traced, the task of again spending millions, because they tell us that they have in their factories worked out a perfect gun. We want security that we are going to get the best gun that can be procured, wherever it comes from. We have no such security now.[1]
The question is one of national, nay, of world-wide importance. As a German paper said the other day: "It would be death to all free ideas if England were to lose the feeling of her own security and the consciousness of her independence."
We believe fully with Sir F. Doyle that our "all-shattering guns" are vain if we do not keep other even more important things in a healthy condition; but if we fail now because we have no "all-shattering" guns at all, that will be the expression only of a far more deadly rottenness.
Under the cover of party government, there is the greatest danger lest a system should be set up in our midst which, hating daylight, and trusting to a parliamentary vote as ever ready to back a head who can by no possibility really check what is going on under him, gives at least the most grievous opportunity for absolute corruption; while if actual corruption were present, it would be impossible that it should ever be reached or rooted out.
How serious, apart from all question of corruption, the state of this department has become, from the kind of cheese-paring extravagance of which it has been guilty, wasting millions and cutting down needful expenditure, may be judged from this, that it is an open secret that, at the time of the bombardment of Alexandria, there was not powder available anywhere in Malta, Gibraltar, or England to have supplied the fleet sufficiently to repeat such an operation.
We are told that if – as we hope he will do – Dr Cameron moves that his Committee shall extend its researches to the Ordnance and Artillery Departments, he will be resisted, precisely because the exposure would be, and because it is known that it would be, so tremendous. We cannot bring ourselves to believe that English politics have yet fallen so low.
If our leaders are ready on such a ground as that to resist inquiry, and if independent members will obediently follow them, our fate is sealed. It does not much matter whether the collapse comes in this way or some other; come it will. The security of England will have ceased, because, abandoning all the principles which have made England worthy to be secure, we shall have earned our fate.
- ↑ Since the above was written, we are glad to learn that some guns of a new pattern are at length being provided. Better late than never.
