inspired, not by devotion to the diplomatists, but, like the Socialist
hero of old on the barricade, by the vision of "human solidarity." And
if he purchases victory for that holy cause with his blood, I submit
that we cannot decently allow the Foreign Office to hang up his martyr's
palm over the War Office Mantelpiece.


*The First Penalty of Disingenuousness.*

The Foreign Office, however, can at lease shift its ground, and declare
for the good cause instead of belittling it with quibbling excuses. For
see what the first effect of the nonsense about Belgium has been! It
carried with it the inevitable conclusion that when the last German was
cleared off Belgian soil, peace-loving England, her reluctant work in
this shocking war done, would calmly retire from the conflict, and leave
her Allies to finish the deal with Potsdam. Accordingly, after Mr.
Asquith's oration at the Mansion House, the Allies very properly
insisted on our signing a solemn treaty between the parties that they
must all stand together to the very end. A pitifully thin attempt has
been made to represent that the mistrusted party was France, and that
the Kaiser was trying to buy her off. All one can say to that is that
the people who believe that any French Government dare face the French
people now with anything less than Alsace and Lorraine as the price of
peace, or that an undefeated and indeed masterfully advancing German
Kaiser (as he seemed then) dare offer France such a price, would believe
anything. Of course we had to sign; but if the Prime Minister had not
been prevented by his own past from taking the popular line, we should
not have been suspected of a possible backing-out when the demands of
our sanctimoniousness were satisfied. He would have known that we are
not vindicating a treaty which by accident remains among the fragments