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 his powerful aid to the same cause.

This pointed the Prime Minister to a stone for two birds.

By himself adopting the policy of Mr.Hughes and Lord Northcliffe, he could at the same time silence those powerful critics and provide his party managers with an effective platform cry to drown the increasing voices of criticism from other quarters.
The progress of the General Election of 1918 affords a sad, dramatic history of the essential weakness of one who draws his chief inspiration not from his own true impulses, but from the grosser effiuxions of the atmosphere which momentarily surrounds him.

The Prime Minister's natural instincts, as they so often are, were right and reasonable.

He himself did not believe in hanging the Kaiser or in the wisdom or the possibility of a great indemnity.