in the Irish government, but they are quite wrong in supposing that the
English have any particular say in English government. And I seriously
believe I am not deceived by any national bias, when I say that the
common Englishman would be quite incapable of the cruelties that were
committed in his name. But, most important of all, it is the historical
fact that there was another England, an England consisting of common
Englishmen, which not only certainly would have done better, but
actually did make some considerable attempt to do better. If anyone asks
for the evidence, the answer is that the evidence has been destroyed, or
at least deliberately boycotted: but can be found in the unfashionable
corners of literature; and, when found, is final. If anyone asks for the
great men of such a potential democratic England, the answer is that the
great men are labelled small men, or not labelled at all; have been
successfully belittled as the emancipation of which they dreamed has
dwindled. The greatest of them is now little more than a name; he is
criticised to be underrated and not to be understood; but he presented
all that alternative and more liberal Englishry; and was enormously
popular because he presented it. In taking him as the type of it we may
tell most shortly the whole of this forgotten tale. And, even when I
begin to tell it, I find myself in the presence of that ubiquitous evil
which is the subject of this book. It is a fact, and I think it is not a
coincidence, that in standing for a moment where this Englishman stood,
I again find myself confronted by the German soldier.

The son of a small Surrey farmer, a respectable Tory and churchman,
ventured to plead against certain extraordinary cruelties being
inflicted on Englishmen whose hands were tied, by the whips of German
superiors; who were then parading in English fields their stiff foreign
uniforms and their sanguinary foreign discipline. In the countries from
which they came, of course, such torments were the one monotonous means