ions, the financial situation, and the general psychological
reactions of men's minds, would provide his enemies with powerful
weapons, if he were to leave them time to mature. The best chance,
therefore, of consolidating his power, which was personal and exercised,
as such, independently of party or principle, to an extent unusual in
British politics, evidently lay in active hostilities before the
prestige of victory had abated, and in an attempt to found on the
emotions of the moment a new basis of power which might outlast the
inevitable reactions of the near future. Within a brief period,
therefore, after the Armistice, the popular victor, at the height of his
influence and his authority, decreed a General Election. It was widely
recognized at the time as an act of political immorality. There were no
grounds of public interest which did not call for a short delay until
the issues of the new age had a little defined themselves and until the
country had something more specific before it on which to declare its
mind and to instruct its new representatives. But the claims of private
ambition determined otherwise.

For a time all went well. But before the campaign was far advanced
Government candidates were finding themselves handicapped by the lack of
an effective cry. The War Cabinet was demanding a further lease of
authority on the ground of having won the war. But partly because the
new issues had not yet defined themselves, partly out of regard for the
delicate balance of a Coalition Party, the Prime Minister's future
policy was the subject of silence or generalities. The campaign seemed,
therefore, to fall a little flat. In the light of subsequent events it
seems improbable that the Coalition Party was ever in real danger. But
party managers are easily "rattled." The Prime Minister's more neurotic
advisers told him that he was not safe from dangerous surprises, and the
Prime Minister lent an ear to them. The party managers demanded more
"ginger." The Prime Minister looked about for some.

On the assumption that the return of the Prime Minister to power was the
primary consideration, the rest followed naturally. At that juncture
there was a clamor from certain quarters that the Government had given
by no means sufficiently clear undertakings that they were not going "to
let the Hun off." Mr. Hughes was evoking a good deal of attention by his
demands for a very large indemnity,[99] and Lord Northcliffe was lending
h