a way as to wreck our industries." At this stage the Prime
Minister sought to indicate that he intended great severity, without
raising excessive hopes of actually getting the money, or committing
himself to a particular line of action at the Conference. It was
rumored that a high city authority had committed himself to the opinion
that Germany could certainly pay $100,000,000,000 and that this
authority for his part would not care to discredit a figure of twice
that sum. The Treasury officials, as Mr. Lloyd George indicated, took a
different view. He could, therefore, shelter himself behind the wide
discrepancy between the opinions of his different advisers, and regard
the precise figure of Germany's capacity to pay as an open question in
the treatment of which he must do his best for his country's interests.
As to our engagements under the Fourteen Points he was always silent.

On November 30, Mr. Barnes, a member of the War Cabinet, in which he was
supposed to represent Labor, shouted from a platform, "I am for hanging
the Kaiser."

On December 6, the Prime Minister issued a statement of policy and aims
in which he stated, with significant emphasis on the word _European_,
that "All the European Allies have accepted the principle that the
Central Powers must pay the cost of the war up to the limit of their
capacity."

But it was now little more than a week to Polling Day, and still he had
not said enough to satisfy the appetites of the moment. On December 8,
the _Times_, providing as usual a cloak of ostensible decorum for the
lesser restraint of its associates, declared in a leader entitled
"Making Germany Pay," that "The public mind was still bewildered by the
Prime Minister's various statements." "There is too much suspicion,"
they added, "of influences concerned to let the Germans off lightly,
whereas the only possible motive in determining their capacity to pay
must be the interests of the Allies." "It is the candidate who deals
with the issues of to-day," wrote their Political Correspondent, "who
adopts Mr. Barnes's phrase about 'hanging the Kaiser' and plumps for the
payment of the cost of the war by Germany, who rouses his audience and
strikes the notes to which they are most responsive."

On December 9, at the Queen's Hall, the Prime Minister avoided the
subject. But from now on, the debauchery of thought and speech
progressed hour by hour. The grossest spectacle was provided by Sir Eric
Geddes in the Gui