could enter France through the line of forts between Verdun and Toul if
they were really too flustered to wait a few days on the chance of Sir
Edward Grey's persuasive conversation and charming character softening
Russia and bringing Austria to conviction of sin. Thereupon the Imperial
Chancellor, not being quite an angel, asked whether we had counted the
cost of crossing the path of an Empire fighting for its life (for these
Militarist statesmen do really believe that nations can be killed by
cannon shot). That was a threat; and as we cared nothing about Germany's
peril, and wouldn't stand being threatened any more by a Power of which
we now had the inside grip, the fat remained in the fire, blazing more
fiercely than ever. There was only one end possible to such a clash of
high tempers, national egotisms, and reciprocal ignorances.


*Delicate Position of Mr. Asquith.*

It seemed a splendid chance for the Government to place itself at the
head of the nation. But no British Government within my recollection has
ever understood the nation. Mr. Asquith, true to the Gladstonian
tradition (hardly just to Gladstone, by the way) that a Liberal Prime
Minister should know nothing concerning foreign politics and care less,
and calmly insensible to the real nature of the popular explosion, fell
back on 1839, picking up the obvious barrister's point about the
violation of the neutrality of Belgium, and tried the equally obvious
barrister's claptrap about "an infamous proposal" on the jury. He
assured us that nobody could have done more for peace than Sir Edward
Grey, though the rush to smash the Kaiser was the most popular thing Sir
Edward had ever done.

Besides, there was another difficulty. Mr. Asquith himself, though