they have been called traitors, cads, cranks, and so forth: they have
been imprisoned for "bad taste" and for sedition whilst the most
virulent sedition against Democracy and the most mutinous military
escapades in the commissioned ranks have been tolerated obsequiously,
until finally the practical shelving of Liberal Constitutionalism has
provoked both in France and England a popular agitation of serious
volume for the supersession of parliament by some sort of direct action
by the people, called Syndicalism. In short Militarism, which is nothing
but State Anarchism, has been carried to such a pitch that it has been
imitated and countered by a movement of popular Anarchism, and has
exploded in a European war because the Commercialist Governments of
Europe had no faith in the effective guidance of any modern State by
higher considerations than Lord Roberts's "will to conquer," the weight
of the Kaiser's mailed fist, and the interest of the Bourses and Stock
Exchanges. Unless we are all prepared to fight Militarism at home as
well as abroad, the cessation of hostilities will last only until the
belligerents have recovered from their exhaustion.

6. It had better be admitted on our side that as to the conduct of the
war there is no trustworthy evidence that the Germans have committed any
worse or other atrocities than those which are admitted to be inevitable
in war or accepted as part of military usage by the Allies. By "making
examples" of towns, and seizing irresponsible citizens as hostages and
shooting them for the acts of armed civilians over whom they could exert
no possible control, the Germans have certainly pushed these usages to a
point of Terrorism which is hardly distinguishable from the deliberate
murder of non-combatants; but as the Allies have not renounced such
usages, nor ceased to employ them ruthlessly in their dealings with the
hill tribes and fellaheen and Arabs with whom they themselves have to
deal (to say nothing of the notorious domestic Terrorism of the Russian