can still remember the thrill of earnestness and of eagerness for
self-sacrifice which has since then given way lamentably to war
profiteering, war strikes, and a general struggle among many classes
of the community to make as much as possible out of the war, merely
because our financial leaders have never really put the country's
financial problem properly before the country.

We were not plaster saints, but we were either Idealistic and perhaps
foolish people who attached great importance to the freedom and
security of small nations and all those items in the programme of
idealistic Radicalism, or else we were good, red-hot, true-blue
Jingoes with a hearty hatred for Germany, and enjoyed the thought that
the big fight which we had long foreseen between the two countries was
at last going to be fought out. Or, again, we were just commonplace
people who did not much believe in idealistic Radicalism or
anti-German bitterness, but saw that the whole future of our country
was at stake, and were prepared to do anything for it. A fine example
was set us in those days by the Trade Union leaders. The industrial
world was seething with discontent. The Suffragettes in London and the
Carsonites in Ireland had shown us how much could be done by appeals
to physical force in a lazy-minded community; and hints of industrial
revolution, with great organised strikes, which were going to tie up
the transport industry of the country were in the air. And then, when
the war came, the Labour leaders said, "No strikes until the war is
over. Our country comes first."

This was the lead given to the country by those down at the bottom,
who had the least to lose, and whose patriotism during the course of
the war has frequently been questioned. At the top the financial and
property-owning classes, having been saved by Mr Lloyd George's able