to Sir Edward Grey's declaration: the very simple reason being that the
Government does not represent the nation, and is in its sympathies just
as much a Junker government as the Kaiser's. And so, what the Government
cannot do has to be done by unofficial persons with clean and brilliant
anti-Junker records like Mr. Wells, Mr. Arnold Bennett, Mr. Neil Lyons,
and Mr. Jerome K. Jerome. Neither Mr. Asquith nor Sir Edward Grey can
grasp, as these real spokesmen of their time do, the fact that we just
simply want to put an end to Potsdamnation, both at home and abroad.
Both of them probably think Potsdam a very fine and enviable
institution, and want England to out-Potsdam Potsdam and to monopolize
the command of the seas; a monstrous aspiration. We, I take it, want to
guarantee that command of the sea which is the common heritage of
mankind to the tiniest State and the humblest fisherman that depends on
the sea for a livelihood. We want the North Sea to be as safe for
everybody, English or German, as Portland Place.


*The Need for Recrimination.*

And now somebody who would rather I had not said all this (having
probably talked dreadful nonsense about Belgium and so forth for a month
past) is sure to ask: "Why all this recrimination? What is done is done.
Is it not now the duty of every Englishman to sink all differences in
the face of the common peril?" etc., etc. To all such prayers to be
shielded from that terrible thing, the truth, I must reply that history
consists mainly of recrimination, and that I am writing history because
an accurate knowledge of what has occurred is not only indispensable to
any sort of reasonable behaviour on our part in the face of Europe when
the inevitable day of settlement comes, but because it has a practical
bearing on the most perilously urgent and immediate business before us: