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Rh the British on its left. The success of the V. Army at Guise could not, in the general situation of the moment, be followed up or extended, and the retreat was resumed. Henceforward the army headquarters had the troops well in hand, and such attempts as were made by the Germans to envelop the now exposed left wing came to nothing. Already, however, Joffre had determined to dismiss summarily a large number of the generals who had played a part in the battle of the Frontiers, as a measure tending to restore the moral of the army and the nation. One of these, and the most conspicuous, was Lanrezac. On the day of the battle of Guise, Joffre had visited his head- quarters with the intention of relieving him of his command, but had thought better of it. Nevertheless, a few days later, on the eve of the battle of the Marne, Lanrezac was removed from his command, being succeeded by one of his corps com- manders, General Franchet d'Esperey.

The justice of his dismissal was far too questionable for him to be relegated to unemployment. He served as an inspector- general of infantry-training till the end of the war, and retired on reaching the age limit.

After the war General Lanrezac published a short account of the Charleroi campaign and the retreat of the V. Army, which besides his personal justification contains important documentary material for the general history of the 1914 campaign. (Le Plan de Campagne Fran^ais, Paris 1920.) LANSBURY, GEORGE (1850- ), English Socialist, was born Feb. 21 1859, at Halesworth, Suffolk, where his father was engaged as a sub-contractor on the railway line between Ipswich and* Yarmouth. When he was seven years old the family moved to London, and his childhood was chiefly spent in Whitechapel. In 1880 he was married to Elizabeth Brine, daughter of Isaac Brine, timber merchant. In 1884 they went with their three older children to Australia, returning in 1885, and soon after- wards settling in Bow, where their home has been ever since. Lansbury worked in the business of his father-in-law and was one of the first members of the Gas Workers' and General Labourers' Union now the National Union of General Workers. In 1921 he had been a member of this union for 30 years, and for the greater part of this time one of its trustees. He began his political life at the age of 15 as a keen Radical, but sub- sequently became a convinced Socialist, a member of the I.L.P. and a member of the National Executive of the Labour party. He was a member of the Church Socialist League from its inception. He was first elected a guardian in Bow in 1892, was elected to the Borough Council in 1901 and was mayor of Poplar in i9io/-2o. As a member of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law he signed the Minority Report. He sat for three years on the L.C.C. In 1910 he was elected Labour M.P. for Bow and Bromley. He resigned his seat in 1912, in order to recon- test it as a supporter of women's suffrage, and was defeated. He was defeated again in the general election in 1918. In 1913 he was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for a speech made at the Albert Hall, but was released after some days .of hunger strike. He had helped to found the first Daily Herald in 1912 as a Labour organ, and he became its editor in 1913. The Herald became a weekly in September 1914, and reappeared as a daily in March 1919, its policy being extremist and even Bolshevist. In this connexion Mr. Lansbury visited Russia in 1920 and was accorded an interview with Lenin. LANSDOWNE, HENRY CHARLES KEITH PETTY FITZMAURICE, 5TH MARQUESS OF (1845- )> British statesman (see 16.184), na d, during his tenure of office as Foreign Minister (1900-5), definitely set his mark on British foreign policy at a crucial period in history. The system which his predecessor, Lord Salisbury, had inherited from Lord Beaconsfield, of a gen- eral reliance on Germany and the Triple Alliance, had become no longer possible, in view of the unconcealed ill -will of Germany during the Boer War, and the German resolve to build a fleet sufficiently large to constitute a serious challenge to the British navy. During the South African War of 1899-1902 Great Britain felt all the disadvantages of isolation. If she could no longer rely on Germany, she had recently nearly come to blows with France over Fashoda, and her historical friction with Russia continued. Her isolation was equally marked in the Far East. Germany, Russia and France had forced Japan, after her Chinese war, to relinquish her conquest of the Liao- tung peninsula. England had refused to join the other European Powers in their action, but had simply stood on one side and allowed them to work their will. Subsequently Russia had over- run Manchuria and seized Port Arthur; France had effected a favourable revision of her frontier in the Mekong valley, and Germany had seized Kiaochow. It is Lord Lansdowne's great title to fame that his five years' tenure of the Foreign Office rescued Great Britain from this position of peril, procured her an ally in the rising maritime Power of the Pacific, Japan, and in Europe established her on terms of friendship and mutual understanding with France, by clearing away all the sources of bickering between Paris and London. He shares this credit, indeed, with Mr. Balfour, who was Prime Minister 1902-5, and of whom he himself testified, in Nov. 1905, that there had never been a Prime Minister who had given closer and more unremitting attention to foreign affairs.

When the Duke of Devonshire resigned from Mr. Balfour's Government in 1903 Lord Lansdowne became the Unionist leader in the House of Lords, and though the fall of Mr. Bal- four's Ministry in Nov. 1905 transferred him to the Opposition bench he remained the leader of the majority of that House until his resignation in Dec. 1916 at the close of Mr. Asquith's Coali- tion Ministry. His polished and courteous manner, his thorough acquaintance both with his work and with the idiosyncrasies of the peers, his cool temper and the sweet reasonableness of his expositions of policy speedily rendered his leadership most acceptable to his followers, in spite of the drawback, from the point of view of the Tory majority among them, that he was himself an old Whig. He rendered consistently patriotic sup- port to the development by Sir Edward Grey of the foreign policy for which he himself had been responsible. In domestic politics he endeavoured, as far as possible, to limit points of difference with the Commons; but the measures of the Liberal Ministry inevitably brought about a conflict, which came to a head over Mr. Lloyd George's budget of 1909. In advising the Lords to reject it as they did he claimed that it was noc an ordinary budget, but emphatically one that ought to be referred to the electorate to decide. Next year, however, he accepted the result of the general election of Jan. 1910 as making it obli- gatory upon the peers to pass the Finance bill. On the con- stitutional question he formed one of the abortive conference which met after King George's accession to endeavour to come to an agreed solution. He supported Lord Rosebery's Resolu- tions for the reform of the House of Lords, and, after the second general election of 1910 on the point of the Lords' veto, he brought forward in 1911, as an alternative to the Parliament bill, a scheme for reconstructing the Upper House, which, how- ever, was dropped after a second reading. When the Parliament bill itself came up to the House of Lords he moved and carried, by 253 to 40, an amendment providing for a submission to a popular vote of bills affecting the Constitution or otherwise of great gravity. From that amendment he and his friends would not, he said, recede so long as they were " free agents." Ministers immediately announced that they would not accept the amendment, and that the King had consented to create, if necessary, sufficient peers to ensure the passage of the bill in its original form. Lord Lansdowne held that, after this threat of coercion, the peers had ceased to be free agents, and he therefore advised them to desist from further resistence. In this advice he was supported by Mr. Balfour; but a vehement opposition developed in the Unionist party, headed by the ex-Lord Chancellor, Lord Halsbury, and these " Diehards " were supported by such a large body of opinion that the bill was only carried eventually by 1 7 votes.

This episode gave a shock to Lord Lansdowne's authority both in his House and in the Unionist party, but he remained leader, though Mr. Balfour retired shortly afterwards and was succeeded in the leadership of the party in the Commons by