The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-12-27
ENGLISH SN0BS
 RULE BRITISH
 FOREIGN OFFICE
AristOcratic Element Trying to Bring About War Between England and Germany
It IS Not Public But so Called Official Opi0n That's Making John Bull BelIicoSe

JOlui DUH DCIllCUSc
 l (By Ed l.. Keene, London Corresponds ent of the United Pfess.) Copyrighted 1911 by United Press ) | London, Dec. 27.-"War between England and Germany, if it comes, and it is more than likely it will come, will be due to the British Foreign Office, which is made up of l men of aristocratic Ieanings who have | conducted the country's international policies with utter disregard of the British spirit of democraey This is the view voiced, today, to the United Press by J. Ramsay Mac Donald, leader of the labor party in the House of Commons, in an inter view in which he throws new light on the circumstances leading up to the present delicate situation between the two great powers and justifles the campaign now being conducted by himself and his colleagues for the re- generation of the foreign office. Con- tinuing,, Macdonald said:
 Public opinion, in England, is not anti-German, however, frequently it may suffer from German scares; of- fcial opinion is. Public opinion is not pro- Russian; official opinion is. That shows where the roads between the national policy and the foreign policy separate.
 Our diplomatic service is recruited from among the sons of the society people. The candidates for a posi- tion in the service must have $2,000 a year of his own, must speak with an approved Oxford drawl and must be polished in court1y ways So as to bow properly"
 You mean that although England iy fr1c 11xy d fa affairs are still controlled by its aris- Ttocracy?' I asked.
 Precisely" he answered. "If we had a stronger foreign minister who had a real policy of his own and who united that policy with a big concep- tion of England's place in the world it might be different. But these men arise about only once in century and, although Sir Edward Grey is personally very honest, he lacks the power to control his own subordi- mates.
 If we had a House of Commons controlled we could check the aristo- cratic officials. But Show all the stupid wise men and stupid 'wisef newspapers in the country say to the stupid wise readers who believe them: We must allow our. foreign pay the bills and find the soldiers. but, if we allow a whisper to get out of Whitehall before treaties are sign ed and irrevocable contracts are made, then we are committing a great wrong
 .''sostha House of Commons knows nothing, except by gossip unless ev- erything is settled and then the foreign secretary comes down and tells that it is too late for profitable criticism and the aristocratic per manent officials laugh in their sleeves and go on ruling.
 "This was we'll illustrated in the recent crisis with Germany. It Is rue that, from the 4th to the 21st of December there was mysterious silence in Berlin as far as we were concerned, but, if our foreign office had been at all sympathetic to Ger many it would not have listened to from Paris and perhaps from Madrid. It would have sent for the German ambassador, repeated its questions. explained it's fears and requested an answer immediately.
 What happened instead? Our foreign office said to itself: Germany is silent. therefore she is plotting. Germany has given guarantees but we can't trust her. And all the time the people were ignorant of the silly game that was being played by the department until Lloyd-George thun-
  across the North Sea.
 The final form of that speech was settled by the foreign office. You can rely upon that being an absolute fact"
 Do you think all this will lead to war with Germany?'' "If the present policy and the present men are re- tained I am afraid it will. I am re- liably informed that Sir Edward Grey's speech has persuaded many friends of England in Germany that we have made up our minds to thwart the empire in her political and econo- mic expansion. Let that idea once be prevalent tin Germany and war will be certain. Yet, I do not believe that either the German or English people want such a calamity to happen"
 How do you explain the official friendship for Russia ?"
 Partly as sequel to our French entente, partly because the heads of our foreign office have happened to be individually prO-Russian. We en- abled the Hate premier of Russia to, suppress, by wholesale judicial mur- der, not merely the revolutionary but the reforming spirit in his country. We helped Russian credit and we stood by, giving our moral support, while Stolypin was reducing the Douma to farcical assem- bly-but the foreign office officials have no damned sentiment about democracy We have been absolutely pliable in the hands of Russia"
 When I questioned MacDonald a bout his remedy he disclaimed any personal antagonism to Sir Edward Grey. 'The present foreign secretary is responsible insofar as he is weok," Macdonald said "He cannot make his officials do what he asks them If Grey went, another equally feeble man would take his place and we would be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. The devil in the machine is not Grey but the perman- en. officials who can work diaboli- cally simply because we allow them to work socially.
 We must devise some means of restoring to the House of Commons control over foreign affairs. When this is done there will be no entang- ling alliance with Russia, but close