say* that, man for man, the present political leaders of England, in sheer intel-j lect, in character, in probity, in pre-: vision and in industry, are at leastj the equal of any who presde over the destinies of either of those nations. 1.. go further. We have heard them com-j pared with previous English Admiuis-. tratioijp, and generally to their disad-j vantage. Let me say that, so far as. my somewhat intimate reading of English history carries me, there has been; no English administration, whether! Walpole's, or Chatham's, or Pitt's, or Liverpool's, or Russell's, or Palmer-! stem's, that would not have derived added lustre from the presence in it of j Asqitith, Bpnar Law, Grey, Balfour, j Lloyd George, or F. E. Smith." And so it is to-day. There will still be growling and carping criticism of men, who are doing the Empire's work, in j high places, and he who takes up the task so well begun and carried on by Lord Kitchener will have no easy! place to fill. j