th from their heads, the Prime Minister later in
the debate said he was not going to accept Seely's resignation. Yet Mr.
Churchill exhibited a fine frenzy of indignation against Mr. Austen
Chamberlain for describing it as a "put-up job."

Only a fairly fertile imagination could suggest a transaction to which
the phrase would be more justly applicable. The idea that Seely, in
adding the paragraphs, was tampering in any way with the considered
policy of the Cabinet was absurd, although it served the purpose of
averting a crisis in the House of Commons. He had been in constant and
close communication with Churchill, who had himself been present at the
War Office Conference with Gough, and who had seen the Prime Minister
earlier in company with Sir John French. The whole business had been
discussed at the Cabinet Meeting, and when Seely returned from his
audience of the King he found the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, and
Lord Morley still in the Cabinet room. Mr. Asquith said on the 25th in
the House of Commons that no Minister except Seely had seen the added
paragraphs, and almost at the same moment in the House of Lords Lord
Morley was saying that he had helped Seely to draft them. Moreover,
Lord Morley actually took a copy of them, which he read in the House of
Lords, and he included the substance of them in his exposition of the
Government policy in the Upper House.

Furthermore, General Gough was on his way to Ireland that night, and if
it had been true that the Prime Minister, or any other Minister,
disapproved of what Seely had done, there was no reason why Gough should
not have found a telegram waiting for him at the Curragh in the morning
cancelling Seely's paragraphs and withdrawing the assurance they
contained. No step of that kind was taken, and the Government, while
repudiating in the House of Commons the action for which Seely was
allowed to take the sole responsibility, permitted Gough to retain in
his despatch-box the document signed by the Army Council.

For it was not only the Secretary of State for War who was involved. The
memorandum had been written by the Adjutant-General, and it bore the
initials of Sir John French and Sir Spencer Ewart as well as Colonel
Seely's. These members of the Army Council knew that the verbal
assurance given by the Secretary of State to Gough had not been
completely embodied in the written memorandum without the paragraph
which had been repudiated after the debate in the C