conscience is respected: an Englishman's is insulted and outraged.

But, indeed, all these oaths are obstructive and useless superstitions.
No recruit will hesitate to pledge his word of honour to fight to the
death for his country or for a cause with which he sympathizes; and that
is all we require. There is no need to drag in Almighty God and no need
to drag in the King. Many an Irishman, many a colonial Republican, many
an American volunteer who would fight against the Prussian monarchy
shoulder to shoulder with the French Republicans with a will, would
rather not pretend to do it out of devotion to the British throne. To
vanquish Prussia in this war we need the active aid or the sympathy of
every Republican in the world. America, for instance, sympathizes with
England, but classes the King with the Kaiser as an obsolete
institution. Besides, even from the courtly point of view the situation
is a delicate one. Why emphasize the fact that, formally speaking, the
war is between two grandsons of Albert the Good, that thoroughbred
German whose London monument is so much grander than Cromwell's?

The Labour Party should also set its face firmly against the abandonment
of Red Cross work and finance, or the support of soldiers' families, or
the patrolling of the streets, to amateurs who regard the war as a
wholesome patriotic exercise, or as the latest amusement in the way of
charity bazaars, or as a fountain of self-righteousness. Civil
volunteering is needed urgently enough: one of the difficulties of war
is that it creates in certain departments a demand so abnormal that no
peace establishment can cope with it. But the volunteers should be
disciplined and paid: we are not so poor that we need spunge on anyone.
And in hospital and medical service war ought not at present to cost
more than peace would if the victims of our commercial system were
properly tended, and our Public Health service adequately extended and